The Remedy of Books

Autumn is the perfect time for creepy tales, and not just because Halloween is approaching. The days are getting shorter, there's a chill in the air. So what better way to spend your evenings than with a warm drink and a scary book?
Here are some of my favorite creepy middle grade books (with one older book snuck in).

Uncle Montague's Tales of Terror by Chris Priestley

Whenever Edgar visits Uncle Montague in his dark old house—full of subtle sounds and moving shadows—his uncle tells him stories. These mostly take the form of cautionary tales, ending in a child's, often gruesome, death. Is it a coincidence that each story is linked to a physical object in the house? And how does uncle Montague know these stories when in every case the person they occurred to is dead? Edgar begins to wonder if there's more to his mysterious uncle than he'd ever guessed.

I love short stories. I think they work remarkably well for horror as they often leave much to the reader's imagination. Priestly does a great job of weaving these separately scary stories together into one sinister framework. (I must also mention the Edward Gorey-esque artwork by David Roberts which is gorgeous.)



We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson

The Blackwoods live in a grand old house on the family estate. That is, half of them do. The other half died tragically six years ago when arsenic was mixed into the sugar bowl one evening. Now, mentally impaired Uncle Julian, big sister Constance, who was accused and then acquitted of the murders, and Merricat, the youngest in the family are the only three living there. Shunned by the people of the town, and terrified of setting foot beyond the garden, Constance hasn't left the grounds in six years. Merricat and Constance live a secluded but insularly happy life until an estranged cousin shows up and everything changes. Even Merricat's magic rituals are unable to stop tragedy from striking and secrets from being revealed. But even then, things might not be what they seem.

So, this is the non-MG book I've snuck in here. But it's worth it. While this book isn't exactly spooky, it's definitely got a creep factor, especially as you begin to realize the truth of what happened to the Blackwoods. Merricat is my absolute favorite example of an unreliable narrator. Even though it's clear from the beginning that we're getting her perspective, it's difficult to foresee just how *different* that perspective will turn out to be.



Tell the Story to its End by Simon P. Clark

When Oli finds a strange creature living in his uncle's attic, he decides to keep it to himself. After all, his mum, aunt, and uncle are all keeping secrets from him—why should he tell them anything? The creature, which Oli learns is called "Eren," is unspeakably old, and its unpredictable moods can turn from comfortingly sympathetic to dark and sinister in a breath. Oli, wary but fascinated is drawn ever inward by the creature's stories. Soon enough, Oli finds himself telling his own stories to Eren. But is it his imagination, or is Eren getting bigger and growing stronger? Oli may just find out that stories can be more powerful than he thought.

Tell the Story to its End (or Eren, in the UK) is a dark and beautiful examination of the enduring power of stories. In its literary and poetic way it manages to be both creepy and thought-provoking. Do stories need to be real to be true?




Lockwood & Co. The Screaming Staircase by Jonathan Stroud

For the last fifty years England has been overrun by ghosts. They only come out after dark, and only children can see them—and fight them. Ghost hunting agencies have sprung up throughout the country, but nobody has been able to identify the cause of what is known simply as The Problem.
Amongst this, Lucy Carlyle is a talented psychic agent looking for work in London. She finds a job at the tiny ghost hunting agency of Lockwood & Co. run by charismatic and somewhat reckless Anthony Lockwood. After a series of dangerous encounters and a case gone horribly wrong, the team find themselves drawn into a job that might be beyond their abilities. It involves surviving the night in the most haunted house in England, and a staircase surrounded by the screams of the dead.

All the Lockwood books are equally amazing and are definitely among my top MG reads of all time. Stroud has an uncanny knack for being both super creepy and super funny in the same book. I couldn't put these books down, even though it meant reading some remarkably heart-thumping scenes by the light of my bedside lamp, surrounded by darkness.



Doll Bones by Holly Black

Zach, Poppy, and Alice are longtime friends. They've always been there for each other and always played together. But things start to change when Zach, pressured by his father, starts to question whether he's too old for make-believe games and friendships with girls. The friendship looks doomed to break apart until a curious incident reunites the three. Poppy begins to be haunted by a china doll. Or, more accurately, by the ghost of the murdered girl whose hair and ground up bones make up the doll. The doll must be returned to the murdered girl's grave or Poppy will face the ghost's wrath. The three set out on a quest to return the doll and find the truth about the murdered girl. Along the way, their friendship continues to be tested as they encounter setbacks, coming to the realization that being 12 makes adventuring a lot harder in the real world than in stories.

This book is wonderfully creepy without being very scary. Ultimately rather than being about ghosts, it's about the struggle of growing up and the way friendships adapt and change as you grow. But, if you're looking for an adventure with a healthy creep factor, this is the one for you.

This was perfect plane reading for my trip from the UK to the US.

I first heard about The Accident Season by Moïra Fowley-Doyle at the Young Adult Literature Convention where there was a booth dedicated to it. The booth's "secrets box" caught my eye, but I still wouldn’t have ended up reading it if my husband hadn’t been persuaded by a fellow author to buy it. He in turn told me to read it because “it gets really gothic at the end.”

The Accident Season is told in first person from the point of view of Cara, a girl whose family seems cursed to suffer from an unnatural amount of physical accidents every October. Each year—led by her mother—Cara, her older sister Alice, and her ex-stepbrother Sam (it’s complicated) hunker down and expect the worst. They do everything they can to minimize the opportunities for accidents to overtake them, yet every October they seem unable to avoid tragedy. This year, Cara begins to notice a strange pattern in her life; every single one of her photographs seem to feature the same childhood friend, but nobody can remember that friend being around or even details about the girl such as what class she was in or what her last name was. As Cara investigates, along with Sam and her best friend Bea, the elusive friend becomes more mysterious and ghostlike. Meanwhile as October draws to a close and the accidents seem to increase, Alice seems to be wrapped up in problems of her own. The layers of secrets around Cara are growing, and she finds it harder and harder to discern reality. Gradually the web of secrets, fears, and lies begins to unravel until all is made clear.

