LITERARY CRITICISM: Critical Children: The Use of Childhood in Ten Great Novels. By Richard Locke Columbia University Press, 218pp. £20.50

'IT'S REMARKABLE that so many classic, or let's say unforgotten, English and American novels should focus on children and adolescents," writes Richard Locke, a professor of writing at Columbia Unversity, essayist and book reviewer, in the informative introduction to his study of fictional children. He deals with 10 great novels, dating from 1838 to 1969, that were written for grown-ups but have children as their main protagonists. His selection excludes books forchildren, and also books whose main characters have not become iconic. It also all but excludes girls, and not one of the novels was written by a woman.

The choice of fiction by white males about white males reflects, Locke says, "the gender priorities of the society that found them so compelling", not prejudice on his own part. He had to choose characters who "command a wider extra-literary force-field in popular consciousness than Cathy [from Wuthering Heights]or Jane [Eyre]". Lolita and, from The Turn of the Screw– as we all know, of course! – Flora are the female characters Locke examines. Oliver Twist, David Copperfield, Pip, Tom Sawyer, Huckleberry Finn, Miles (also from The Turn of the Screw), Peter Pan, Holden Caulfield and Alexander Portnoy are the boys. That the last, from the novels of Philip Roth, commands a wider "extra-literary force-field" than Jane Eyre is news to me, but maybe, around Columbia, Alexander P is as famous as Mickey Mouse.

The book seems to have been written as a unit; if it is a collection of previously published articles, there are no references to them in the book’s excellent bibliography. But, although it is arranged chronologically, the chapters read like thematically linked but stand-alone essays.

They are quite varied in approach. For example, the chapter on JM Barrie is heavily biographical, whereas that on Mark Twain concentrates on textual analysis. The early chapters are lengthy, the later rather short, more like reviews. Presumably this variation is deliberate: Locke is a writer of “creative” nonfiction, and the book, in shape and style, is more artistic than systematic.

Nevertheless he traces the evolution of the child hero, from the saintly, well-spoken Oliver Twist (who never uses low dialect, even in the workhouse) to JD Salinger’s rebel teenager to the “loudmouthed”, obscene Portnoy – from the asexual to the melodramatically and vociferously libidinous.

Dickens and Twain command most attention. Dickens is regarded as the father of the novel of childhood, and Oliver Twist,from 1838, as the first example of the genre, beating Jane Eyreby almost a decade. Locke's readings of Dickens's novels are brilliant, but Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finnare the characters who engage his passion. Huckleberry Finn, the great American novel praised by Ernest Hemingway as the source of all modern American literature, and called "an almost perfect work" by the critic Lionel Trilling. Locke takes issue with these views and debates other opinions of the novel in the most complex, original and probably controversial section of his book.

Apart from the theme of childhood (or let’s say boyhood) in literature, there are other threads to guide the sometimes bedazzled reader through the labyrinth. One strand derives from Locke’s keen eye for literary technique. For example, in his discussion of David Copperfield, he compares the portrayal of David’s first wife, Dora, with that of his second, Agnes. What David feels for Dora is youthful infatuation, while for Agnes his love is the real thing, mature and lifelong. But Locke maintains that Agnes never comes alive on the page, whereas the bimbo Dora “is always vividly, actively, alive in action, speed, feeling”. Why is this? Because “she is presented dramatically in scenes more than speeches. Agnes is presented through David’s assertions and unironically fulsome declarations.”

This is a well-spotted, perfect example of the power of mimesis versus diegesis – or of showing versus telling. In such comments – and there are others – Locke’s keen eye as editor and teacher of creative writing reveals itself, and I would have welcomed more of them. But although Locke is advertised as showing us “how the novels work”, he doesn’t, really. Instead he writes about what the novels mean, in a brilliant, entertaining but perhaps old-fashioned way, somewhat in the style of William Empson or Harold Bloom. His chapters are reflective essays in the liberal humanist tradition. They contain many illuminating ideas about childen in novels but, above all, showcase Locke’s fine intellect and literary style.

The book is of a specialised nature, and is likely to be of interest primarily to students of English literature. Everyone, however, will be affected by Locke’s love for the works he discusses. His commentary sends you rushing back to the original novels, eager to reread them and do your own interpreting.

Éilís Ní Dhuibhne teaches creative writing at University College Dublin and with the Faber Academy. Her novel for young people, Snobs, Dogs and Scobies, under the pen name Elizabeth O'Hara, has just been published by Little Island