A Candle in Her Room

I'm so pleased to have picked up A Candle in Her Room by Ruth M. Arthur (Atheneum, 1966) at the book sale, despite (or perhaps because of) its dated cover. It's just the sort of book I would have been enraptured by as an eleven-year-old, one in which three generations of young women living in Pembrokeshire, Wales are haunted by a wooden doll. Even now I read it in a similarly rapt state on a rainy Saturday, and felt closer to my eleven-year-old self than I have in a long time!

I'm also pleased to have discovered the work of Ruth M. Arthur, who wrote a whole list of Gothic novels for girls in the 1960s and 70s, none of which I had previously read. How could that be? Anyway, A Candle in Her Room was the first of those, and introduces a lot of the conventions that Arthur seems to have returned to again and again: a female first person narrator; an evocative setting to which the narrator moves; a multi-generational (or parallel historical) plot; and an element of fantasy or magic, usually involving a talisman of some sort.

A Candle in Her Room actually has three narrators (they all sound remarkably alike). The first section is narrated by Melissa, whose family moves from London to the Old Court in Pembrokeshire sometime before WWI. Melissa has two younger sisters, Judith and Briony, and while it's Briony who finds the wooden doll, Judith--the artistic, sophisticated sister--is the one who becomes almost possessed by it. After Melissa falls off a cliff and is confined to a wheelchair, Judith runs off with Melissa's boyfriend Carew and the two of them are married in London.

Subsequent sections are narrated by Dilys, Judith and Carew's daughter; Melissa again, as she searches for Dilys's child following WWII; and Nina, who comes to live with Melissa at the Old Court. Dido, the wooden doll (her name is carved into her back) is a mysterious, malignant presence throughout: her origins are never explained, and ultimately Nina must destroy her and her hold on the family in a terrific bonfire (as seen on the cover).

While the plot of A Candle in Her Room is often melodramatic (I'm thinking of poor Dilys in particular), the narration of events is somewhat removed from the experience of them. There is a lot of matter-of-fact telling. Intentional or not, I think this tension only heightens the overall feeling of foreboding that makes this such a creepy book. 

Now I'm actively seeking out some of Arthur's other books, namely Dragon Summer (1963), Requiem for a Princess (1967), and The Saracen Lamp (1970). And if there are any Arthur fans out there, your recommendations are most welcome! In the meantime, it's nice to add an author to my most-wanted list for the next book sale.

[Margery Gill's distinctive pen-and-ink illustrations for A Candle in Her Room (she illustrated many of Arthur's other books as well) do a lot to enliven the text. This one is of Melissa examining Dido as Briony looks on.]

National Book Awards longlist

The National Book Awards longlist for young people's literature was announced today (the collage of cover images above is from the National Book Foundation, whcih administers the prize). This is the first year that the National Book Awards are running longlists: the five finalists will be announced on October 16, and the winner on November 20. Here's the longlist (with links courtesy of the Daily Beast):

The True Blue Scouts of Sugar Man Swamp by Kathi Appelt
Flora and Ulysses: The Illuminated Adventures by Kate DiCamillo, illustrated by K.G. Campbell
A Tangle of Knots by Lisa Graff
The Summer Prince by Alaya Dawn Johnson
The Thing About Luck by Cynthia Kadohata
Two Boys Kissing by David Levithan
Far Far Away by Tom McNeal
Picture Me Gone by Meg Rosoff
The Real Boy by Anne Ursu, illustrated by Erin McGuire
Boxers and Saints by Gene Luen Yang

Of the ten finalists, I've read two (Far, Far Away and The Real Boy; reviews to follow) and actively avoided reading two others (which shall remain nameless). I've also added two to my to-read list, but the one I'm most looking forward to is Meg Rosoff's Picture Me Gone (Putnam Juvenile), available October 3.

I like having lists for the National Book Awards, whose criteria (unlike that of, say, the Newbery) aren't strictly defined; instead, they're "whatever [the judges, mostly writers] deem appropriate." I wonder what criteria this year's judges are using?

Waiting on Wednesday: The Watchers in the Shadows

I'm waiting on not one but two books titled The Watcher in the Shadows this spring. The Watcher in the Shadows by Chris Moriarty, which comes out May 28 from Harcourt Children's Books, is the sequel to The Inquisitor's Apprentice (2011), an alternate--magical--history set in early-twentieth century New York City. I liked The Inquisitor's Apprentice lots (we shortlisted it for the Cybils that year), especially the representation of immigrant Jewish culture, and the line illustrations by Mark Edward Geyer: it was sort of like a fantasy/boy version of All-of-a-Kind family. Which is to say, not at all like All-of-a-Kind family, but with line illustrations.