The Accident Season is a novel not only about secrets, but about denial and the processing of truth through fiction. Cara is only able to acknowledge the truth she already knows through her gradually increasing visions of a fantasy where she, Alice, Sam and Bea are each represented by a “changeling.” As Cara begins to realize who the threats are in her life, she sees visions of the changelings facing those enemies, and through that finds power to take action herself. She finds that her ghosts can only be put to rest if she is brave enough to face them.

Fowley-Doyle, I think, leaves it a bit ambiguous just how much of the story is supernatural. But I really like that in a story. I always lean toward it being completely constructed—not because I don’t like the idea of fantasy being real, but because I find it so much more compelling to think about the human mind’s ability to find weird ways to cope with reality. It reminded me a bit of Jonathan Stroud’s The Leap as there is some ambiguity as to whether there is actually a fantastical element to the things that happened, or whether the main character is imagining the fantasy in order to cope with a traumatic reality.

 As per my husband's recommendation, the book does have some satisfyingly gothic elements wound throughout its modern-day setting. Parts of the atmosphere reminded me of Doll Bones by Holly Black, but for an older audience. I really enjoyed reading this book and though the action lags a bit toward the middle, the ending resolution is very good.

I bought The Iron Trial last month at the Young Adult Literature Convention where, to my delight, I was able to get it signed by the lovely Cassandra Clare. I was person number 252 of what I think was about 450 people waiting for signings--it turns out she's incredibly popular, and for good reason. Though her published work began with the Mortal Instruments series Clare actually had a fan base built up long before that with her fanfiction writing. Most notably The Very Secret Diaries of the Fellowship of the Rings and the Draco Trilogy (book-length Harry Potter fanfic which she has asked no longer be shared online...though some people might still have copies saved somewhere offline...maybe).
Holly Black also has been writing prolifically and I've loved her writing since reading her first book, Tithe: A Modern Faerie Tale. Finding out these two ladies were going to collaborate on a series made me very happy. (Also, Black is from New Jersey, the best state, so yay.)

The Iron Trial is the first in what is to be a series of five books. The story follows Callum--a young boy with a limp and an affinity for magic--who is called to be tested in the Iron Trial. The Trial is a test for potential mages and whoever passes will enter the Magisterium (a magic school) for formal mage training. There's just one problem. Callum's father was a mage and is dead set against magic after losing Callum's mother in a mage war years earlier. Callum has been brought up to believe that magic is dangerous and mages are heartless, using the students at the Magisterium for their own selfish purposes. Despite trying his best to fail the trial, as his father advised, Callum finds himself apprenticed to a mage and whisked off to the Magisterium against his will. Once there Call finds himself torn between his father's teaching and his own experience with magic while also discovering that his father might be keeping a dark secret about Callum.

Yay for meeting Cassandra Clare!

This book was very fun to read. Both Clare and Black have great senses of humor and that really shone through in the writing. The characters were interesting and accessible, and continue to develop throughout the book. Call is a protagonist you can really root for--pretty normal, but still with some issues. Bullied about his limp, he's not terribly popular at school and causes trouble--mostly by accident. Unlike many fantasy protagonists, he actually has a good relationship with his dad at the beginning of the book. The plot moves quickly and was engaging enough to keep me turning the pages. This was one of those books I ended up finishing at around 1am because I didn't want to stop to go to bed.

Black and Clare have said that one of their goals in writing this series was to turn common fantasy tropes on their head, and The Iron Trial certainly did make me consider whether or not one should try to avoid tropes or jump in and change them.
A few chapters in, I couldn't help but notice how very Harry Potterish the plot was turning out to be. As a baby Call is the lone survivor of a magical massacre, is left permanently marked by the enemy (his injured leg), finds himself at a school of magic where everything is new and exciting, makes friends with a guy and a girl his age, and gradually finds out more about his own past as the story progresses.

These parallels weren't an accident. Black and Clare couldn't possibly have written this and *not* noticed they were more or less following the plot of Harry Potter. Writers often try to reclaim tropes that have come to be associated with one specific book--after all, J.K. Rowling wasn't the first to come up with the idea of an orphan discovering he was "the chosen one," so it's not fair to give negative marks to any future authors who use that trope. However, it is certainly true that if future authors are going to use it, they must find a way to make it different enough that it doesn't seem like they're copying. In The Iron Trial Clare and Black weren't trying to reclaim the Harry Potter plot so much as start out with a plot readers might expect, and then turn it around into something unexpected. They were reforming readers' expectations of the "chosen one" fantasy trope.

In my opinion, they have been only somewhat successful here. Since the plot followed Harry Potter for much of the book, the first two-thirds or so were fairly predictable. Although there were a couple twists at the end, the prologue had made one of them quite easy to foresee. I appreciate what Clare and Black are doing here, but even with the twists, there wasn't enough of a departure from Harry Potter for the plot to feel original. I realize this is the first of a five book series, so there is plenty of time to take this in a vastly different direction, but in this single first book the plot leans more toward a homage than a reclamation.

Luckily for Black and Clare, they really are fantastic writers, so even with a predictable plot there was plenty else that was unique and I didn't want to put the book down. In the end, tropes or no, The Iron Trial is great fun to read and I do look forward to the next Magisterium book.