Charlotte Sometimes (book)
| Author | Penelope Farmer |
|---|---|
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Language | English |
| Genre | Children's novel |
| Publisher | Chatto & Windus (UK); Harcourt (USA) |
|
Publication date
|
1969 |
| Media type | |
| Preceded by | Emma in Winter |
Charlotte Sometimes is a children's novel by the English writer Penelope Farmer, published in 1969 by Chatto & Windus in the UK, and by Harcourt in the United States. It is the third and best known of three books featuring the Makepeace sisters, Charlotte and Emma. The three are sometimes known as the Aviary Hall books.[2] Charlotte Sometimes inspired the song of the same name by the English rock band, The Cure.
The story centres on a girl called Charlotte, who not long after starting at a boarding school, finds she has travelled mysteriously back more than forty years. The teachers and other students call her "Clare", the girl in whose shoes Charlotte finds herself. Charlotte and Clare mysteriously change places each night, each one alternating between the years 1918 and Charlotte's time. Although Charlotte and Clare never meet each other, they communicate by writing notes in an old diary that looks like an exercise book. The girls are faced with the disconcerting scenario of finding out how to live each other's lives without being discovered.
The story is entirely written from Charlotte's point of view: Clare herself never appears in the narrative. As the story progresses, Charlotte becomes trapped in Clare's time. Charlotte struggles to maintain her own identity as Charlotte, whilst living Clare's life in Clare's time.
At the age of twenty-one, Penelope Farmer was contracted for her first collection of short stories, The China People. One story originally intended for this collection proved too long to include. This was rewritten as the first chapter of The Summer Birds (1962), her first book featuring Charlotte and Emma Makepeace. A second book, Emma in Winter, with Emma as the main character followed in 1966. Charlotte Sometimes was first published in 1969 by Harcourt in the United States, and by Chatto and Windus in the UK in the same year.
Penelope Farmer arranged many of the incidents in Charlotte Sometimes ahead of time, based upon family experiences. She later wrote that Charlotte and Emma were originally based on her mother and her mother's sister as children, having no parents and "having to be everything to each other," one being the responsible one, the other being rather difficult. She wrote, "Emma and Charlotte have grown in their own ways and aren't exactly based on my mother and her sister now, but this is where it started." Penelope Farmer's mother, Penelope Boothby, who was "talkative and unconventional", besides being the inspiration for Emma, was also the inspiration for the character of Emily. The boarding school where the story takes place is set near where Penelope Farmer lived in London. It was based on the kind of school which the author and her twin sister Judith attended in the 1950s.
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