Book Review: The Diddakoi

Title: The Diddakoi

Author: Rumer Godden

Date: 1972

Publisher: Viking

ISBN: none

Quote: "Kizzy...was what they called her, a ''diddakoi,' not all Gypsy. 'We don't say gypsies now. We say travellers," Mrs. Blount told the children."

Kizzy Lovell may or may not have been named for a friend of her great-grandmother's. Certainly that friend's grandson has always let Kizzy's "Gran" live in her little old wagon in his orchard, so that in her old age Gran Lovell felt she was aging and dying in the proper Romany way. Her last wishes were that her wagon be burned when she died. She assumed that relatives, who have modernized enough to live in trailers towed by motor vehicles rater than horses, would take Kizzy but when the child heard talk of their horse being sold for dog food she led the horse up to the house where Gran's friend lives and asks him to keep the horse.

During the next year Kizzy's grief is aggravated by bieng bullied at school. The bullying is bad; Kizzy spends a large part of the year recovering from one illness or injury or another. Her Gran's friend, the Admiral, a bachelor who's been living happily with two other men, needs a wife in order to be able to adopt Kizzy, and his story is a sweet romantic comedy. Exactly how he feels about adding Miss Brooke to his household, we don't have to know. They and the two hired men all like and respect each other and care about Kizzy. 

If you've read Godden's memoirs you may remember that, though she married men, she was attracted to women. If anything I've liked her more, since learning that about her, because she wrote her novels with discretion. Most of her characters are heterosexual and whether the others are "gay" or "ace" we don't need to know. The Admiral and Mr. Peters, who does the domestic work in the house, think they're happier without women in the house until they're resigned to the fact that Kizzy has to have an adoptive mother. Maybe they mean they're happy without sex; Kizzy wouldn't know or care, and people who grew up before antibiotics often achieved what could pass for spiritual chastity as the result of fevers. If you're looking for "gay" couples who are described in a way that's appropriate for seven-year-olds to read about, on the other hand, the Admiral and Mr. Peters are easy to picture that way too. 

Unusual among characters in Godden's children's books, Kizzy doesn't have or want a doll, but she and the Admiral share a fascination with miniatures...the nativity scenes, miniature boats, and of course eventually a miniature Gypsy wagon. Only in one book did Godden give detailed instructions for readers to make their own versions of the miniatures in the story. In all her books she described the miniatures in rich, loving, inspiring detail. Older children (like the character Clem, "a big boy of fourteen") could build a child-sized trailer like the one shown on the front cover.

The story is told in the apparently artless way Rumer Godden wrote children's books. The plot might even have been suggested to her by a teacher or school committee--"You are a writer whose books little girls look forward to reading. Write a happy story about integrating a Gypsy child into their little homogenous clique at school'." Nevertheless, some libraries classified The Diddakoi as an adult novel, because the level of violence in the bullying is higher than it was at the local schools and adults didn't want to give the children ideas.

Well. I have a copy. Parents, it's your call. There are a couple of paperback reprints; what I have is the original hardcover edition with the wagon on the front.