The Borrowers

I loved Mary Norton’s book for its narrative hook: size. This is Gulliver’s Lilliput without the satiric political overtones. The main characters are a miniature Edwardian family called the Clocks because they live underneath one. The father, Pod, his wife, Homily, and their daughter, Arietty, are so small they fit under the floorboards of a human-sized house.

All their ingenuity is devoted to adapting their smallness to the world of Big People while preventing them from being “seen” by them. Everything they use must be “borrowed” from the bigger world and adapted to their circumstances. Matchboxes become dressers and chests… show more.

I’ve heard people say “This isn’t fantasy”, which confuses me. A story about miniature people living in your walls and stuff, who “borrow” items to furnish their homes and lives? Sounds pretty fantastical to me!  

This book really made me think about what could be hiding right under my nose. Before I read this, I’d never really considered the possibility that there could be things in our world that we have no idea about. That helped form the core tenet of my trilogy: extraordinary things can be hiding amongst the ordinary ones.