#RIPXII Wrap-Up

How is it the end of October already?! Luckily I got my fill of RIP reads over the past two months with 25 perilous reads, 17 of them rereads. Yay!

I loved my massive Agatha Christie binge. I had great fun with audiobooks from Carlos Ruiz Zafón and John Connolly. And I finished the event with a collection of ghost stories--Ghostly--collected by Audrey Niffenegger. With just two duds (I guess I am not really a fan of some modern ghost stories), this was a great collection.

So, I would stop the RIP reads now except that my hold on the audiobook of The Screaming Staircase just came in so I'm gonna need a few more days on this challenge ... ::wink::

What was your favorite read this season (perilous or not)?

Reminder: Witch Week is starting over at Emerald City Book Review today ...

Until we meet again ... in a dark alley, under a full moon,

K

RIP Read 1: The Oxford Book of Victorian Ghost Stories

I didn't mean to go missing for two weeks from the blog. I guess back to school tasks in the school library, getting back to the gym regularly and taking two weeks to read this book all conspired to keep me away. But here I am, with my first RIP VIII book done. Hooray!

The Oxford Book of Victorian Ghost Stories is a collection edited by Michael Cox and R.A. Gilbert. It has 35 stories, written between 1852 and 1908. As they are presented in chronological order, it was quite interesting to see the progression of the ghost story through time, though the basic elements of the stories really did stay the same.

Some of the best stories in the collection were --

Elizabeth Gaskell, The Old Nurse's Story
J.Y. Akerman, The Miniature
Tom Hood, The Shadow of a Shade
Mary Elizabeth Braddon, At Chrighton Abbey
Thomas Street Millington, No Living Voice
Wilkie Collins, Miss Jéromette and the Clergyman
Anonymous, The Story of Clifford House
Amelia B. Edwards, Was It an Illusion?
Charlotte Riddell, The Open Door
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, The Captain of the 'Pole-Star'
Robert Louis Stevenson, The Body-Snatcher
Mary Louisa Molesworth, The Story of the Rippling Train
B.M. Croker, To Let
E. Nesbit, John Charrington's Wedding
Jerome K. Jerome, The Man of Science
Algernon Blackwood, The Kit-bag

If you read Victorian fiction, you probably recognize a lot of the names on that list (and there were other stories by Dickens and Kipling and more). It was interesting to see that ghost stories were standard fare for many authors of the time. The story that I found most haunting was the last in the book, the one by Algernon Blackwood. It made me seriously uncomfortable while I was reading it and it was just a great ghost story, with a fully explained but nonetheless frightening scenario. I've done you a favor and found an online copy of The Kit-bag. If you need just one creepy story to get you in the mood for the season, this might do the trick. Enjoy!

Jumping at every little sound,
K

Book v. Movie: The Woman in Black

This will be a pretty short post because I read the book and watched the film a month and a half ago and, to be honest, neither was especially memorable. The book was satisfactory but not mind-blowing and the film was bad but in a totally predictable way.

Susan Hill's The Woman in Black has been on my TBR list for years but I didn't get around to reading it until December, mostly because I also wanted to watch the recent film version. It turned out to be an acceptably spooky story with good pacing and a haunted house that I hope never to get caught in at night. But while the story also had a deep feeling of melancholy and loss, the film went for the cheap thrills, inventing horrors that were obvious and, to be honest, rather lame. I knew from the moment that I saw it was a Hammer film that it would be over the top but, when the entire mystery of the book was given away in the first few minutes of the film and then was just exploited for stereotypical horror scenarios, it was really frustrating. And I really don't believe this interview with Susan Hill where she says

And now, 30 years after I wrote it, The Woman in Black has made it to the big screen. Jane Goldman, one of the hottest screenwriting talents around, has done a marvellous adaptation, which is just that — not a copy but a screen interpretation which remains faithful to the spirit of the book but, like the play, is true to its own medium.

