Julius and the Watchmaker (Tim Hehir, Text)

Tim Hehir’s debut YA novel Julius and the Watchmaker takes us into the world of Julius Caesar Higgins, a boy who lives with his bespectacled grandfather above a used bookstore in Victorian London. From the first paragraph we get straight into the action: Julius is on the run from school bully Crimper McCready and his ‘henchboys’ Fosdyke and Grimshaw when he meets Jack Springheel, a mysterious watchmaker who wears garish cravats, and Algernon Fox, a professor with a pocketwatch that seems to play tricks with time. Both men are searching for the diary of John Harrison, the greatest watchmaker of all time, and as Julius gets drawn into the pursuit it becomes difficult to tell who is his enemy and who is his friend. Hehir creates a strong sense of place with his descriptions of London’s cobbled streets, cockney accents, pawn shops and parlours filled with dusty books and whirring clocks. But the novel really hits its stride when Julius’ time-bending adventures begin, delving into concepts such as parallel realms that exist ‘in the same place in space and time’, vortexes and time-travel. Julius is a rapidly paced romp that will appeal to boys in their early teens—there are no strong female protagonists in the story—who like a lot going on in their stories. Although the narrative moves along at a frenetic pace, it also pauses near its end to touch on some deeper themes, such as Julius’ great yearning to meet his mother and father. Hehir rounds off the novel with a witty summary of the famous historical names he has borrowed (Percy Shelley and H G Wells to name a couple), as well as a fun glossary of English slang. Young fans of Brian Selznick’s The Invention of Hugo Cabret (Scholastic) will find much to enjoy in this rollicking tale.

Kate Blackwood is editorial assistant at Books+Publishing

Books+Publishing pre-publication reviews are supported by the Copyright Agency Cultural Fund.

Category: Reviews