osprey_archer: (books)
[personal profile] osprey_archer
I don’t remember where precisely we bought Zilpha Keatley Snyder’s The Headless Cupid, or exactly how old I was at the time; but I remember that it was on sale on a special rack, and it was summer and sunny and I sat in the car and read.

Or maybe I just remember it as sunny and summery because the book itself takes place in summer, although not always in the sun - although there is one scene, where David and his new stepsister Amanda go to gather herbs, and there’s a sense almost of heat shimmering off the page as they go down the dusty lane to the crossroads, for herbs gathered at the crossroads will have more occult powers.

In a sense The Headless Cupid is most important to me because it led me to Zilpha Keatley Snyder’s other works: The Egypt Game and the Greensky books (the ending of the second Greensky book is one of the most sublime endings I’ve ever read) and especially The Changeling.

But it’s also important to me for its own sake: it has a permanent place on the shelves in my bedside table. You can read The Headless Cupid (and I did, as a child) as simply a cracking good story. I loved the occult themes, which start in the realm of make-believe and edge toward reality - yet becoming more mysterious and numinous the more real they become.

(To me the balance of the evidence suggests that there is an actual ghost, although it’s not totally definite.)

Snyder is excellent at portraying the way that children play, particularly the way that they like to play with magic. The sequences of tests that Amanda prepares for the Stanley children before she’s willing to initiate them into the world of the occult is great: a day where they can’t touch metal, a day when they’re not allowed to touch hardwood floor (an early version of “the floor is lava!”), a day of silence…

As a child, I reacted to Amanda much the way that David does: he’s fascinated by her, and he goes along with her initiation tests because they’re interesting and he’s hoping they’ll help him understand her better - but he doesn’t understand her. Yet her actions always had an internal logic, and even when I didn’t understand what it was, I always felt that it was there - that Snyder was playing fair.

Rereading as an adult, it’s much clearer to me that Amanda is lashing out because she’s angry about her parents’ divorce (which David’s dad does mention to David, but he doesn’t beleaguer the point), and why that would seep into areas of her life that didn’t (to a child’s mind) seem particularly connected.

Lots of Snyder’s books have this subterranean layer - often more than one subterranean layer. They give her work a sense of depth that I could feel even as a child and which means that they almost always reward rereading - and yet the stories work even if you don’t understand that they’re not just about poltergeists & friendship but also divorce, or child abuse, or lonely children.

(The one exception IMO is The Witches of Worm, which I neither liked nor understood as a child - I think you have to see and understand the underpinnings in that story in order to find Jessica sympathetic. But that may just have been me. If anyone else read it - what did you think?)

And, of course, I have to mention the illustrations. A lot of Snyder’s books were illustrated by Alton Raible (particularly in the sixties and seventies, her golden years, although some of her later books are very good too), and it’s hard to imagine a more felicitous marriage of author and illustrator. Although now I’m thinking: The Perilous Gard and Richard Cuffari, Beth and Joe Krush and their illustrations for The Borrowers and Gone-Away Lake...

It’s a little disturbing how many of my favorite books also have my favorite illustrations. Maybe I’m simply too susceptible to the lure of a good picture.

Nonetheless. Alton Raible’s pictures always seemed to me perfectly in harmony with the atmosphere of Zilpha Keatley Snyder’s books - that delicate blend of magic and realism. Who could beat his picture of Amanda slipping down the dark hallway like a ghost, the picture all dark but for the reflected gleam of her flashlight?

Date: 2019-02-08 01:30 pm (UTC)
sartorias: (Default)
From: [personal profile] sartorias
I'd have to go back and reread THE WITCHES OF WORM. I love all the ones you did. I should get those out for a reread.

Date: 2019-02-08 02:01 pm (UTC)
ancientreader: sebastian stan as bucky looking pensive (Default)
From: [personal profile] ancientreader
I owe you one: I loved Zilpha Keatley Snyder but I hadn't thought of her in years; the reminder fills me with the most intense nostalgic pleasure and of course the desire to re-read. The Perilous Gard is also ringing all kinds of bells in my memory ...

Date: 2019-02-09 12:18 am (UTC)
conuly: (Default)
From: [personal profile] conuly
Not only are all her books on ebook, but I believe you can get the collected works at a steep discount that way.