The film was not at all faithful to the spirit of the book nor was it, by any stretch of the imagination "marvellous". It was like a knock-off of The Ring or some other schlocky horror film.

Verdict: Read the book, skip the movie ... unless you really need to see Daniel Radcliffe looking handsome at a legal age, then go ahead and watch it but don't expect anything but a standard horror flick.

Disappointed once more,
K

RIP VII Read #2: The Ghost of Crutchfield Hall

A very middle grade ghost story, The Ghost of Crutchfield Hall (2010) was my first Mary Downing Hahn book and I hope her others are better as I hear good things about them. This is a short tale about an orphaned twelve-year old girl, Florence, who has finally been sent for by her Great-Uncle Thomas, who keeps a country home with his sister, Great-Aunt Eugenia, and his nephew James. But there is one other resident of the house, one with evil intentions, and that is James' dead sister Sophia.

Though this book was definitely creepy, I couldn't stand Florence's lack of willpower or her Aunt Eugenia's ridiculous prejudice against her. The characters were just too one-dimensional and I was disappointed that the female main character was so weak. I was actually kind of rooting for something bad to happen to her by the end, which I'm sure wasn't the author's intention.

If anyone could recommend a better MDH book to me, I would appreciate it! I'm willing to give her another chance.

More indignant than frightened,
K

RIP Read #9: The Little Stranger

It turns out that I couldn't wait any longer to pick up my next Sarah Waters book after a rather good experience with Fingersmith.  Now, I'm even a bigger fan of Waters after reading The Little Stranger.  It was a perfect study of post-war England with a touch of unexplained darkness.

If you're one of the few who hasn't heard of this story yet, it's about the Ayres family--mother, daughter and son--who are coping with the deterioration of their home, Hundreds Hall, war injuries (both physical and mental) and a possible malicious presence in their home.  Told by the local physician, Dr. Faraday, this is a story of love, obligation and change.

I don't think I can praise this book enough.  When I was about a third of the way through it, I sat back at one point and thought "this is exactly the book that I want to read" and not just because it was a wonderful RIP read.  It was simply a perfect picture of the changing times in the years after World War II -- both for the nobility and for women.  I'm still looking forward to Affinity but, for now, this is my favorite Sarah Waters novel.

Watching it all fall down,
K


Support our site and buy The Little Stranger on Amazon or find it at your local library.  We bought our own copy.

A Youth Series to Die For

There seem to be a pretty high number of youth series that deal with the supernatural in different ways. I've just found a new series that is fun and different -- 42 Old Cemetery Road written by Kate Clise and illustrated by her sister, M. Sarah Klise. I read the first two books in the series yesterday.

The first book is 43 Old Cemetery Road: Dying to Meet You. Ignatius B. Grumply is a children's ghost story author who has had writer's block for twenty years. He decides to rent a house for the summer to finally write that next book in his series and chooses Spence Mansion in Ghastly, Illinois. The only problem is that he isn't told that the house is already inhabited by Seymour Hope, a young boy who has been abandoned by his parents, and Olive Spence, the builder of the home who has been dead for ninety-seven years. At first Seymour and Olive try to get rid of Grumply but eventually they see other options for co-existence in the house.

This book is told entirely through notes, letters and newspaper pages. It's an interesting way to tell the story and gives a definite "back and forth" feel to the book. I think that grade school kids would find this amusing and, as there is nothing actually scary in the book, it's appropriate for all kids. There has never been a sweeter ghost than Olive Spence -- she even cooks dinner!

The second in the series is 43 Old Cemetery Road: Over My Dead Body. This book continues the story with a busybody bureaucrat who thinks that Spence Mansion is not a proper home for young Seymour. Grumply gets hauled off to the mental institution for insisting that Olive exists and Seymour is taken to the orphanage. It's up to Olive to get them free and to make them all a real, legal family.

