Book Review: The Haunting
May. 1st, 2022 07:52 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
osprey_archerAlthough I’d heard whispers about Margaret Mahy for years, I hadn’t read any of her novels till littlerhymes and I decided to read The Haunting. I’m SO glad that we did because otherwise Mahy might have passed me by entirely, and that would have been a tragedy.
The Haunting is a children’s fantasy in the classic twentieth century mold, a svelte, atmospheric little book. One day when Barney is walking home from school, a ghost appears to him: a small child dressed in blue velvet, who cries, “Barnaby’s dead! I’m going to be very lonely.”
As Barney’s full name is Barnaby, he races home in terror, and faints on the front steps in front of his sisters Tabitha and Troy
The haunting is wonderful (just the right level of creepy), but I may have loved Barnaby’s family even more. Special mention goes to Tabitha, who is “writing the world’s greatest novel, but no one was allowed to read it until she was twenty-one and it was published.” She takes notes on everything that happens, and as soon as it's clear that Barney’s faint is not dangerous she begins to study him from all angles: “We’re such a healthy family, the chance of anyone fainting in the next ten years is absolutely nil.”
Portrait of the Writer as a Young Girl indeed!
Troy, meanwhile, is a dark and brooding teenager (but portrayed with affection, as dark and brooding teenagers often are not). And the children’s stepmother, Claire, is a refreshing Good Stepmother, particularly adored by Barney, whose own mother died when he was born: “before Claire had come he had not had much kindness and fussing so surely he was allowed to make up for it now,” Barney muses, contemplating whether to pretend to be just a bit sicker than he really feels after he faints just so Claire will look after him.
(Ultimately his desire not to worry Claire wins out. Claire is going to have a baby and, because of his own mother’s death in childbirth, Barney frets that any little thing might result in a similar outcome to Claire’s pregnancy.)
There is also a father but he is just kind of There. Something had to give in order to lavish Tabitha, the true MVP of this book, with sufficient page time to investigate What Is Up with This Ghost.
I will not tell you What Is Up with the Ghost but I did find the investigation tremendously satisfying. The ending is perhaps a bit rushed (the danger of those years when children’s books were so very short!), but overall an excellent book. We liked The Haunting so much that we are going to read The Changeover next.
***
Over the course of our reading,littlerhymes and I have managed to hit books from most of the major English-speaking countries: Australia (Mary Grant Bruce’s Billabong series), Canada (L.M. Montgomery’s Anne & Emily series; especially sorry I didn’t post about these), England (Arthur Ransome’s Swallows and Amazons series, ditto), New Zealand (Margaret Mahy, although if there IS a famous New Zealand children’s books series from the days of yore please let us know), US (various Louisa May Alcott, still ongoing, and Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Little House books), and Wales (Jenny Nimmo’s Magicians Trilogy).
That leaves just Scotland and Ireland. Do either of them have a classic, iconic children’s book series? If not, we also take children’s fantasy from the second half of the 20th century.
littlerhymes and I decided to read The Haunting. I’m SO glad that we did because otherwise Mahy might have passed me by entirely, and that would have been a tragedy.The Haunting is a children’s fantasy in the classic twentieth century mold, a svelte, atmospheric little book. One day when Barney is walking home from school, a ghost appears to him: a small child dressed in blue velvet, who cries, “Barnaby’s dead! I’m going to be very lonely.”
As Barney’s full name is Barnaby, he races home in terror, and faints on the front steps in front of his sisters Tabitha and Troy
The haunting is wonderful (just the right level of creepy), but I may have loved Barnaby’s family even more. Special mention goes to Tabitha, who is “writing the world’s greatest novel, but no one was allowed to read it until she was twenty-one and it was published.” She takes notes on everything that happens, and as soon as it's clear that Barney’s faint is not dangerous she begins to study him from all angles: “We’re such a healthy family, the chance of anyone fainting in the next ten years is absolutely nil.”
Portrait of the Writer as a Young Girl indeed!
Troy, meanwhile, is a dark and brooding teenager (but portrayed with affection, as dark and brooding teenagers often are not). And the children’s stepmother, Claire, is a refreshing Good Stepmother, particularly adored by Barney, whose own mother died when he was born: “before Claire had come he had not had much kindness and fussing so surely he was allowed to make up for it now,” Barney muses, contemplating whether to pretend to be just a bit sicker than he really feels after he faints just so Claire will look after him.
(Ultimately his desire not to worry Claire wins out. Claire is going to have a baby and, because of his own mother’s death in childbirth, Barney frets that any little thing might result in a similar outcome to Claire’s pregnancy.)
There is also a father but he is just kind of There. Something had to give in order to lavish Tabitha, the true MVP of this book, with sufficient page time to investigate What Is Up with This Ghost.
