As so many of us are well aware, author Ted Prior has made a veritable mint from his world renowned series based on the adventures of the exceedingly bewhiskered Grug. And so, I am disheartened to say that Grug And His Bicycle, this latest addition to the pantheon, had me mopping at my brow in frustration. I must start by saying that I am much enamoured of the original text. Grug, and its glorious celebration of humanity through the eyes of a bearded rogue. It is indeed a tragic eventuality that the same figurehead of all that was passion and wonderment now somehow seems laboured and tired. Gone is the subversive wit of Grug Plays Soccer, and the gung-ho stylish flair of Grug At The Playground. All that is left is a flaccid wet carcass, a vacant shell, a dead stinking fish of a tale. The plot consists of the increasingly bedraggled Grug coming to find (i.e. steal, in a Dickensian rehash of events), a bicycle. The bicycle itself leaves a lot to be desired. It's an old-fashioned yellow relic, with dated grey mudguards. Hardly the chariot of a former literary champion. On it he simply rides to the shops to get some fruit; to put it bluntly, a trivial, self-centred and inconsequential voyage of a progressively vacuous soul.
The problem is that not only does this new chapter in the Grug series fail to provide anything in the way of original insight or ideas, it also presents a seriously distorted view of reality and reinforces some extremely undesirable attitudes. Indeed, Grug doesn't even wear a Stack Hat.
The plot is so predictable there's no point reading past page five — isn't it becoming a little too neat that Grug so often ends up gracefully serene and temperate, and his experience wrapped up in a tidy little twine-tied parcel? Where are the titillating plot twists of Grug And The International Terrorist? Where is the two-fisted gristle of Grug And The Drunken Greco-Roman Wrestler?
Prior's characters have become completely one-dimensional. Grug, once a somewhat twisted and complex pawn in the game of life, has now become merely an amalgamation of every emotionless small furry object you care to name. It is as if his character traits have been replaced by the bland and pedestrian ingredients of Cornflakes. And I'm not talking crunchy nut.
There is no unitary vision of a world Grug used to dream of. Now more than ever, the fact that Grug was indeed based on the ever-enlightening Sir Desmond Tutu is hardly in evidence at all. And what of us, the reader? Always kept so safely with the omnipotent narrator and never feeling anxiety, warmth or anger through the weary eyes of the once mighty Grug?
In a similar fashion, although the book attempts to cover the long distances travelled on Grug’s journey, Prior completely fails to convey any sense of the immensity of space or the passage of time , (compare this with Tolstoy's War and Peace, or Tolkien's ubiquitous Lord of the Rings). There is a difference between telling the reader how long the path to Grug's Fruit And Veg shop is and actually giving us some feeling of the enormity of the pilgrimage. Perhaps most worryingly , there's nothing in this volume which will make anyone consider their own role in the universe.
“I'm a little bit tired," says Grug towards the feeble denouement of this sorry excuse for a parable. Aren't we all, Grug? Of you no less.
(First published 1999, Empire Times)
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