This book was written in the same way which wasn't bad for a second book but I'm not sure if I could read many more books in this format. It might get a bit boring. For now, though, I think these two books are cute! The sisters have worked together on other series and their work perfectly complements each other.

Already formulating my haunting plans,
K


Support our site and buy Dying to Meet You (Book One) and Over My Dead Body (Book Two) on Amazon or find them at your local library. We borrowed our copies from the library.

New Release: Her Fearful Symmetry

Many readers waited with baited breath for Audrey Niffenegger's newest book, Her Fearful Symmetry. Now that it's here, some readers have already rushed through it and their opinions have been good for the most part. Carl thought it was a "probably should read". Lenore is torn between sort of liking it and really liking it. Simon is pretty sure it's going to become one of his favorites. I usually don't read reviews of a book I'm planning to read in the near future so I skipped the summaries and just read the impressions in these posts. My views ended up being very similar to theirs.

(Warning: This review is mildly spoilerish as to the tone of the book but not to any plot elements.)

Edie and Elspeth are twin sisters that had a falling out when they were young adults. Edie ended up living with her husband Jack in the States and Elspeth stayed in London and lived her own life. Now, twenty years later, Elspeth has died of cancer and has decided to leave her flat and her money to Edie's twin daughters, Valentina and Julia. The girls have never been able to decide or agree upon their futures so this seems like a lucky break. On their twenty-first birthday, the girls legally inherit the estate and move to London. What they find is a flat that looks over the well-known Highgate Cemetery and a pair of strange neighbors -- upstairs is a married man whose wife has just left him because of his severe O.C.D. and downstairs is Elspeth's partner who is still having problems coping a year after her death. As the girls spend more time in the flat, they find that books and clothing aren't the only things that Elspeth has left behind. They also discover that their special relationship as sisters might not be as idyllic as it once seemed.

When I started this book, I thought that this was one of the best books of its kind that I had ever read. By the end, I wasn't so sure. Niffenegger's writing is fantastic throughout the whole book. There's no fault there. My problem was with the direction that some of the characters took. I saw the major plot twist coming but hoped that it wouldn't actually happen. It wasn't that it was a poor plot choice. It was just incredibly heart-breaking and I hoped that the book would go in a different direction. It didn't but I would have to say that there were so many things to like in this book that I enjoyed it nevertheless. It was a fantastic spooky, gothic read and has inspired me to learn more about Highgate Cemetery. I plan to visit the cemetery and I may even revisit this book at some point.

Still waiting for a life-changing inheritance,
K


Support our site and buy Her Fearful Symmetry on Amazon or find it at your local library. We borrowed our copy from the library.

"No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality ..."

After reading We Have Always Lived in the Castle last year, I wanted to read another Shirley Jackson book this year. I chose The Haunting of Hill House because others have been enjoying it and because they had a copy available at the library. I had seen the 1999 film version, The Haunting, a few years back. Luckily I didn't remember much about it because they weren't very similar. This book was definitely a psychological thriller versus a gory, violent one.

A paranormal researcher selects a small group of people to accompany him to Hill House, a place built slightly off-kilter and with an inherent aura of gloom and despair. The professor, Dr. Montague, is hoping that a successful encounter with the spirit in the house will finally bring him the reputation he has been craving for years. Eleanor Vance is recovering from eleven years of nursing a demanding mother and so sees the chance to finally have an experience that is all her own. Theodora, a possible "sensitive", is high-spirited and makes a last-minute decision to join the group. Finally, Luke Sanderson is the future heir of Hill House and is joining the group as a condition of their being on the property. These four people bring their own shortcomings with them to the house but none are as severe as the issues the house already has inside its walls.

As you can guess, I chose this book as another read for the R.I.P. Challenge. From other people's reviews, I thought this would be a much scarier read than it turned out to be. I personally thought it was more disturbing than scary. It definitely fit in with what I expected from Shirley Jackson though. She specializes in exploring emotions and reactionary behavior in different situations. It's incredible to me how much depth she is able to fit into her novellas and short stories. I will definitely be reading more of her works soon -- perhaps with a re-read of The Lottery because I haven't read it since high school.

