A Pattern of Roses

by K.M. Peyton

:After finding a hidden packet of drawings signed with his own initials, Tim Ingram is haunted by the ghost of Tom Inskip, the artist, who died mysteriously before his sixteenth birthday.

Genres: Young Adult, Fiction, British Literature, Mystery, Childrens, Horror, Fantasy

176 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1972

About the author

Kathleen Wendy Herald Peyton MBE, who wrote primarily as K. M. Peyton, was a British author of fiction for children and young adults

Reviews

[Ivonne Rovira · Rating 5 out of 5]

A Pattern of Roses struck me as old fashioned, and, at first, I couldn't determine why. The plot wasn't saccharine; the language wasn't stilted; the teenagers involved weren't Pollyanish or unrealistically well-behaved. What was it then? That's when I realized: the plot was completely unpredictable.

Too many of today's novels aimed at teenagers involve either the modern Cinderella fairy tale in which the bad boy -- or girl -- ends up with the handsome/beautiful prince/princess of the school or, otherwise, just another dystopian romance. In A Pattern of Roses, Timothy R. Ingram's parents wrench him out of London and his upper-class boarding school into the countryside. While there, Tim stumbles across first a cache of drawings and then the grave of a boy who lived in the house decades earlier, Thomas R. Inskip. Intrigued at the boy who shares his same initials, Tim begins to see the ghost of Tom, who teases Tim to find out about Tom's fate but then warns him, "But be careful it doesn't happen to you."

Tom Inskip died in 1910 just shy of his 17th birthday. Who was he? How did he die? And Tim, himself artistic, wonders, how did Tom, just a farm laborer's son, learn to draw as well as he did? And who is the captivating girl that Tom sketched just a day before he died?

A Pattern of Roses arouses more suspense than this synopsis would indicate; Tom's warning tinges the novel with a sense of foreboding. But it's not really a ghost story. Nor is it strictly a coming-of-age tale, although Tim grows up quite a bit. Nor is it really a romance, even though Tom falls utterly in love. Dirt-poor Tom falls for the willful and selfish Netty Bellinger, the upper-class girl who carelessly leads Tom to tragedy. She could easily have grown up into The Great Gatsby's Daisy Buchanan or the titular character of The Marriage of Maria Braun. The slim novel also explores the nature of destiny and of what constitutes a good life, but, again, it's not preachy. Somehow K.M. Peyton manages to weave all these threads together into a bittersweet tale that unfurls without becoming either predictable or maudlin. It's highly recommended.

[Daisy May Johnson · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have a great love for KM Peyton. She's one of the authors that has defined my attitude towards children's literature, to what it can and could be and to what it so very often is. And so it was with great, gleeful, giddy delight that I picked this one up.

A Pattern of Roses is a dual narrative story, balancing modern day Tim Ingram's life against the story of Tom Inskip who lived in the same house many years ago. It's a coming of age, timeslip, sort of story which plays the tensions of the boys lives against each others and it's one that Peyton, as ever, delivers.

"A brief, flaming sunset was scorching the horizon, inked over by a mesh of old elms and black hedgerow and circling rocks."

If you've not discovered Peyton yet, that's how she writes. A sort of vivid understatement, a painterly writer that draws her images together with a very precise control and vivid skill. She is intoxicating to read for me because I always find something new in her work. Here, she catches that subtle beauty of falling in love when you don't ever know what love is:

"[She] put out her hand and touched his. His own hand shied away, frightened, but hers followed and took it very firmly and held it. She still walked along, not saying anything, with the primroses round her neck, and he walked beside her, very carefully, feeling that the day had come to a standstill."

She makes me cry does Peyton, and she makes me very envious. She makes me cry at how she can just - capture - things and hold them and make you see them. She's one of, if not, the greatest writer of children's literature that I've ever read.

[Yellowoasis · Rating 3 out of 5]

I generally like a ‘ghost’ story (not that this is one, really) but found this a little insipid. I appreciated the afterword written 12-14 years later, with Peyton explaining why she wrote this story and what it meant to her personally, and loved the detail of her finding the real headstone which inspired the story. I think the problem with it is that it’s two separate stories and they don’t really gel together that well. I’m pleased to have read it though, as part of her oeuvre.

[Dona · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this first at school, mainly because my school was featured in the TV adaptation. I've re-read it this month and it's still as spectacular as I remembered it all those years ago.

[Serenely · Rating 5 out of 5]

A hidden gem…a story that is wonderful, exciting, sad, and inspiring at the same time.

[Daniela Sorgente · Rating 4 out of 5]

What a beautiful book, I wonder why it is so little known, so little read, so little translated! The first publication dates back to 1972 and I was lucky enough to read a first edition I found in a library. Maybe I could say that it is a story of other times but perhaps unfortunately it is only the values that are outdated. Tim is sixteen years old, and he discovers by chance the story of Tom, a boy who sixty years before was his age, lived in the house where he lives now and like him loved to draw. Tim feels Tom's presence very much and is driven to discover his story.

Tim wanted Tom's presence to stay, as it did, in his other consciousness, to draw on, to use; he needed it, and when Tom's story was unfolded, he thought Tom would leave him. Tom, after all, was only a ghost, a figment of his imagination, little enough to want, little enough to draw inspiration from. Tim knew perfectly well that none of his feelings would stand up in the cold light of verbal examination; if anyone asked him how Tom's ghost affected him, it would be impossible for him to say. It was a sense that haunted him rather than anything more tangible, a sense of the irrevocability of what had gone before, of life proceeding generation by generation, the one before shaping the one after so that there was a respońsibility to follow through one's own potential because it had been built up from all that had happened earlier.

