Families in literature: The Mouse and His Child by Russell Hoban

A father and son dance around the family ties which bind us all together – even though they’re only clockwork rodents

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I was a 26-year-old living by myself when I first read The Mouse and His Child. I spent my evenings reading on an old, yellow sofa my mother gave me when I left home. It was uncomfortable and covered in stains, but it was a fixture in family pictures of the house I grew up in – a grainy bit of furniture in the background, sat next to a bookshelf and a little wooden seesaw. It reminded me of living with my sisters, of the posters on the wall and the dusty globe on the shelf. As I sat on it and read Russell Hoban’s book, I thought about my family.

The Mouse and His Child begins with a tramp (the book’s only human character) looking through the window of a toyshop on Christmas Eve. He watches as toys are taken out of a doll’s house for display – an elephant, a seal and then two clockwork mice, a father and son. The father dances around in a circle, swinging his son up and down. As we move inside the shop the toys begin to speak to each other. “What are we?” asks the child. “I don’t know yet,” says the father. “Are you my mama?” the child says to the clockwork elephant standing next to him. “He had no idea what a mother might be,” Hoban writes, “but he knew that he needed one, badly.”

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