The House with a Clock in Its Walls by John Bellairs
My rating: 3 of 5 stars Poker, Baseball, History, Magic, and the Apocalypse In 1948, a freshly orphaned ten-year-old boy called Lewis Barnavelt rides a bus from Wisconsin to Michigan to live with his uncle Jonathan in New Zebedee, pop 6,000. Lewis cuts no heroic figure: he parts his oiled hair in the middle, wears purple corduroy pants, has a moony fat face with shiny cheeks, and murmurs Latin choir boy prayers full of sorrowful questions like “quare me repulisti?” (Why have you cast me off?”) He packs his enormous suitcase full of books and lead soldiers. He’s hopeless at sports (he can’t hit a baseball and always lets the bat fly out of his hands when he tries, while playing football he always collapses to the ground when anyone approaches him, and he is always picked last, if at all, when teams are chosen). He likes eating chocolate-covered mints while reading history books about bloody events like the assassination of Rizzio by Mary Queen of Scots’ noblemen (fifty-six stab wounds!). Lewis is also given to crying, whenever his feelings are hurt or he’s scared--which is not seldom. But he does have a lively imagination and a heart ready to love, and luckily, his eccentric uncle Jonathan van Olden Barnavelt is likeably strange and lives in a wonderful three-story stone mansion at 100 High Street that Lewis immediately takes to. When he first enters the house, Lewis finds a gray-haired smiley-wrinkle faced woman listening to the wall; it’s his uncle’s neighbor and best friend, Florence Zimmermann. And soon the trio are playing poker till midnight with old foreign coins and a dubious deck of old magician’s cards, with Lewis winning most of the hands. Is it due to his luck or to some kind of slight-of-hand performed in his favor by Mrs. Zimmermann and Jonathan? The pair are like a married couple who live next door to each other, always visiting each other and affectionately insulting each other: Weird Beard, Fatso, and Tub of Beans vs. Frumpy, Doll Face, and Frizzy Wig. Lewis quickly comes to love his uncle and Mrs. Zimmerman--way cooler parents than his own strict and threatening biological ones whose recent demise he never thinks or feels sad about. But why has Jonathan scattered a hodgepodge of clocks throughout his house? And why does he creep stealthily about the house late at night, turning the clocks off or tapping on the walls as if listening to something? The short novel depicts Lewis learning provocative half answers to his questions while experiencing vivid illusions and dangerous necromancy and a “device” that looks like a clock and becoming a catalyst for a battle for the fate of the world between bad good and good bad warlocks and witches. Bellairs writes a lot of fine descriptions, like “He heard the noise that earthworms make, as they slowly inch along, breaking hard black clods with their blunt heads.” He also writes telling life wisdom, like this: “You can’t prepare for all the disasters in this frightening world of ours.” Or “One of the troubles with people is that they can only see out of their own eyes.” He fills his novel with neat things, like Jonathan’s galleon hookah and a petrified forest family grave space in the local cemetery. Magic in his hands has a consistent basis: “Most magic is accomplished with solid everyday objects, objects that have had spells said over them.” He writes plenty of humorous lines, like “Oh, for heaven’s sake, Lewis, stop playing Sherlock Holmes. You make a better Watson.” I liked The House with a Clock in Its Walls (1973), because of Bellairs’ vivid descriptions of New Zebedee, 100 High Street, the town cemetery, and the historical and other illusions; because of the relationships between Mrs. Zimmermann, Jonathan, and Lewis and between Lewis and Tarby (the daredevil sportsman most popular boy in school); and because Lewis is such an atypical hero. Also because the antagonists Mr. and Mrs. Izard are pretty scary. And because of Edward Gorey’s typically dark, quaint, and stylized illustrations. And especially because of George Guidall’s savory reading of the audiobook. The novel ends a little abruptly. A new character is inserted without any preparation or narration in an off-handed way at the very end. Lewis can get a little frustrating. There is no explanation as to why early on Jonathan freezes when the bell in the monster-faced steeple of the town church tolls. Finally, I’m almost--but not quite--enticed enough by this first book to go on and read the others in the series. View all my reviews
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
Jefferson Peters
This blog is for book reviews. Please feel free to comment on any of the reviews! Categories
All
Archives
May 2024
Jefferson's books
by Sabaa Tahir
A Young Adult Epic Fantasy with Lots of Violence & Romance
Elias is an elite Martial soldier, Laia a naïve Scholar slave. As they alternate telling their stories (in trendy Young Adult first person, present tense narration), we soon rea...
"It must be due to some fault in ourselves"--
George Orwell's Animal Farm (1945) is an anti-totalitarian-communist allegory in which the exploited animals of the Manor Farm kick Farmer Jones out and set about running the farm. At first...
by Lu Xun
Perfect Stories of Life in Early 20th Century China
Chinese Classic Stories (1998) by Xun Lu is an excellent collection of seven short stories by perhaps the most important 20th century Chinese writer of fiction. Lu Xun (1881-1936) stu...
Fine Writing, Great Characters, Immersive World
The Surgeon's Mate (1980) is the 7th novel in Patrick O'Brian's addicting series of age of sail novels about the lives, loves, and careers of the British navy captain Jack Aubrey and the ...
An Overwritten, Oddly Compelling Gothic Father
Matthew Lewis' notorious and influential Gothic novel The Monk (1796) takes place during the heyday of the Spanish Inquisition. Ambrosio, the monk/friar/abbot/idol of Madrid, is nicknamed ...
|
My Fukuoka University