Nicobobinus

"Vanishingly few people have run into Nicobobinus – I almost never find anybody who has read this book – but it’s easily one of my favourite books ever. I had it read to me in school as a kid, and now I have a hardback, which is very beloved. This is the story of Nicobobinus and his very outgoing friend, Rosie, two kids living in Venice. One morning, Rosie wants to occupy them, ideally off having some kind of adventure; so first she suggests weeding the doorstep, and when Nicobobinus declines, she declares – ‘Oh, well then I guess we’re going to go find the land of dragons.’ And so their adventure begins. They climb over a garden wall to get some fruit and are pursued through a manor. Nicobobinus is apprehended by a golden man who turns various parts of his body into gold. As they’re escaping, it turns out that the only cure for it is dragon blood, which is very convenient since they were going to the land of dragons anyway… But it also involves bloodthirsty monks, an ocean of mountains, and the City of Cries – delightfully weird. Everything about it is weird. It felt subversive to read it. I think those books that you discover when you’re a kid where it feels like you’re getting away with something often tend to be favourites. It’s got a healthy measure of Python-esque nonsense… I just couldn’t love it more. There’s certainly a feverish quality to them. I think that as kids, we’re willing to suspend our disbelief much, much further than we are as adults – because everything seems possible when you’re a kid. When I was reading fantasy fiction as a child, I did have this lingering belief – maybe this could really happen to me. Maybe it just hasn’t yet. And I think the belief that truly fantastical things are possible is something that it’s sad to lose as we get older. Even if you read a fantasy book as an adult, people still care about the physics. How would they carry that much gold from place to place? I’m sure the horses would have been tired by now. And how did they get from this end of the continent to the other end of the continent in only one day? We have these practicalities that nag at us. I don’t think kids really mind at all."