I will not tell you What Is Up with the Ghost but I did find the investigation tremendously satisfying. The ending is perhaps a bit rushed (the danger of those years when children’s books were so very short!), but overall an excellent book. We liked The Haunting so much that we are going to read The Changeover next.
***
Over the course of our reading,
littlerhymes and I have managed to hit books from most of the major English-speaking countries: Australia (Mary Grant Bruce’s Billabong series), Canada (L.M. Montgomery’s Anne & Emily series; especially sorry I didn’t post about these), England (Arthur Ransome’s Swallows and Amazons series, ditto), New Zealand (Margaret Mahy, although if there IS a famous New Zealand children’s books series from the days of yore please let us know), US (various Louisa May Alcott, still ongoing, and Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Little House books), and Wales (Jenny Nimmo’s Magicians Trilogy).That leaves just Scotland and Ireland. Do either of them have a classic, iconic children’s book series? If not, we also take children’s fantasy from the second half of the 20th century.
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Date: 2022-05-01 12:29 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-05-03 01:23 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-05-01 12:54 pm (UTC)Oh Tabitha! I did especially like towards the end at some terribly important, dramatic moment when she takes out her notebook and Claire is like "not now Tabitha" and she reluctantly puts it away again LOL.
We have read so many books! I've enjoyed this project so much.
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Date: 2022-05-03 01:34 am (UTC)We have read SO many books. I am a little sorry I didn't start posting about them on DW earlier but such is life! One can only shrug and sigh and move forward.
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Date: 2022-05-01 02:06 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-05-03 01:24 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-05-01 05:09 pm (UTC)Tabitha sounds particularly great, and I'm not all that surprised because I did eventually manage to catch some Mahy as a children's librarian. She was also a librarian herself and one of her short stories is the completely delightful The Librarian and the Robbers. (Miss Laburnum, the beautiful orphaned librarian, is kidnapped by robbers and held to ransom! The Council, although they would like their Librarian back because Miss Laburnum has the key to the library, are not at all sure which budget ransoming the librarian comes out of and left it to the next committee meeting & of course in the meantime, Miss Laburnum converts the robbers to reading. She nearly gets pulverised by literature ("the ideal way for a librarian to die!" but all ends well, heh.)
Anyway, good luck with finding more!
I feel like there probably are Scottish/Irish things of that era, but other than obv. R. L. Stevenson for Scotland, I'm blanking at the moment.
(In later works, the main Irish one I can think of is The Hounds of the Morrigan by Pat O'Shea, but that is more fantasy. And Scotland, well, Katie Morag, if you want to take on some picture books!)
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Date: 2022-05-03 01:28 am (UTC)From comments I'm gathering that neither Scotland nor Ireland has a big iconic Swallows and Amazons-type series, which really seems too bad. But we are discussing reading R. L. Stevenson's Kidnapped!, possibly the most Scottish book ever written!
I read The Hounds of the Morrigan as a child and remember almost nothing except that it had one of those "and then the children forget their magical adventures" endings that were so bizarrely popular in the 70s & 80s (like the Dark Is Rising sequence. WHY, Susan Cooper?), but I think I did otherwise like it? It's SO long, though. Do I want to commit to reading it again? A true quandary.
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Date: 2022-05-03 09:22 am (UTC)I think part of the reason is also that some of the biggest Scottish and Irish names aren't thought of that way - J M Barrie was Scottish, as was Kenneth Grahame; Oscar Wilde (who also wrote children's fairy tales) and CS Lewis were both Irish, and all of them are about as iconic as it gets.
Anyway, I had a think and googled to jog my memory, and for Irish writers, idk so many older ones, but Oscar Wilde's fairy tales.
For 20th C - Joan Lingard (as we mentioned before)
Marita Conlon-Mckenna, who I think might be slightly more what you're looking for
and some big current Irish children's authors are Eoin Colfer (Artemis Fowl series, Half Moon INvestigations etc.), Derek Landy (Skulduggery Pleasant) & Kate Thompson.
(I've read Colfer & Landy, they're both fantastical & good fun. Landy is full on fantasy, although v wacky, with high death counts, I'm not entirely sure they'd be your thing, but is very Irish in background; Artemis Fowl is Irish Faerie, Half-Moon Investigations more real world set)
Scotland obv has R L Stevenson, but also R M Ballantyne.
20th C - Mollie Hunter (seconding the rec - haven't read, but she's definitely a Name in the field), Patricia Leitch (author of the Jinny horse books), Frances M Hendry (inc. historical, probably the sort of thing you;re after), Catherine MacPhail (more contemporary), Mairi Hedderwick (author Katie Morag & others, lots of HIghland illustrations, def. iconic), Lavinia Derwent's Sula series, Nicholas Stuart Gray (infl. fantasy author)
(I also spotted Sheila Stuart who seems to have written mid20th C Scottish girls series.