Comfortable in my house with no history,
K


Support our site and buy The Haunting of Hill House on Amazon or find it at your local library. We borrowed our copy from the library.

Time Enough for Scaring

The back of this book asks "How scary can thirty seconds be!?" and now I know. Harper Collins has collected a ridiculous number of famous authors and asked them to pen very short stories for the young readers' anthology Half-Minute Horrors (edited by Susan Rich). Here's a glimpse at a small portion of the author list: Margaret Atwood, Avi, Michael Connelly, Neil Gaiman, Dan Gutman, Erin Hunter, Faye Kellerman, Gregory Maguire, James Patterson, Jon Scieszka, Lemony Snicket and R.L. Stine. If these folks can't scare your tweens, I don't know who can!

The stories in this book run the gamut of topics from monsters under the bed to ghosts to demonic pets to the most terrifying thing of all ... clowns. Of course it's impossible to summarize any of these stories without, well, reprinting the entire things so here are just some mentions of the ones that stood out to me --

Kenneth Oppel wrote In Hiding, an amusing twist on the standard monster-under-the-bed story.

Jon Klassen drew the hilarious but disturbing The Legend of Alexandra & Rose. Klassen also worked on the Coraline film and if you are a fan of illustrators, I highly suggest checking out his website.

Holly Black wrote the most touching and sad story of the book, A Very Short Story.

Lisa Brown drew the amusing "The Turn of the Screw by Henry James as Told by Lisa Brown in Fewer Than 30 Seconds". This three panel series is a must-see for anyone who has read or is planning to read The Turn of the Screw.

I was the most traumatized by Ayelet Waldman's story, At the Water's Edge. I think this would have been the one that recurred in my nightmares as a child.

The collaboration that was the most terrifying was The Final Word by Brett Helquist (your favorite Series of Unfortunate Events illustrator) and Josh Greenhut. This story features the creepy story staple - The Ouija Board.

These stories are just the tip of the iceberg in this fantastic anthology. And the best thing is that the royalties go to First Book, a very worthy cause that supports putting books into every child's home. And on the Half-Minute Horrors website, you can submit your own story and read the other submitted stories. How cool is that?

This was a quick, fun and yet discomforting read and though it wasn't incredibly scary for me as an adult, it did remind me of many of the things that I found most frightful when I was a kid. Z is too young for almost all of the stories in this book (luckily he's not afraid of the dark and I don't want to change that) but he did take a look at the cover only to declare that "it's a bunch of beetles in people suits" before he started chuckling. He's got a very interesting sense of humor!

Briefly renewing my childhood habit of checking under the bed,
K


Support our site (and First Book) and buy Half-Minute Horrors on Amazon or find it at your local library. We bought our own copy.

Pretty Monsters and Giveaway!

I first saw Kelly Link's Pretty Monsters on Rob Around Books in one of his Daily Bookshot posts. Based solely on the cover, I jumped on Amazon and bought myself a copy. I'll admit that I was a bit disappointed when I didn't get the super awesome black-edged copy that Rob featured but I guess that was just for the U.K. edition. Then Rob started reading the stories on October 1 for his 31 Shots of Shock short story challenge. I decided to pick up my copy at the same time and read along. If you head to this search page, you can see his entries for each story and my quick comments on each one. He also has an eloquent Afterthoughts post about the entire book. (Have I plugged RobAroundBooks enough times yet?!)

Anyway, I know that a few of my readers are familiar with Kelly Link already and this is a collection of stories that have almost all been printed before. And yet I hadn't read anything by her until now so I wasn't sure what to expect. What I got was a set of imaginative stories over a wide variety of topics and genres. The Wrong Grave and Monster are based on more classic horror themes while Pretty Monsters is classic but then again not. There are a couple of stories that are a bit more fantasy. My favorites were probably Magic for Beginners about teens that follow a pirate television show about a magical library and The Constable of Abal with its "ghosts on ribbons".

