Children enabled a writer to escape from drudgery

a book about the tensions facing an adopted boy

PERCHED in her hillside cottage full of fat white cats and lined with

shelves of books and china, Susan Coon fits perfectly the notion of what

a writer should be. It is no surprise that she wrote her first book at

the age of eight: five chapters of a page each. More surprising is that

she studied architecture before dropping out of a course that was not

for her to go into retail management and then the Civil Service, both of

which proved equally unsuitable choices.

Her first published work, a children's book, Richard's Castle, has

just won the tenth Kathleen Fidler award made annually for new writing

for the eight to 12 age-group in memory of the popular broadcaster and

author of more than 80 children's books. It is a small-scale thriller

with a mystery involving those staples of the genre, a ruined castle and

mysterious goings-on with flashing lights at dead of night.

Having children proved the release from Civil Service drudgery which

allowed her creative instincts full flow. ''When the children went to

school I knew I did not want to go back to an office job and remembered

that I had once harboured an ambition to write,'' she said.

She found joining the Edinburgh writers' group the key to pursuing her

ambition seriously: ''It works like an Alcoholics Anonymous group in

reverse for writers. Instead of stopping drinking, you have to start

writing. When established writers talk to you as though you are a

serious writer, you start to take yourself seriously.'' She wrote an

adult novel -- as yet unpublished -- as well as magazine articles on a

freelance basis.

The serious theme explored in Richard's Castle is adoption and the

difficulties facing an adopted child who suddenly has to fit into a new

family. Richard's experience of living with a number of different

families leads him to sus out new situations quietly, carefully, and

sometimes cynically.

There are some nicely-observed moments when Richard sneaks out of the

holiday cottage at night to explore on his own instead of always being

shown things by other people. Looking for the backdoor key to let

himself out, he recalls the family who kept all keys on a rack, the one

where it was hidden in a sweetie tin to baffle burglars, the one where

all the odds and ends were piled into ''the'' drawer, and how his new

family planted a broken coat-hanger in the garden to effect entry to the

house without a key.

Richard's front of apparently not caring is carefully built up for the

reader who is party to Richard's inner thoughts which include at tough

moments the mantra: ''Nothing matters. It doesn't matter. Nothing

matters.''

Except that it does, of course. What matters most of all is that his

original family was destroyed violently and unnecessarily by a

terrorist's bullet. It is a more dramatic background than most adopted

children have, and with exactly that Blytonesque tailoring of

circumstances to fictional purposes which is so thoroughly irritating --

to some children as well as to cynical adults. That is the book's

weakness. Its strength is in portraying the inner conflict of a child

trying to remain loyal to his natural parents and at the same time

assimilate into a new family.

This is a tale of late twentieth-century Scotland, where children

(rather than babies) are placed for adoption when their family

circumstances have broken down but they are not orphans. Richard's

father and younger sister were killed in the terrorist attack. His

mother was injured and although Richard was only slightly wounded, he

has been more seriously damaged by the experience and by his subsequent

life with his mother who became an alcoholic. Although he apparently

accepts that he is better-off with this new family, he remembers his

real mum with a hint of longing as well as despair at the chaotic life

they led together.

That conflict is daringly close to home for Susan Coon and her family,

one of whose three children is adopted and who is at the stage of

questioning some of the decisions which were made on his behalf.

Mrs Coon herself is personally aware of the possibility of adoptions

breaking down and suggests that in an enthusiasm for giving children the

best possible life by placing them in a family, some were not given as

much time as they might have required to come to terms with leaving

their original families.

Another strand of her life is also hinted at in this story, where much

depends on a map reference and there is a discussion of running

techniques. She is the editor of CompasSport, the orienteering magazine,

and the sport has been taken up by the whole family to the extent that

the children now complete the courses in front of her -- but the next

book (for five to eight year-olds) is already competing with the grid

references in her head.