Review: Into the Nowhere (Doctor Who) - Jenny Colgan

The last few months have certainly been a rollercoaster ride for Doctor Who fans. The Name of the Doctor! The Night of the Doctor! The Day of the Doctor! The Time of the Doctor! Splendid stuff, all of it. Not to mention a veritable plethora of audios, books, etc. (The Veritable Plethora of the Doctor, you might say.) It’s a great time to be a fan. Except – except for that one little matter. Come in, No. 11, your time is up. And much as I’m looking forward to Peter Capaldi’s tenure in the TARDIS (there’s no doubt in my mind he’s going to be brilliant), I’m really, really going to miss Matt Smith. Because, you know what, Doctor? You were my Doctor.

Thankfully he’s not gone, not entirely, because there are still adventures out there we haven’t previously heard about, and one of these has now been recounted, as part of the new Time Trips series, by Jenny Colgan. The series kicked off in style last month with A L Kennedy’s Fourth Doctor story, The Death Pit, and I’m glad to say continues in equal-but-different style with Into the Nowhere. This e-book features the Eleventh Doctor and Clara, and a planet which doesn’t seem to exist. It’s not in any of the literature. (There’s a lovely Douglas Adams reference here, which made me very happy – and a nod to Harry Potter later, too. I do like the idea that these universes co-exist.) But anyway, there it is, and of course they have to go there and find out more, and it’s… really not a very nice place, actually, though the reason why is not what you might expect.

Jenny Colgan – author of numerous romantic comedies, and one previous Doctor Who novel, the acclaimed Dark Horizons (well, I acclaimed it. I’m pretty sure other people did, too.) – writes beautifully here. This is dark and scary stuff, and it’s very very good. This planet with no name is a frightening place and the reader feels that, every step of the way. But as good, if not better, than this is the characterisation of the Doctor and Clara, which is insightful and believable. I’ll admit that I have struggled to really warm to Clara as a companion, largely because the – to my mind –rather uneven series 7b never totally gave me a grasp of who she was, apart from cute and pretty and with a nice line in sarky repartee. I didn’t feel much depth of personality came across, somehow, and hence it was hard to care what happened to her. I think she’s growing on me, though, and Jenny Colgan – by giving us insight into Clara’s inner feelings, post-Name of the Doctor, about what has happened to her and how it feels and what it all means – has helped to give her genuine depth. The Doctor is also very well characterised in all his lightness and his darkness. I don’t want to spoil the story for those who haven’t read it, so I’ll only say that things take an unexpected turn. It’s cleverly done, with some rather surprising imagery, and also very sad at one point in particular – but the end is satisfying and left me thinking.

Highly, highly recommended and I look forward to more Doctor Who stories from Jenny Colgan.

The Ghost Runner - Bill Jones

Bill Jones first heard of the "ghost runner" in 1984, nine years after John Tarrant's death; researching a documentary about the Salford Harriers, an interviewee pushed a slender, battered paperback into his hand. The book, an Athletics Weekly publication, was John Tarrant's hastily written autobiography, also entitled The Ghost Runner. Unfortunately John's literary talent did not match his running talent and the book was not well written, but the story was absolutely compelling and Bill Jones quickly became haunted by this "ghost", determined to learn more about him, and ultimately to tell John's amazing story as it deserved to be told.

Subtitled "The Tragedy Of The Man They Couldn't Stop", it is a moving and inspiring story, yet the character who emerges from this book is not always easy to like - "self-centred, destructive and lacking in emotional intelligence", driven by anger and a burning sense of injustice. But John Tarrant had much to be angry about. Born in London in 1932, due to his mother's illness and later death and his father's conscription in 1940 he spent much of his childhood in a brutal children's home, his only companion and support his beloved younger brother, Victor. It wasn't until 1947 that the brothers, now 15 and 13, finally left the home, moving to Buxton in the Peak District with their father and newly-acquired stepmother.

There wasn't a great deal for young men to do in Buxton and when a new craze for boxing swept the town, John took it up with alacrity. Although he was never destined to be a particularly successful boxer, his years of surviving the harsh regime and defending himself and Victor against the bullies in the children's home had toughened him up and taught him to fight, and he participated in several matches over a couple of years, receiving a total of £17 for his trouble. This paltry sum was to prove his downfall. Discovering on the fells around his home an abiding love and talent for running, when John wanted to join a running club and enter races, dreaming of the success he was sure he was capable of, he was forbidden by the authorities to do so. Thanks to that seventeen pounds, honestly if naively declared, his amateur status had been compromised; he was banned for life, at home and abroad.

