Lord of the Nutcracker Men

Iain Lawrence’s novel Lord of the Nutcracker Men (2001) is narrated by ten-year-old Johnny Briggs, a boy growing up in London during World War I. When Johnny's toymaker father goes off to the front, Johnny continues to play with his toy soldiers until he begins to understand the senseless, violent nature of war. One of Dad's handmade toy soldiers arrives with each of his letters, each toy more maimed and broken than the last.

Johnny's dad is the finest toymaker in London. He gives Johnny thirty wooden toy soldiers for his ninth birthday, and the soldiers are the envy of the neighborhood boys. Dad says that the soldiers are one of a kind and very special.

When Johnny is ten, the war in Europe begins, an event that, for Johnny, is marked by the disappearance of Fatty, the local butcher. Fatty's shop is empty with nothing but a rotting pig carcass inside. The butcher is a German, and Dad says he must have gone to join "that army of butchers." One by one, all of the German people in Johnny's neighborhood move away. The last German family is pushed out by the townspeople, and even Dad joins in with comments like "Go on back home."



Johnny watches the Germans marching into Belgium at the picture show. His nutcracker men begin invading different rooms in the house.

Johnny wonders if his dad is a coward for not joining the cause, and his mother tells him that, at 5'7", Dad is too short to join the army. Dad brings home some lead toy soldiers that were made by a German toymaker. Explaining that no one will buy German-made things now, he tells a story about a man he saw in the street going out of his way to kick a dachshund.

Dad joins the army when the government lowers the height requirement. Mum cries. From this point on, Dad corresponds with Johnny via letter, including more toy soldiers that he has carved for him. At first, Dad's letters are optimistic, but they grow darker and more desperate as the war continues. The soldiers he sends, too, begin arriving with scars and sickly pallor.



Mum sends Johnny to stay with his Aunt Ivy, and along the way, Johnny meets the Highlander, a twitching Scotsman who has been to the front. The Highlander tells everyone on the train that the Brits will win the war. He was there at the front and saw the corpses, he tells them. He tells Johnny that he won't see his father for Christmas like he's been told. He won't see him for years.

Aunt Ivy and Johnny live in a town called Cliffe, and Johnny's mother moves to Woolwich. Mum corresponds with Johnny about her new job at a factory, making weapons for the war effort.

Johnny misses a few days of school while building a Guy Fawkes. Consequently, he has to visit his teacher, Mr. Tuttle, every Wednesday and Saturday afternoon. Together, Johnny and Mr. Tuttle read The Iliad and draw comparisons between the happenings of the war raging in Europe and the classic novel.



As Johnny continues to play with his soldiers, he notices that his father's battles mimic the outcomes of his pretend battles. He stops playing with the soldiers fearing for the lives of his father and his comrades. He only takes the soldiers back up again to enact the Christmas Truce of 1914. Meanwhile, in the real truce, opposing soldiers sing "Silent Night" together and weep.

Four long years later, Dad returns. Another five years pass and Mum dies of sulfur poisoning incurred while she was working in the weapons factory.

Kirkus Reviews said of the novel, "Big themes are hauntingly conveyed through gripping personal story and eerie symbolism." A prominent theme in the work is the senselessness of war and people's foolish eagerness to be a part of it. Dad is thrilled to finally be able to enlist, overcoming the social implication of cowardice, but as the war rages on, he begins to break down physically and mentally, as is evident in the state of the toy soldiers that he sends to Johnny. Johnny, too, happily plays with his toy soldiers enacting death and destruction until he connects his soldiers with the very real fate of his father. He says while playing, "The guns in France pounded away with their faint little thunder, and I thought that my real dad would be just like my model, wide awake, watching the sky."



Iain Lawrence is a Canadian author. In 2006, he published the best-selling novel, Gemini Summer, which won the Governor General's Award, the PNBA Book Award, and the 2007 Bank Street College Best Book.