They’re also parodies of The Wombles, a series of children’s books, TV shows, and films which I’ve never read or seen.

The Rumbles dwell in a massive (and very posh) underground bunker in Rumbledom a native Londoner might better recognize the area as Wimbledon Common. Their sworn enemies are the Rumbles, intelligent rodents resembling “a giant rat, a huge mole or a deformed rabbit” that walk on hind legs and even drive cars. Borribles are anarchist lawyers, “outcasts, but unlike most outcasts they enjoy themselves and wouldn’t be anything else.” They are urchins gone elf, living in loose neighborhood tribes, squatting in abandoned buildings and shoplifting their food they have no leaders or laws beyond a collection of proverbs (“Don’t get caught”), which they frequently cite in their arguments. Sometimes it’s given out that a kid down the street has been put into care: the truth is that he’s been Borribled and is caring for himself someplace.

A child disappears and the word goes round that he was ‘unmanageable’ the chances are he’s off managing by himself. It doesn’t matter where they come from as long as they’ve had what is called a bad start. Normal kids are turned into Borribles very slowly, almost without being aware of it but one day they wake up and there it is. What’s a Borrible? What’s a Rumble?īorribles, in Michael de Larrabeiti’s razor-sharp novel, are “feral Peter Pans,” to cadge a phrase from the New York Times, pointy-eared children who never grow up:

The two Borribles quickly capture the Rumble and then. While on patrol one night in London’s Battersea Park, Knocker and his buddy Lightfinger discover a Rumble trespassing on their home turf.

The Borribles by Michael de Larrabeiti