Confident that reason must eventually prevail, John embarked on a campaign of letter writing to the relevant authorities, only to be met by rejection after rejection. By this time married (in 1953) to the unswervingly supportive Edie, and working as a rather inefficient council plumber - the first in a succession of jobs which always took second place to running - John, aided and abetted by his brother Victor, embarked on a drastic course of action. If he wasn't allowed to run officially in races, he would run them unofficially, heading to the start line in disguise aiming to jump into the race at the last minute, where he would quickly speed to the front and stay there until he either won or collapsed of exhaustion. His intention: to show the powers that be just what he was capable of, and his genuine desire to run for the sake of it rather than for reward. Thus the ghost runner was born, quickly seizing the imagination of the nation.

Though officialdom refused to recognise his existence, John was welcomed and warmly supported by his fellow athletes, most of whom understood and sympathised with his predicament. (Former international athlete and main rival, Arthur Keily, even wrote repeatedly to the AAA pleading John's case, without success.)

The Ghost Runner is an incredibly good read, following John's running career from his first "ghost" outing at the Liverpool Marathon, to setting world records at 40 and 100 miles, and to South Africa where he ran the Comrades Marathon - a race which became an obsession for him - as a "ghost" and later defied apartheid as the only white man running alongside the black and Indian athletes who, like him, were barred from official races. In the process he earned himself the love and respect of many who were battling for equality in South Africa.

Although Bill Jones never, of course, met John Tarrant, in researching his life he received full and warm co-operation from John's family - his long-suffering, ever supportive widow Edie, son Roger, and indispensable brother Victor, all of whom deserve medals of their own - and found that many others, including John's running contemporaries, were only too happy to talk to him, and indeed believed the telling of John's story was long overdue. Hence, a clear picture of the man and his remarkable, if all too short, life emerges from this gripping book.

You would need a heart of stone not to be moved by this story (the last few pages had me in tears), which can also frequently make the blood boil. John may have been "the man they couldn't stop" but he was also engaged in a fight he could never win, constantly knocked back by the intransigent authorities, who refused to accept that £17 earned as a not particularly good teenage boxer did not render him a money-tainted "professional" for ever after. (Ironic, when money was the one thing John never had.) John wasn't the only person to fall foul of the elitist "cult of amateurism" which was unforgivingly enforced by the upper echelons, but he was probably the most determined to resist, and became a constant thorn in the side of the AAA.

The Ghost Runner is a great read, packed with fascinating incidents and characters, and extremely evocative of the post-war social and political period it describes. There are some extraordinary descriptions of races, including an attempt at the 50-mile world record which took place on a dilapidated Durban track periodically illuminated by flashes of lightning while rain lashed down flooding the track knee-deep in places, fighting broke out between rival gangs, and a local band continued playing regardless.

I would recommend anyone to read the book; it’s a terrific and thought-provoking story of a man whose life and achievements deserve to be more widely known.

The Death Pit (Time Trips) - A L Kennedy

What with all that post-anniversary comedown, some new Doctor Who was sorely needed to ease the pain. A brand new Fourth Doctor novella from A.L. Kennedy, you say? That'll do nicely! Especially following on from some brand new Tom in The Day of the Doctor...

Over 2013 I've got used to a new e-book coming out every month, so it's nice to continue this tradition with the new Time Trips series. They're a bit longer (and a bit cheaper) than their predecessors and seem to feature Doctors in random order (presumably as chosen by the authors).

The Death Pit is set at a Scottish hotel in the '70s and concerns dissatisfied 24-year-old Junior Day Receptionist (or, as she points out, Only Day Receptionist) Bryony Mailer, "possibly the most inquisitive human alive on Earth at that time". It's not a very nice hotel, mainly frequented by boring golfers and their bored wives, but it still seems odd that people are disappearing from the golf course never to be seen again. There are other oddities too - the elderly hotel owner is never seen, and there's something a bit unusual about her twin grandchildren. Then a stranger, a particularly strange stranger, turns up...

I detected a distinct Douglas Adams-esque flavour to the writing at times ("He was flailing about in the pit like someone who had just found out a great deal of new and unpleasant information about life..."), which makes it seem very fitting that one of the characters is actually called David Agnew (a pseudonym used at various times in Doctor Who, including famously by Adams and others on "City of Death").The Fourth Doctor is travelling solo post-Deadly Assassin, and seems to be on the lookout for a new companion, at least if his many approving thoughts (we spend quite a lot of time in the Doctor's head here)about Bryony are anything to go by.

I enjoyed this story, although I did get a bit confused towards the end, and was left wondering about certain characters. Possibly that's a failing on my part, though. All in all, a good read which is certainly worth the price tag. I look forward to the rest of the series.