The other Watcher in the Shadows is by Carlos Ruiz Zafón, who is probably more familiar as the author of the bestselling adult novel The Shadow of the Wind (trans. by Lucia Graves; Penguin, 2004) and its sequels. This is more of a gothic middle grade or YA, the third in a thematic trilogy originally published in the 1990s, in Spanish. It's set in a toymaker's mansion on the coast of Normandy in the 1930s: of course I'm going to read it. I read the first, The Prince of Mist (Little, Brown BFYR, 2010), in a cottage on the coast of Maine, as close to on location as it is possible to be this side of the Atlantic. The Watcher in the Shadows comes out June 18, so I will probably have to read it on the Metro.

Post-Valentine's Day YA

So, I've been reading a little more YA lately--enough to make this list of YA novels that involve both a. kissing, and b. trips to Europe. What's not to love?

The Statistical Probability of Love at First Sight by Jennifer E. Smith (Poppy, 2012). Hadley falls in love with Oliver on a flight from New York to London for her father's wedding. Aside (or not): Hadley is understandably upset about her father's remarriage. He was on fellowship at Oxford over a year ago--still married to Hadley's mom--when he fell in love with a much younger woman, whom Hadley has thus far refused to meet. Adult readers must try to overlook this. Anyway, after a cinematic kiss (see cover), Hadley and Oliver lose track of each other at Heathrow, but fate and second chances bring them back together (twice!) over the next 24 hours.

Anna and the French Kiss by Stephanie Perkins (Dutton, 2010). Anna is inexplicably reluctant to go to boarding school in Paris, where she will meet a cute French boy (she should know, because her father writes romance novels). This book is like having a whole box of macarons. In Paris.

The Fault in Our Stars by John Green (Dutton, 2012). Hazel and Augustus go to Amsterdam. Before one of them DIES.

Just One Day by Gayle Forman (Dutton). Just one day in Paris with a sexy Dutch guy you just met at an underground performance of Shakespeare's Twelfth Night, followed by a year of heartache and a sequel (Willem's side of the story, Just One Year, will be out this fall). Note to future Milly: Don't even think about it.

My Life Next Door by Huntley Fitzpatrick (Dial, 2012). Okay, this one is the opposite of Europe: almost everything happens, well, next door. But there is lots of kissing.

Thank you, David Levithan

Last night I read Every Day by David Levithan (Knopf, 2012). It's the sort of book I want everyone I know to read, so I can talk about it without giving anything away. Starting with the premise: Every day A wakes up in a different body. Til then, here's Day 6009:

Today I'm a boy named AJ. He has diabetes, so I have a whole other layer of concerns on top of my usual ones. I've been diabetic a couple of times, and the first time was harrowing. Not because diabetes isn't controllable, but because I had to rely on the body's memories to tell me what to look out for, and how to manage it.... Now I feel I can handle it, but I am very attentive to what the body is telling me, much more so than I usually am. (166)

I've read many (many) books, but this is the first time I've spontaneously encountered a person with Type 1 diabetes in one: the prevalence appears to be lower than in the general population. Which is surprising, given that Type 1 is most often diagnosed in children and young adults. Case in point: my son Leo, who was diagnosed at age 11, a year ago this month.

Thankfully, I think Levithan gets it right. Diabetes adds another layer of concern to whatever else--a math test, a crush, a soccer game, lunch--might be happening on any given day. It demands a certain, constant level of attention to the body that most of us rarely require. It's the first thing A thinks about that morning.

But the rest of the day, as written, is not about diabetes. AJ is also a regular kid: "It's a relief, in many ways, to be a guy who doesn't mind riding the bus, who has friends waiting for him when he gets on, who doesn't have to deal with anything more troubling than the fact that he ate breakfast and is still hungry." He even eats french fries for lunch. Leo would love that. I did.

The ballad of Long Lankin, for Poetry Friday

Debut author Lindsey Barraclough's YA novel Long Lankin was inspired by the eponymous old English ballad (Roud Folk Song Index 6) in which Long Lankin, aided and abetted by a nursemaid, murders a lady and her infant son--by pricking him all over with a pin (shiver):

"Where's the heir of this house?" said Long Lankin. / "He's asleep in his cradle," said the false nurse to him.
"We'll prick him, we'll prick him all over with a pin, / And that'll make my lady to come down to him."

The baby's cries bring his mother, and she dies in Long Lankin's arms.

Barraclough sets her retelling of the ballad in postwar England: Sisters Cora and Mimi are sent from London to stay with their great-aunt Ida in the coastal village of Bryers Guerdon, but Auntie Ida, stern and secretly terrified, doesn't want them there. Of course, Cora and Mimi disregard her warnings (Ida doesn't even want them in the great big house alone) and go straight to the forbidden church and graveyard. Don't they know they're in a gothic horror story? Sigh. Poor Mimi.