Date: 2019-02-08 03:43 pm (UTC)
asakiyume: created by the ninja girl (Default)
From: [personal profile] asakiyume
I totally agree with you about the ending to And All Between. I loved it, and I realize it influenced me tremendously. I can picture so clearly Pomma and Teera standing together and the weapon floating toward them--and I think that scene *wasn't* illustrated. (But maybe it was?)

And I agree with you about Alton Raible's illustrations (and also Richard Cuffari's!).

The Witches of Worm terrified and upset me, and I haven't ever tried rereading it.

I've never actually read The Headless Cupid!

Date: 2019-02-08 04:17 pm (UTC)
kore: (Default)
From: [personal profile] kore
Headless Cupid is REALLY good, possibly her best book imo, or at least my favourite.

Date: 2019-02-08 06:54 pm (UTC)
asakiyume: created by the ninja girl (Default)
From: [personal profile] asakiyume
I think it would have a hard time displacing the Green-sky books and The Changeling--I tried to **live** Green-sky after reading that series, and The Changeling was so powerfully emotionally true for me. But if it crossed my path I'll read it!

Date: 2019-02-11 01:53 am (UTC)
asakiyume: created by the ninja girl (Default)
From: [personal profile] asakiyume
Yes I love that picture of them playing Five-Pense!

Date: 2019-02-08 04:17 pm (UTC)
kore: (Default)
From: [personal profile] kore
I loved Headless Cupid and Changeling and Witches of Worm growing up, and then rediscovering them as an adult was great. I'm very pleased they've been republished in uniform paperback.

Witches of Worm -- I don't remember exactly liking it as a kid, but it was very mesmerizing. To me Jessica projects her own self-image onto Worm -- unloved, unlovely, possibly dangerous and supernatural, although as always with Snyder's works, the supernatural is never quite dismissed. There's an eerie quality both about Jessica's anger and pain, and how her internal emotional world manifests itself in lashing out in a direct comparison to the Salem girl-witches. It's Shirley Jackson-esque -- vivid, memorable, deeply unsettling.

Date: 2019-02-09 12:20 am (UTC)
conuly: (Default)
From: [personal profile] conuly
The Headless Cupid was pleasant, but for me, the crucial reads were The Egypt Game and - and this is certainly an oddball entry! - And Condors Danced. Also a fan of Libby on Wednesdays, though I don't like how it's aged.

Date: 2019-02-09 12:27 am (UTC)
skygiants: the aunts from Pushing Daisies reading and sipping wine on a couch (wine and books)
From: [personal profile] skygiants
I reread Libby on Wednesdays several years ago and mostly walked away feeling pleasantly nostalgic, though there was definitely stuff I didn't catch as a kid (somehow I never registered Libby's gay dad?)

Date: 2019-02-09 07:11 am (UTC)
conuly: (Default)
From: [personal profile] conuly
IS he gay? Bisexual, surely?

Date: 2019-02-09 02:38 pm (UTC)
skygiants: Audrey Hepburn peering around a corner disguised in giant sunglasses, from Charade (sneaky like hepburnninja)
From: [personal profile] skygiants
Could be? iirc we don't really have any information other than 'has a mostly-absent wife and a live-in boyfriend,' which in the 80s really could go either way.

Date: 2019-02-09 12:21 am (UTC)
skygiants: the aunts from Pushing Daisies reading and sipping wine on a couch (wine and books)
From: [personal profile] skygiants
I loved these books! Both this one and the hilariously left-plot-turn sequel; books about siblings are always intensely my jam, books about kids becoming the family they need from each other despite themselves especially so.

(I only realized a year or two ago that there were actually four, and I had somehow missed the last two in my childhood.)

Date: 2019-02-09 02:21 pm (UTC)
anelith: (Default)
From: [personal profile] anelith
I adored The Egypt Game and other ZKS books as a child. I wonder how popular she is these days?

Profile

osprey_archer: (Default)
osprey_archer

May 2025

S M T W T F S
    123
4 5 6 7 8910
111213 14151617
18 19 20 21 22 2324
25 2627 28 29 3031

Most Popular Tags

Style Credit

Expand Cut Tags

No cut tags
Page generated Jun. 2nd, 2025 12:30 am
Powered by Dreamwidth Studios