the house with a clock in its walls book review

Review: ‘Boy, Everywhere’ by A.M. Dassu.Interview: James Dixon and Tamsin Rosewell on ‘The Billow Maiden’.Sometimes things come back from the dark and mysterious past with good reason: so, enjoy. World, from old-time slang to Welch’s Fudge Bars.Īnd why is now a good time to discover John Bellairs? Well, after years of me foisting old paperbacks on friends, Andersen Press have reissued not only The House with a Clock in its Walls in the UK but also its two sequels, The Figure in the Shadows and The Letter, The Witch and the Ring (with Nathan Collins boldly stepping into the giant shoes of Edward Gorey. Safely into a never-quite-was world where magic never-quite-wasn’t, and simultaneouslyĭrawing us ever closer into all the sensuous and fascinating detail of that Unlike the Stranger Things gambit, 40 years early): shifting the action The Lewis Barnavelt novels, which, though published in the 1970s and onwards,Īre set in a richly evoked late 1940s setting. Joel Stewart on his blog, many years ago. In The House with the Clock in its Walls and its many sequels,Bellairs welcomes younger readers into the world of necromancy, of the Hand of Glory, of vengeful spirits and otherworldly evil, but he does so with enough rhetorical sleight-of-hand for us to know that the safety barriers are still up: you cannot walk off the edge of the cliff.īooks circuitously: it was in the corner of a photo of writer and illustrator In a stylistic coup de grace almost unthinkable today, Gorey’s unique artwork alerts us to the playfulness of Bellairs’ work, and perhaps of all spooky work for children: two worlds which should not overlap, the innocence of childhood and the forbidden knowledge of gothic fiction, suggestively interwoven through deadpan pastiche. But I came to those adventures circuitously, at least partly via the work of the master himself, Edward Gorey, whose unmistakable North American gothic stylings jacket almost all Bellairs’ novels. None of the above would be outside the bounds of possibilities for a Bellairs adventure. No, not by nudging open a mysterious door behindĪ green baize curtain at Dulwich Library, or by stumbling upon an arcaneĬeremony in my next-door neighbour’s back garden when they thought I was away,Īnd not even whilst browsing the bookshelves of a mysterious red-hairedīachelor uncle whom I had hitherto known only as the black sheep of the Unearth him: not just because his work is ideal for Halloween season, either.Īgo, and in a curious fashion.

Said, too few people know about John Bellairs and now is a great time to

I’ve been trying to keep this blog focused primarily on new kids’ books,Īnd this is a golden oldie (though not so old as it might first appear).

The house with a clock in its walls book review