Tulku

by Peter Dickinson

Book Overview

An attack in the dark, screams, burning huts... Thirteen-year-old Theodore crouches under the trees. His father's Mission has been destroyed. His father is dead. Theodore is on his own, fleeing the Chinese rebels of the Boxer uprising. Then Mrs Jones appears. A botanist, Mrs Jones is a feisty, aging, good-hearted woman who has an amazing (and eye-opening) vocabulary and who adopts Theodore into her band of travellers. Fleeing bandits, the group enters...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0525415718
• ISBN13: 9780525415718
• Release Date: May 1979
• Publisher: Dutton Books
• Length: 286 Pages
• Weight: 1.16 lbs.
• Age Range: 12 to 16 years
• Grade Range: Grades 7 to 11

Customer Reviews

Not adventure, but powerful

Perhaps the reason this book isn't very well-known is that it represents a divergence from Dickinson's more popular juvenile fantasy novels like "The Weathermonger". That's a pity because - to use an awful cliche - it's a great coming-of-age story. Again, this isn't an adventure-oriented story like the Changes trilogy ("The Weathermonger", "Heartsease", and "The Devil's Children"). It does have some travelling and some physical conflict but most of the plot occurs as inner conflict in a place of outward peace. With his father and friends killed by the Boxers, missionary kid Theodore finds himself sheltered (or trapped) at a Tibetan monastery with a middle-aged English botanist and her young Chinese lover. Also unlike Dickinson's aforementioned fantasy books, this one doesn't have much in terms of supernatural phenomena. There are episodes of spirit possession and Theodore's occasionally sensing the presence or absence of his God or the Buddhist gods, but attributing these to his and the monks' imagination if you're so inclined isn't incompatible with events as stated. Dickinson deals subtly with a subject that a lot of other novels paint in broad brush strokes - what happens when a young person is forced to reexamine their beliefs. Most characters in stories like this either end up becoming ever more zealous or rejecting their childhood religion completely, depending on the author. Theodore does neither, and I think that ambiguity in his mind near the end is powerfully described and realistic. [As a side note, I would like to point out that another reviewer's labelling Theodore and his father as "fundamentalist" is inaccurate and rather unfair, given the modern associations of the word with violence and bigotry. While English missionaries in Asia were not entirely innocent of cultural imperialism, the most successful ones like Hudson Taylor and other CIM workers "went native" and lived with the people they preached to. They also discouraged opium addiction at a time when the British government was pushing it on China, and were later asked by the Kuomintang government to help eradicate the binding of young girl's feet *because* the Kuomintang knew that they circulated in rural areas and were generally trustworthy.] One of the exciting things about my experience with this book was that shortly after I read it in my college's library, I had the opportunity to travel to China and saw in a museum a Tibetan mask that was pretty much identical to the description of the one worn by the young monk who befriends Theodore (forgot his name). Peter Dickinson is married to Robin McKinley, which as far as my taste is concerned, makes them the power couple of youth/young adult/juvenile fantasy fiction. Another less-well-known book by him that's also good is "The Blue Hawk" which takes place in a world like ancient Egypt ruled by the gods.

very well thought out, good plot,but a weak ending.

There is not specifis information as to when exactly this story was set, but certain sections suggest that it was set in the late 1800s. At the beginning of the story, in China, the main character Theodore(or Theo)is all alonebecause his fundamentalist Christian settlement has been burnt to the ground by the Boxers, or the Chinese anti foreign society. Theodore was the only survivor, and among those dead was his father. With his fathers mission destroyed, Theodore has no choice but to flee. As Theodore hide in the nearby woods, he comes across Mrs. Jones, a fiesty good-hearted woman who likes to collect and classify plants. Mrs. Jones invites Theo into her band of travellers and they head off to Tibet while fleeing bandits. Once in Tibet, they meet the Lama Amachi who rules the Buddhist monastery in Dong Pe. He had set out on a journey, as was tradition, to find the Tulku, or the riencarnated spirit of the late Dalai Lama. When Lama Amachi insists that Theo, Mrs. Jones and her Chinese assistant Lung hold the key to his finding of the Tulku, things started changing for Theodore including his beliefs and what he would think to be right or wrong. This story was nicely written and is a very good adventure-historical fiction combonaton. The author compared the Christian and Buddhist faiths with interesting concepts and ideas that wil keep the pages turning. The author is very discriptive, which is nice because it helps you get into the story more and live with the characters. I felt that this was an excellent novel, although the ending was quite weak and fairly unrelated to the story. I also found that the author repeated some words and ideas more often than he should have. For instance, in the beginning of the book, the words "mocking", or "mockingly" were used quite often. Other than that, I found that this was a great book for those interested in religeon, adventure and descriptive stories and I am glad that i came accross this award winning novel. A wonderful love-adventure story that expresses the true power of emotion and the spirit.