Googling also gave me some people I haven't heard of but do seem to have maybe written the kinds of old school books you are maybe after: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marion_Adams-Acton#Writings
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henrietta_Keddie
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Henry_Oliphant_Smeaton
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Date: 2022-05-04 12:09 am (UTC)I really liked The File on Fraulein Berg, so it would definitely be worthwhile to check out more Joan Lingard... It looks like it would all have to be interlibrary loan, though, the library has clearly weeded her out. (I am sure there are sound reasons for this much weeding but it is very inconvenient to ME.) The library DOES however have some Conlon-McKenna so I might give her a look!
I feel sure that I've heard of R. M. Ballantyne SOMEWHERE, but I can't remember where and none of the titles are pinging me as something that I've read or read about. Perhaps it will come to me.
The three at the end I've never heard of either! And yet it looks like they were all prolific and popular. It's shocking how many books simply disappear down the memory hole.
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Date: 2022-05-04 07:21 pm (UTC)R M Ballantyne wrote The Coral Island, which I haven't read but is one of those 19th adventure classic types.
The three at the end I've never heard of either! And yet it looks like they were all prolific and popular. It's shocking how many books simply disappear down the memory hole.
We move on very quickly!!
Glad to be of use & hope some of those work out for you. ♥
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Date: 2022-05-04 07:30 pm (UTC)I haven't actually read Lord of the Flies and don't really intend to, but somehow over the course of my life I've picked up a number of facts about it.
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Date: 2022-05-05 09:44 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-05-01 05:18 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-05-03 01:35 am (UTC)I too feel the urge to tackle more Mahy, but her oeuvre is SO vast that I don't think I could even contemplate demolishing the whole thing. She wrote so! many! books! Although admittedly many of them are picture books which does make the pile a bit more scalable.
Which Mahys did you read?
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Date: 2022-05-01 05:40 pm (UTC)This is a strong recommendation for Mollie Hunter, whose most famous novel is probably A Stranger Came Ashore (1975), although I grew up also on The Kelpie's Pearls (1964) and later The Mermaid Summer (1988). Most, but not all of her fantasy was drawn from Scottish folklore, and much of it, like A Stranger Came Ashore, has a notably dark edge. (And then there's the charming one for young readers about learning to apologize, chiefly by having to deal with a monster.)
The Changeover was my formative Mahy. I heard shockingly good things about the recent film adaptation, too.
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Date: 2022-05-03 01:41 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-05-01 07:59 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-05-03 01:39 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-05-01 11:26 pm (UTC)I feel like I certainly ought to know of an iconic Scottish children's book series, but I can't think of anything offhand. I'll ponder and see if anything obvious in retrospect occurs to me!
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Date: 2022-05-03 01:47 am (UTC)So far I've garnered a few suggestions for Scottish and Irish standalone children's books, but none for a whole children's series. Perhaps they don't exist? Scottish and Irish children's book writers, take note! You could fill the niche!
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Date: 2022-05-02 12:07 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-05-03 01:49 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-05-02 04:40 am (UTC)For iconic Scottish children’s lit, my first thought is Kidnapped by Robert Louis Stevenson! Which unlike Treasure Island is incredibly Scottish, but like Treasure Island is a really fun read. Though the Wind in the Willows is by a Scottish author it’s not particularly Scottish in setting or feel, I think.
Or the Katie Morag books! Which are admittedly picture books from the 80s/90s, so not classics, but they’re adorable and very Scottish and I reread them over and over as a kid.
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Date: 2022-05-03 01:45 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-05-02 07:33 am (UTC)Rosemary Sutcliff has novels set in Scotland and what will eventually be Scotland as wellk. "Bonnie Dundee" and "Mark of the Horse Lord" comes to mind; also her re-tellings of Irish myth "The High Deeds of Finn Mac Cool" and "The Hound of Ulster".
https://rosemarysutcliff.com/latest-summary-bibliography-list-of-books-by-rosemary-sutcliff/
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Date: 2022-05-03 01:44 am (UTC)I can't claim to have read all of Sutcliff's books (she was SO prolific), but I think I've read all the major ones, including the ones you mention. (Although I definitely haven't read as many of her retellings as I have of her novels.)
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Date: 2022-05-05 03:41 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-05-10 12:02 am (UTC)I finally figured out only about 7 years ago that Mollie Hunter was the person who wrote The Walking Stones, a book I read as a kid that just haunted the back of my brain but I remembered very little about (definitely not title or author) and thus could not find again. The copy I read as a kid and then found again had line drawings by Trina Schart Hyman.
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Date: 2022-05-11 03:21 pm (UTC)