My only real complaint about this collection was that the stories are written for a young adult audience and yet the first three stories all dropped the f-bomb which limits some of the younger teens from picking up this book (if their parents happen to see it first). My fake complaint is that I wanted some of the stories to be more fleshed out but I guess then they wouldn't have been short stories! Some of them almost weren't anyway at anywhere from thirty to sixty pages. This didn't matter so much though as Link has a very conversational way of writing which makes even her longest stories quick-reading.

And now for the giveaway! I'm giving one of you the chance to win my gently-read copy (it does have a remainder mark on the bottom). I'm going to make this a U.S. and Canada only giveaway since it is a 400 page hardcover. To enter, give me two pieces of information in a comment -- your email address (if you don't have it in your commenter profile) and the story, book or movie that scared you most as a child. My favorite scary movie was The Watcher in the Woods (1980) which I watched a couple of dozen times and made all of my friends watch. It was also my first introduction to Bette Davis which makes it all the more memorable. The scariest book I remember is The Dollhouse Murders (1983) by Betty Ren Wright. I couldn't stop thinking about it for weeks and had problems sleeping while I was reading it. It was re-released a year ago to torment a new generation of girls.

Please get your entries in by midnight Pacific on Saturday October 24.

Pretty monsters make for pretty spooky stories,
K


Support our site and buy Pretty Monsters: Stories on Amazon or find it at your local library. We bought our own copy.

"Nick Mason thought it ironic that he had always been so skilled at the covert aspect of the craft."

After a slow start where I considered setting the book aside, I eventually got wrapped up in the mystery and tragedy of F.G. Cottam's The House of Lost Souls. Though this wasn't a perfect book, it was an acceptable October read.

Paul Seaton is the only man who can help a trio of college students who are psychologically damaged after visiting a house where unspeakable evil lives -- because he is the only one to have defeated that evil once before. This is a story that visits the past -- the 1920s when a group of people gathered on the Isle of Wight at Fischer House for nefarious purposes under the watchful eye of real-life character Aleister Crowley. One of these people is the female photographer Pandora Gibson-Hoare. In the 1980's, Paul Seaton's girlfriend is a fashion student who wants to research Gibson-Hoare but has run out of time. Paul, as a journalist, steps in to help and precipitates an unbelievable chain of events. When Paul is approached years later to help the young women-- who are all now endangered after their trip to the Fischer house --he decides that this is a chance to help and to exorcise his own demons.

This was obviously another R.I.P. Challenge read. It was a good choice with more than enough ghosts and evil to tide one over for an entire season. Strangely, this wasn't as traumatic a book as I thought it would be. I tend to avoid plots that are strongly based in the evil that men do. While I feel rather safe from ghosts, vampires and magic, evil men exist and can be found anywhere. So I don't find a lot of entertainment in reading about murderers, sadists and other violent people. However, this book was much more about choices and consequences and this was a good balance for me. Some of the writing was a bit awkward and the book could have used more editing but it was a pretty solid horror/paranormal read.

Sticks and stones and vindictive ghosts may break my bones,
K


Support our site and buy The House of Lost Souls on Amazon or find it at your local library. We borrowed this book from the library.

"Though carefully educated in medicine and surgery, I have never practiced either."

Though I thought that this book would be a single story, I found out in the Introduction that In a Glass Darkly is actually a collection of short (and one longish) stories written by Sheridan Le Fanu. The subjects of the stories are hardly related except that they all are improbable. Some are rooted in the supernatural, others in the evil of men's hearts.