Emily's Quest

The portrait of Elisabeth Bas featured in August's Middle Grade Gallery hangs by the fireplace in the Disappointed House, as furnished by Emily Starr and Dean Priest during their ill-fated engagement in Emily's Quest by L.M. Montgomery.  This is the third and final book in the Emily series, which isn't nearly as beloved as Montgomery's Anne series (or so I am forced to conclude, since no one guessed.  Members of the Emily Starr Fan Club, please leave a comment).

I didn't love Emily either, but I still like to reread the chapter of Emily's Quest dedicated to making over the Disappointed House (it's Chapter 9), inside and out.  Montgomery describes everything, from the wallpaper in the living-room ("shadowy grey with snowy pine branches over it") to Emily's great-grandmother's wedding china (willow-ware) to the brass chessy-cat door knocker on the front porch door.  And of course, the pictures:  Lady Giovanna, Mona Lisa...and Elisabeth Bas.

Spoiler alert:  Emily breaks off her engagement to Dean when she realizes that she still loves Teddy, and the Disappointed House is boarded up again.  But years later, Dean gives the deed to the house and all it contains to Emily as a wedding gift.  I can't imagine Emily and Teddy actually living there among Dean's things, but it's always been my House of Dreams.

Does anyone else remember the Disappointed House? Or, for that matter, Anne's House of Dreams (perhaps my favorite of the Anne books)?  Which would you prefer?

The reading habits of fictional characters

I just finished reading Laurie Halse Anderson's Wintergirls (Viking, 2009), in which main character Lia reads a lot of Neil Gaiman.  At one point she "stay[s] up past midnight reading in the family room" (99); she's reading, in her words, "Neil Gaiman's latest work of genius" (100).  Other more-or-less contemporary authors mentioned include Tolkien, Butler (Octavia?), and Yolen (that would be Jane).  I wonder when characters in YA fiction are going to be reading Anderson.  Maybe they already are?

I almost forgot

The Other Side of the Island by Allegra Goodman (Razorbill). This one hasn't gotten any Newbery buzz, but I liked it better than that other dystopian YA book people are raving about.  Carry on.

Poetry Friday: "In an Artist's Studio"

Christina Rossetti's sonnet makes the perfect epigraph to Julie Hearn's YA novel Ivy (Ginee Seo/Atheneum, 2008), about a laudanum-addicted artist's model in Victorian England:

One face looks out from all his canvasses,
One selfsame figure sits or walks or leans;
We found her hidden just behind those screens,
That mirror gave back all her loveliness,
A queen in opal or in ruby dress,
A nameless girl in freshest summer greens,
A saint, an angel; -- every canvas means
The same one meaning, neither more nor less.
He feeds upon her face by day and night,
And she with true kind eyes looks back on him
Fair as the moon and joyful as the light.

Hearn chooses to quote only these eleven lines, which I found somewhat disconcerting but which makes sense in the context of her novel.  Here is the final tercet; it doesn't apply to Ivy (yet):

Not wan with waiting, not with sorrow dim;
Not as she is, but was when hope shone bright;
Not as she is, but as she fills his dream.

[This poem is in the public domain.]

I liked Ivy, especially inasmuch as it reminded me of another modern Dickensian novel, Sarah Waters's Fingersmith.  That one's definitely for the grownups.  Don't miss it.

And speaking of Dickens:  I haven't read any (gasp!).  Well, that's not strictly true:  I've read A Christmas Carol and Molly and the Magic Wishbone (retold and illustrated by Barbara McClintock; FSG, 2001).  Where should I start?

Twilight; perhaps you've heard of it?

I try to stay away from vampires. That includes vampire books, movies, and television shows (sorry, Buffy). Not interested. But I haven't been able to avoid the hype about tonight's release of the fourth and final book in Stephenie Meyer's Twilight Saga, Breaking Dawn (I didn't even have to look any of that up). A lot of what I've read, including this article by Laura Yao in the Washington Post ("Bitten and Smitten," 8/01/08), is about the Twilight series as a publishing phenomenon on a par with Harry Potter, and about its predominantly female fan base of daughters and (gasp!) their moms. But Laura Miller, in Salon, offers a damning critique of Twilight in the context of literary vampirism and traditional feminine fantasy as well ("Touched by a Vampire," 7/30/08). I'm beginning to wonder if I should read it myself, if only to know what everyone's talking about, and despite the fact that (see above) I'm not even interested in vampires. Help! They're sucking me in.