The Play of Goggle Eyes

by Anne Fine

The "Heinemann Plays" series offers contemporary drama and classic plays in durable classroom editions. Many have large casts and an equal mix of boy and girl parts. Anne Fine has dramatized her own humorous novel, "Goggle Eyes", for the series.

Genres: Plays

96 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1995

About the author

Though readers often find themselves inadvertently laughing aloud as they read Anne Fine's novels, as she herself admits, "a lot of my work, even for fairly young readers, raises serious social issues. Growing up is a long and confusing business. I try to show that the battle through the chaos is worthwhile and can, at times, be seen as very funny." In 1994, this unique combination of humour and realism inspired the hit movie MRS. DOUBTFIRE, based on Anne's novel MADAME DOUBTFIRE and starring the late comedic genius Robin Williams.

Anne is best known in her home country, England, as a writer principally for children, but over the years she has also written eight novels for adult readers. Seven of these she describes as black - or sour - comedies, and the first, THE KILLJOY, simply as "dead black". These novels have proved great favourites with reading groups, causing readers to squirm with mingled horror and delight as she peels away the layers in all too familiar family relationships, exposing the tangled threads and conflicts beneath. (It's perhaps not surprising that Anne has openly expressed astonishment at the fact that murder in the domestic setting is not even more common.)

Anne has written more than sixty books for children and young people. Amongst numerous other awards, she is twice winner of both the Carnegie Medal, Britain's most prestigious children's book award, and the Whitbread Award. Twice chosen as Children's Author of the Year in the British Book Awards, Anne Fine was also the first novelist to be honoured as Children's Laureate in the United Kingdom. In 2003, Anne became a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and was awarded an OBE. Her work has been translated into forty five languages.

Anne Fine lives in the north of England and has two grown up daughters.

Reviews

[nina .-. · Rating 1 out of 5]

I hate this play

[Sati Marie Frost · Rating 4 out of 5]

Kitty and her younger sister Jude live a comfortable life with their hippie mother Rosie - a life of activism, messy rooms, eating in front of the telly and doing things exactly the way that they like. Enter Gerald, Rosie's new boyfriend, who is fussy, coolly pragmatic and, in Kitty's opinion, much too concerned with tidiness and order - not to mention his habit of goggling at Rosie's legs! It seems like a nightmare. But when Rosie gets arrested at a protest, Kitty realises that having someone staid and reliable around may not be so bad after all.

This is the play based on the book of the same name, and though I haven't read the novel, I enjoyed the play a lot. I only vaguely remember studying this in school - it was half a lifetime ago - but I do remember how much I sympathised with Kitty's points of view back then. I was both surprised and amused to find that on this reading, my 30-year-old self sided with Gerald more than half of the time.

Perhaps that is one of the great strengths of the story - people of all ages can read it and find some sort of empathy with the characters' situations.

Divorce and parental dating are almost always minefields to be warily navigated, but Anne Fine has created a delightful story that doesn't sugar-coat anything, but still manages to instil a sense of hope and humor that I think a lot of teenagers and preteens will find both helpful and uplifting. 4 stars.