The first three stories, Green Tea, The Familiar and Mr. Justice Harbottle, were the most similar. Each dealt with someone plagued with madness though the sources of the madness were debatable. In one case, guilt was suspected though it could have been a ghost. In another story, the culprit may have been too much green tea. These were good solid Victorian stories of the supernatural though none of them were mind-blowing.

The fourth story in the book was the longest and was an adventure story with human villains. The Room in the Dragon Volant was maddening in the way of Victorian stories where the reader is far more sophisticated than the trusting, naive protagonist. From the start of the story, it was obvious what mistakes young Richard made when traveling to France. However, he is also our narrator and so we could assume that everything worked out for him somewhat in the end -- though one starts to worry when the premature burial scene comes around! Yet, by the end of this story, it was my favorite of the book.

The final story, Carmilla was shorter than the previous one but also pretty long for a short story. This was again another kind of story, one that I wasn't expecting after the other four -- a lesbian vampire story. I liked this story until it got toward the end when the situation was pretty obvious but again our oblivious young narrator and protagonist can't put together the clues that are spoken right at her. For some reason, it was a bit more maddening than in the previous story. However, I found it interesting that Carmilla was written in 1872-- twenty-five years before Dracula --and was a major influence on the classic vampire story.

This was one of the books that I really wanted to read this fall. I had already planned to read it for another challenge but held off until now and this definitely proved to be a perfect time of year (and a perfect day) for it. Sitting on the sofa with thunder and pouring rain while I got through Carmilla made the story that much spookier. This was one of the best R.I.P Challenge IV reads that I've had so far. The stories weren't perfect but they were very enjoyable. I will definitely read more Le Fanu in the future.

This book is also on the 1001 Books to Read Before You Die list. I can definitely see the influence of some of these stories on future fiction -- especially horror and vampire stories. I could even see The Room in the Dragon Volant being made into a film one day. I am making terrific progress with the 1% Well-Read Challenge as this is my eighth book for the challenge this year. I only have two more to read before the end of the year and then I will be more well-read ... at least by the standards of the current list!

You know I made it to the end of the book because I'm writing this post ...
K


Support our site and buy In A Glass Darkly on Amazon or find it at your local library. We bought our own copy.

"The story was told to me by my old tutor, Theo Parmitter, as we sat beside the fire in his college rooms one bitterly cold January night."

Over my past year in the blogging world, one author's name has come up over and over as a community favorite -- Susan Hill. So I have been looking for used copies of her books for months and strangely (or not) there aren't many out there. I finally found a used copy of her ghost story, The Man in the Picture, at Powell's and read it almost as soon as it arrived.

A past student, Oliver, returns to Cambridge to visit an old professor and friend, Theo Parmitter. Theo is a bit out of sorts and decides to confess a story from his youth to Oliver. He asks Oliver to first look at an eighteenth-century painting of Venice that is on the wall. Oliver notices that the scene that at first seems frivolous and festive is actually disturbing -- with strange characters in it that almost seem to be looking out of the canvas at him. Then, over two nights, Theo tells the story of how he acquired the painting and what else he has since found out about its history. Of course, this is a far-fetched story that Oliver isn't sure whether to believe -- until he also becomes entangled in the painting's malevolent grasp.

Each R.I.P. Challenge read that I have gotten to has been better than the ones before. This one was a good solid A- story. It has a very similar cadence and phrasing to many Poe short stories and in fact drops a "House of Usher" reference which I loved. The only thing that kept me from adoring this story was that the plot became a bit predictable and I wasn't shocked or surprised at the end. But I really loved Hill's writing and might even be willing to buy brand-spanking-new copies of her books!

Glad that I only hang photographs in the house,
K


Support our site and buy The Man in the Picture on Amazon or find it at your local library.

Spooky Stories With Spark

A small book, The Ghost Stories of Muriel Spark has eight short stories of the paranormal and supernatural. Some were much better than others and there were only a couple that I really liked.

The Girl I Left Behind Me is the one that I believe I have read before. It's a fantastic ghost story. It's very short so I can't really give any summary without giving anything away. It felt like something that could be retold around a campfire. I think this was my favorite of the bunch.

