(no subject)
Nov. 29th, 2014 06:10 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
skygiantsThe first thing I did after getting back to my parents' for Thanksgiving was go hunt for some books I know I used to own and cannot find at any local library, come on, past self, why didn't you keep better track of your stuff!
...so I did not find the books, but while I was looking I turned up and reread Peppermints in the Parlor, the cutest little middle-grade Gothic the eighties ever turned out.
Emily Luccock is a Tragic Victorian Orphan who is kind of sad about her parents dying but perfectly willing to have a nice life with her aunt and uncle in their big fancy house.
HOWEVER! When she gets there, her terrified aunt gives her dire and mysterious warnings, her uncle is nowhere to be found, and the house is full of secret passageways and traumatized senior citizens!
The Evil Headmistress -- well, actually she's not a headmistress, just the owner of the senior citizens' home, but she fulfills every criterion of Evil Headmistress-itude so we may as well call her one anyway -- sets Emily to scrubbing floors on a starvation diet of gruel and stale bread. The other orphan scullery maid takes Emily's stuff, the senior citizens are too traumatized and intellectually starved to even attempt conversation when Emily comes to dust their rooms, and everything is terrible!
Fortunately, Emily befriends a plucky local fishmonger's son, who brings her nourishing fish syrup, encourages her to investigate the secret passageways, and helps her sneak kittens and intellectually engaging hobbies to the senior citizens. Eventually all the mysteries of the household are unraveled. Emily is reunited with her relatives, and, in a triumphant climax, the senior citizens get a cathartic chance to pelt their tormentors with peppermints. Happy ending for all!
Looking up the Amazon page just now reveals the existence of a sequel that did not exist at the age I was reading this book, but it seems to involve neither the senior citizens nor the nourishing fish syrup, so I'm not really sure what the point of it can possibly be.
...so I did not find the books, but while I was looking I turned up and reread Peppermints in the Parlor, the cutest little middle-grade Gothic the eighties ever turned out.
Emily Luccock is a Tragic Victorian Orphan who is kind of sad about her parents dying but perfectly willing to have a nice life with her aunt and uncle in their big fancy house.
HOWEVER! When she gets there, her terrified aunt gives her dire and mysterious warnings, her uncle is nowhere to be found, and the house is full of secret passageways and traumatized senior citizens!
The Evil Headmistress -- well, actually she's not a headmistress, just the owner of the senior citizens' home, but she fulfills every criterion of Evil Headmistress-itude so we may as well call her one anyway -- sets Emily to scrubbing floors on a starvation diet of gruel and stale bread. The other orphan scullery maid takes Emily's stuff, the senior citizens are too traumatized and intellectually starved to even attempt conversation when Emily comes to dust their rooms, and everything is terrible!
Fortunately, Emily befriends a plucky local fishmonger's son, who brings her nourishing fish syrup, encourages her to investigate the secret passageways, and helps her sneak kittens and intellectually engaging hobbies to the senior citizens. Eventually all the mysteries of the household are unraveled. Emily is reunited with her relatives, and, in a triumphant climax, the senior citizens get a cathartic chance to pelt their tormentors with peppermints. Happy ending for all!
Looking up the Amazon page just now reveals the existence of a sequel that did not exist at the age I was reading this book, but it seems to involve neither the senior citizens nor the nourishing fish syrup, so I'm not really sure what the point of it can possibly be.
no subject
Date: 2014-11-30 02:22 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-11-30 03:51 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-11-30 01:13 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-12-02 02:07 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-12-01 03:40 pm (UTC)I have vague memories of this book, meaning only the title and knowing that I read it! I'm glad there is a happy ending for the senior citizens.
. . . Is the fishmonger's son named Kipper?
no subject
Date: 2014-12-02 02:08 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-12-02 06:17 pm (UTC)Yep. Read this book. I think I had it mentally filed with Joan Aiken. It would have had a lot more telepathy and possibly some kind of violent revolution if it were actually part of the Wolves series, though.
no subject
Date: 2014-12-02 06:22 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-12-02 06:54 pm (UTC)I greatly enjoy how the utter batshit quotient of a Joan Aiken novel increases exponentially on any re-read after the age of about twelve. I mean, in elementary school I knew The Stolen Lake (1981) was weird. I came back to it with a knowledge of Arthuriana, also, the actual nineteenth century, and it was weirder.
I can't remember if The Whispering Mountain (1968) is part of the Wolves chronology, but I like it very much. I think Midnight Is a Place (1976) might actually be Victorian, but it's one of my favorites.
no subject
Date: 2014-12-02 07:08 pm (UTC)The Whispering Mountain is one of my favorites! I cannot for the life of me tell if she is parodying the form of the Susan Cooperish Welsh fantasy, or if this is just her version of taking it seriously, but either way it is beautiful. Midnight is a Place I haven't read, but I did just reserve one or two of her Gothics at the library last week after remembering how much I enjoyed A Cluster of Separate Sparks, which features sinister oubliettes, the fictional world's most friendly and helpful terrorist airplane hijackers, and a heroine who is constantly asking herself What Would Esther Summerson Do If (For Example) Confronted By An Army Of Angry Killer Bees.
no subject
Date: 2014-12-03 04:47 am (UTC)(a) Read Midnight Is a Place. It takes place in the über-industrial Northern factory town of Blastburn at the height of Victorian exploitation and both of its protagonists are dispossessed orphans cast upon the cruelty of the world, the definition of which runs the gamut from aristocratic pranks gone awry to child labor to man-eating hogs in sewers. It is actually not a parody; it all happens at the slightly outsize Dickensian pitch which characterizes most of Aiken's novels, but its co-protagonists are perfectly real and believable young adolescents and the child labor is all quite historical, nightmare fuel that it is.
(b) What would Esther Summerson do if confronted by an army of angry killer bees?
(c) That sounds much better than her one adult Gothic I tried, Castle Barebane (1976), which I bounced off with a vehemence that surprised me. I tried it on my mother and she had the same reaction. We concluded the problem was not us.
no subject
Date: 2014-12-03 02:08 pm (UTC)b.) Sing them to sleep, apparently! I'm willing to believe Esther Summerson would do this, it seems reasonably in character.
c.) Yeah, I read another one of her adult Gothics, Voices in an Empty House, and it was fairly awful (on the one hand hilariously inconvenient bursts of thirty-second amnesia, but on the other hand actualfax villainous twincest.) My understanding is that her adult novels in general are something of a mixed bag but I am hoping I will be able to locate the treasures within!
no subject
Date: 2014-12-03 02:17 pm (UTC)Awesome.
no subject
Date: 2014-12-01 03:48 pm (UTC)Obviously this is the most important part of the book. No, but otherwise it sounds charming! (BUT BUT BUT EW.)
no subject
Date: 2014-12-02 02:09 pm (UTC)