Who are the people portrayed in Tom's drawings? How did he die? Everything Tim discovers will totally change Tim's life and will determine the choices about his future, trying to live as Tom lived,  "with perfect spiritual grace".
This book was made into a film in 1983, featuring one of Helena Bonham-Carter's first appearances.

[Denise Kato · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a quick and easy read. Nothing scary, some points very vague. Because it was so highly recommended I expected more form it. I found I felt like it was dragging on. Tim can "feel" Tom around him and searches to resolve his mysterious death. Bit by bit he puts Tom's life together and solves the "mystery". I found the bits about Tim's life a bit slow and boring.
This was reading during commuting otherwise it would have been a day read.

[Charlotte · Rating 4 out of 5]

Two kids in an English village in the present, both with parents trying to squash them into their own values (two very different sets of values, but similar heavy expectations), become friends trying to unravel the mystery of what happened to a boy years ago. You could argue it's a ghost story, but it is much more a time slip, with the modern boy forming a bond with the dead boy across the years. I liked it lots.

[Deb Lancaster · Rating 4 out of 5]

Unpatronising, deftly written kids book back when kids didn't need everything spelled out.

[Queen Elsa]

Great to read on a rainy day

[Ola · Rating 3 out of 5]

chwilami ciekawe, a chwilami niezbyt

[Maria (miamaria_348) · Rating 4 out of 5]

Den handlar om Tom som flyttar med sina upptagna föräldrar från stan till en liten by på landet. Han har varit sjuk och måste stanna hemma och vila upp sig innan han kan börja skolan igen. I huset de bor hittar Tom några teckningar i en burk gjorda av T.R.I. 1910. Det är samma initialer som Tom har så han blir intresserad av vem som kan ha ritat dem. Han hittar en Tim R. Inskips gravsten och det visar sig att Tim har dött 1910 precis innan han skulle fylla 16 år, bara kort efter att teckningarna ritats.

Tim blev lika gammal som Tom är och det finns många andra paralleller mellan dem. Berättelsen hoppar fram och tillbaka mellan Toms och Tims tid. Ibland märker man inte riktigt när det händer. Tom blir mer och mer intresserad av att få reda på vad som verkligen hände då han känner att han och Tom hör ihop på något sätt.

Den finns en filmatisering på imdb med en då okänd Helena Bonham Carter som spelar Netty i filmen. Kommer ihåg att jag sett den också för länge sedan.

[Ullagummans Läsgodis · Rating 4 out of 5]

Rosenmönstret är den svenska titeln. Biblo-personalen hade lite svårt att finna ett exemplar av den här boken men till slut fann dem den i ett bokmagasin i vårt avlånga land. Boken är utgiven 1972.

Tim Ingram flyttar med sina föräldrar till ett gammalt torp på den Engelska landsbygden.
När torpet renoveras hittas ett gammalt rosenmönstrat skrin fyllt med gamla teckningar; de är signerade "T.R.I 17 februari 1910".
Tim inser att det är samma initialer som han själv har. Denne person T.R.I dog endast 16 år gammal. Varför?
Tim känner en samhörighet med denne person och tillsammans med en nyfunnen vän börjar Tim nysta i det hela.... vem var T.R.I?
En läsvärd bok om än att den kan vara svår att få tag på.

[Ann Duddy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Compelling YA read. I love K.M. Peyton's pony books, so I picked this up on eBay. The books she wrote in the 70s are the strongest, including this one. Tim is recovering from an illness and his parents move to an old cottage in the country to get away from city life. He finds drawings by Tom, a boy who died the day before his 16th birthday in the early 1900s. Tim finds strange parallels between his life and Tom's, and also finds himself in the process. I'll definitely pass this on to my tween niece at Christmas.

[Myra King · Rating 3 out of 5]

I enjoyed this simple little book. And it could never be accused of dragging out, which is always a winner for me.
But I felt a little bit let down at the end, the two stories - interesting on their own - didn't mesh well. It was like reading two short stories at once. I wish there had been more mystery, more of a link.
But I enjoyed having something different to read. Books are becoming almost boringly formulaic. This one stands out in terms of plot.

[Kitty Tomlinson · Rating 2 out of 5]

Young adult novel. Tim Ingram discovers a ghost in the English cottage his parents buy and renovate. He learns of the of life of a boy named Tom, whose drawings he finds in the fireplace and of his death in 1910.

[Hannah-riley Blessing · Rating 5 out of 5]

My copy was titled, So Once Was I, the 1975 Scholastic Book Services paperback, first printing. It's the same book. I haven't read it in so long, I don't remember the story. I just accidentally destroyed the book.

[Debbie Gascoyne · Rating 4 out of 5]

K.M. Peyton is an old favourite, and I always liked this one a lot. It was pleasant to find that it hasn't dated too much (despite a few rather quaint expressions, like "cripes!"). The time-slip fantasy is low-key; more important is the story of a boy growing into his own identity.

[alison · Rating 4 out of 5]

K.M. Peyton writes her characters like she's drawing. her understanding of their interior lives is tender but not sentimental.

[Princy Rose]

a master piece of thrills and suspense filled story

[Sharon Buxton · Rating 3 out of 5]

B. fantasy, 20th century, YA, mom's stash, keep

[Sherroy · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very sad story.