I almost liked The House of the Famous Poet but it was a little vague in some parts and I couldn't be totally sure of some of the things that happened. It is set during WWII in London.

Another Pair of Hands is a ghost story without any scare to it. I liked it as a short story but not as a ghost story. There's just nothing spooky about a maid whose work improves thanks to some help from the dead cook. The same with the story The Executor.

The final story was The Portobello Road which was the longest story and the most haunting. It was the most well-formed story with the strongest characters. It's the story of how the relationships of a small group of friends change over time.

This was my first short story anthology for the R.I.P. IV Challenge. I was a bit disappointed that these were not all stories about ghosts when they were billed as thus. The ones about ghosts were better than the ones not. I know that I have more scary stories ahead from Joe Hill but there's still something about these older stories and their subtlety. It's kind of like the difference between classic horror movies and those today.

With a few goosebumps,
K


Support our site and buy The Ghost Stories of Muriel Spark on Amazon or find it at your local library.

For the Love of Green Knowe

I just finished reading the sixth book in L.M. Boston's Green Knowe series last night. She started writing the books in 1955 (at the age of 62) and the final one came out in 1976. I read them all in just under three months and was fascinated by this series where nothing remains the same except the sturdy old stones of Green Knowe.

The first book, The Children of Green Knowe, introduces us to the stone house which dates from Norman times. Though it has had many names over the years, it has always come back to being called Green Knowe. The book starts with a young boy named Toseland who is coming to live with his Great-Grandmother Oldknow. He has lost his mother and his father has remarried and moved to the East so he is feeling a bit alone. But although there are only two living people in the home, it is alive with the spirits of those who have come before. The "ghosts" that Tolly befriends are three children -- Toby, Alexander and Linnet -- from the 1800s who have left behind some of their treasures in the home. They are shy at first but eventually become Tolly's playmates as he learns to accept them.

This was a delightful book that I would have loved as a child. There was nothing I would have wanted more than to live in an old house with friendly ghosts and hidden treasures. And I loved that the children from the past were actually Tolly's ancestors so that there was even a sort of love between them all. Mrs. Oldknow was also a lovely character -- the kind of grandmother who wants you to go exploring but then always has a warm drink and a snack ready right when you come back. Her connection with Green Knowe and with the family history are based in love and it's obvious that she wants Tolly to continue the tradition.

The second book also featured Tolly and was a look back into another period in Green Knowe's history. The Treasure of Green Knowe introduces Tolly to Susan, a young blind girl who lived about 150 years before the other three children. Her father was a sea captain and he brought a young freed slave back with him to help his daughter out from under the suffocating care of her mother and grandmother. In this story, Tolly actually travels back in time when he must help someone in need. The past and the future become one and Tolly learns even more about the home and finds a hidden treasure that helps Mrs. Oldknow remain in the home. Though I didn't love this book as much as the first, it was still a very good read and a good continuation of the story.

The next two stories, The River at Green Knowe and A Stranger at Green Knowe, happen at times when Tolly is away from the house. In the first of these, Mrs. Oldknow has let the house to an archaeologist/historian named Sybilla Bun. She invites her niece Ida to the house for the summer and also two refugee children, Oskar and Hsu, whom they call Ping. The kids are basically left on their own to explore and they spend the summer getting to know the area around the house and down the river. This was the most boring of all the books as there wasn't much of a plot -- just the summer meanderings of some children. They had small adventures and experienced the magic of Green Knowe but there just wasn't the same sweetness that the stories with Tolly have.

