Book Review: Midnight is a Place

[osprey_archer]

Onward in the Aikening! This time littlerhymes and I read Midnight is a Place, which is very loosely related to the Wolves series in that it also features an industrial city named Blastburn. There are no crossover characters, no wolves, no reigning Tudor-Stuarts, and the town has completely different industries. Aiken may have just liked the name Blastburn.

However, I’m glad that it is described as related to the Wolves books, as otherwise we wouldn’t have read it and this book is PEAK gothic. Start with Midnight Court, an old house which is falling into ruin because the crabbed and miserly owner has been selling off the furniture and firing all the servants! Add a lonely orphan boy and his Mysterious Tutor! Throw in a Dickensian carpet factory where the carpet-making process ends with a press that can and will squash children on a regular basis! Stir in one more lonely orphan, this one a small and furious girl from France, and you have yourself a rich and savory gothic stew.

This is merely the set-up. Other gothic elements arrive in due course. For instance: the current owner of Midnight Court won it in a midnight bet at the Hellfire Club! (Not actually called the Hellfire Club, but the same idea.) The lonely orphan boy must make his living by descending into the sewers to find treasure. (The sewers are inhabited by savage rats and thirty to forty feral hogs, because Aiken loves a wild animal attack.) The child-squashing press on the mantelpiece does of course go off.

Overall a delight. The only flaw is that the last chapter is pretty rushed, and introduces a completely random plot thread for two pages which is then summarily dropped. Aiken mentions, in passing, that certain people have decided to breach the dikes and flood the town. But no worries, the orphan boy overheard the plot (off-page, apparently) and warned everyone (also off-page!) so it will be fine.

Aiken must have just REALLY wanted to flood Blastburn, because she does it again at the end of Is Underground, much more thoroughly and at great length. But you can just kind of ignore that bit and savor all the gothic everything that precedes it.

Comments

[conuly]

The child-squashing press on the mantelpiece does of course go off.

With a good deal of extra drama and discussion of deliberately terrible working conditions, iirc.

[osprey_archer]

But of course! Would it even be Aiken if the child-squashing press didn't almost squash a child in the most dramatic way possible?

[sovay]

Aiken may have just liked the name Blastburn.

I am pretty sure it's just lumped in with the Wolves books because of the name, as it seems otherwise to take place in our actual history and Aiken was not wrong that Blastburn is an incredible name for an industrial town in northern England.

The mysterious tutor is my favorite character, but I love pretty much the book.

[osprey_archer]

Blastburn IS an incredible name for an industrial town in northern England. I 100% understand why Aiken reused it, and I bet that if she didn't intend it to be one of the Wolves books, she found it pretty funny that people included it on the basis of the name.

The mysterious tutor is the definite stand-out of the book.

[skygiants]

She also floods the whole town at the end of The Embroidered Sunset! I think maybe she just liked flooding places!

[conuly]

I get it. I always liked unleashing Godzilla on my hapless Sim City, so... being a writer is kinda like that too?

[osprey_archer]

Aiken does take a wild joy in destructive, it's true.

[littlerhymes]

Is there a Dickens where a character goes into the sewers and finds something? I keep thinking it's Our Mutual Friend. Regardless. PEAK gothic. When Lucas wakes up in the night and smells smoke - oh so perfect.

[osprey_archer]

I think in Dickens the characters are finding things in the rivers, not the sewers, although I didn't finish the book so possibly they make it down to the sewers later on? And of course there's plenty of sewers in Les Mis.

YES, the fire that burns Midnight Court down is PEAK gothic. Sir Randolph running into the flames to be devoured!!!

[asakiyume]

Now I'm hoping you do me the favor of reading The Whispering Mountain, which I owned as a kid but could never manage to read. But I could read your summary! Just the right amount of Aiken for me!

The plot thread in this one that's picked up and dropped is hilarious (that is, the picking up and dropping part).

[osprey_archer]

We are reading The Whispering Mountain right now! It's the final book in our Wolves reading sequence.

[asakiyume]

Hurray! Books mediated through someone else! Such a great way to experience things if you just ... can't experience them first hand, for whatever reason.

[thisbluespirit]

I'm so glad you enjoyed this one! I think it may actually be my favourite Aiken overall. I discovered it first when a teacher read the opening chapter to us at school and then abandoned it - she used to do this, presumably in the hopes that we would go off and read the book ourselves, but unfortunately MiaP was nowhere to be found in my town for the next two years or so until it finally turned up in the library! I was very fond of it then, but read it again when I was first very ill this go round and really imprinted onto it for a while.

Also, talking of the rushed ending, I think, despite how much I love all the backstory and the sadness and the gothic-ness, my favourite thing might be when Lady Murgatroyd's relative turns up and is all, "Oh, so you have not been dead all these years." I mean, I suppose if you live in Aiken-land, these things will happen!

The other thing about re-reading it c.2011 or 12 when I was so bad was that it accidentally dovetailed with my David Collings watchings - it turned out that ITV made an adaptation in the 70s, with David Collings as Julian Oakapple. (I have mixed feelings about the series generally, because they tried so hard to make it a proper period drama, and, I mean, you've just got to embrace that it's Aiken and it's really not, even if it isn't in the Wolves sequence. Or maybe is, whatever. DC and Julian Oakapple is a perfect casting choice though! Of course, I obtained the thing).

Anyway, I don't know if you will be interested, but a cool thing about the series was that Joan Aiken was involved and provided them with a bonus verse of Denzil's song, and I think the basis for the music, too, although this is composed by John Patrick Phelan. If you would like to hear it, I uploaded the full theme here, as sung by David Collings for the intro & outro. (Phelan turned up on the shorter version I posted to confirm it was Collings singing, as there aren't credits for it, although his voice is so distinctive, it was impossible to mistake anyway).

[osprey_archer]

It's true, in Aiken-land you just have to learn to roll with happenings like "dead relative actually alive all these years" and "long-lost heir shows up and is identified by special family eye color" and "surprise! you have a twin!"

Oh amazing! I love that Aiken was involved in the TV show and provided them with the basis for the music for Denzil's song. There are so many songs in her books, and so many musician characters, it must have been so fun for her to get to actually see the song performed.