Enid - review

A fantastic biopic of the world’s most successful children’s author Enid Blyton.

Enid is portrayed by Helena Bonham Carter in a tale which shows us the family side of Enid and how she struggled to get accepted by publishers at the start of her career.

When Enid’s father leaves the family while she is still young, Enid struggles to believe her father would leave her, but as soon as she’s old enough she too leaves the family home in order to train as a teacher.

In an attempt to get her love of writing noticed, she approaches publishers with her short stories and poems, but receives countless rejection letters, until Hugh Pollock takes an interest.

With a contract signed, Enid and Hugh become close and later marry, but with a happy marriage and a career on the up, there is something missing for Enid – children. As the couple struggle to conceive Enid is concerned that her wish won’t come true, but when she successfully becomes mother to Gillian she has no patience to deal with a baby, preferring to hire a nanny instead and devote her time to the characters she lovingly created.

A few years later and after the birth of Enid’s second daughter Imogen, Enid’s marriage is crumbling and with more time spent on her books than her children, Gillian and Imogen are sent away to school so she can focus.

As war approaches, Hugh is recruited to help out and therefore leaves the family home, but while he’s away Enid is not short of male company and spends her time with troops and a new friend, Dr Kenneth Darrell Waters, a man she later went onto marry.

With Enid’s books proving popular and sales rocketing, she and Kenneth enjoy their life together, but when Enid is visited by her brother with the news that their mother has died, she begins to realise how much time she has been spending in an imaginary world instead of the real one.

I wasn’t sure what to expect of this film as I knew it was based on a real person whose books both my mum and I enjoyed through childhood, but I was surprised to learn how distant Enid was to her children even though her life was filled with creating a world for children to spend time in.

However, despite learning that Enid wasn’t as motherly as I had hoped and was also quite bitter towards her husband, my image of her hasn’t changed and has made me more determined to become a children’s writer – though I can only dream of the success Enid achieved.