The other story is set in the following summer when Mrs. Oldknow is back in the house. Oskar had been adopted and Ida is busy with her family but she feels badly for Ping who is still in the orphans' camp so she writes to Mrs. Oldknow to ask if Ping can visit. Since Tolly is away in the East for a visit with his father, Mrs. Oldknow agrees and invites Ping for the summer. Right before Ping heads to the country, he goes on a field trip to the zoo and is fascinated by the gorilla, Hanno. Coincidentally, Hanno escapes and ends up in Green Knowe where Ping keeps him a secret. This of course was a silly set-up but the story was sweet as Ping's status as a refugee is compared to the story of Hanno's capture in the wild. I thought this one was okay and Ping was a good character but most of what I enjoyed were the chapters about Hanno's family in the wild. I'm surprised that Boston had such a well-informed picture of the gorilla family structure and behaviors a full ten years before Dian Fossey first published her research in National Geographic and gained visibility for these gentle giants.

The fifth book, An Enemy at Green Knowe has Tolly back at Green Knowe but also Ping as Mrs. Oldknow adopted him at the end of the previous summer. They are starting to enjoy getting to know each other when a strange "researcher", Melanie Powers, moves in next door and asks if she can search the house for some possible manuscripts left by the alchemist Dr. Vogel who lived in the house as a tutor hundreds of years earlier. It is obvious from the start that Ms. Powers is not who she claims to be and that she is also up to no good. Tolly, Ping and Mrs. Oldknow do everything in their power to thwart her and eventually come up against some pretty evil stuff. This story was a bit of a shocker with all of its Satanic and witchcraft references and plagues and such. This would never make it past the hyper-vigilant parents of today. Ms. Powers makes Voldemort seem a bit milque-toast!

The final book was one of my favorites in the series, The Stones of Green Knowe. This is the story of Roger, the child who lived when Green Knowe was being built in around 1050 A.D. He unearths some ancient and magical stone chairs hidden in the trees on a hill and finds that they give him the power to travel through time for brief periods. His greatest concern is that Green Knowe survives and so he travels forward in time to see if the house is still standing. He manages to find almost all of the children we have met before -- Alexander, Linnet and Toby, Susan and Jacob and finally, Tolly. This story had a satisfying sense of closure and was sweet in the way it brought all of the children together.

This was a strange "series" with each book having an entirely different focus and tempo. From exploration and ghosts to witches and time travel, this series has something for almost every child. I didn't feel that anything was too dated in the stories because they are really about emotions and relationships and imagination. This was a fantastic find and I thank those bloggers who brought this series to my attention.

Dreaming of ancient stones that feel like home,
K


Support our site and buy The Children of Green Knowe, Treasure of Green Knowe, The River at Green Knowe, A Stranger at Green Knowe, An Enemy at Green Knowe and The Stones of Green Knowe on Amazon or find them at your local library.

"I first saw the photograph on a hot January afternoon in my mother's bedroom."

As I started reading John Harwood's The Ghost Writer, I realized that I might not ever have read a book set in Australia. Isn't that strange? There have been stories that mentioned Australia as a destination (especially for convicts and people escaping debt or danger) but I can't recall a book set in the land down under. Of course, not much of this book has anything to do with Australia but it felt nice to have a change of weather, so to speak.

This story was simply one where nothing was as it seemed. Gerard knows his mother has secrets, especially pertaining to the reason that she relocated from England to Australia, but she never tells him about her past except for stories about a country house. Gerard has his own secrets, especially about his invalid penfriend, Alice. His mother knows about the letters but not about the intimacy growing between Alice and Gerard. Eventually, Gerard sets off to England to learn more about his mother, his authoress great-grandmother and, most of all, Alice.

I really liked the way that Harwood included Viola's short stories in the book and in the plot. It was a clever direction to take and led to multiple layers of suspense. The only complaint I had was the quick and slap-dash ending. I feel like there were too many questions left unanswered for me at the end. Although, I think his point was that Gerard was left with these same questions and no way to ever find answers.

If you are looking for a good winter fireside read, go ahead and pick up this book!

Wondering where all the ideas come from,
K


Buy The Ghost Writer on Amazon or find it at your local library.