favorite movie #84 - halloween edition: bunny lake is missing

Favorite movies that have had an impact on me - #84 - Bunny Lake is Missing (1965) - Some may consider this more of a thriller, but I have always reacted to this as a horror film. Director Otto Preminger sets the film in seemingly mundane London locations which become creepy, even nightmarish, as Ann Lake (Carol Lynley) tries to convince everyone that her little girl Bunny has disappeared. A police inspector (Laurence Olivier) and even Ann's own brother (Keir Dullea) seem to doubt her and her story as the film progresses.

the door in the wall

My eight year-old loves libraries, which thrills me to no end. Not only are her reading choices getting more adventurous as she reads more and more, but while she is picking out books I also peruse titles and pick out something to read to her — or to myself, that I may have missed. As I was checking out the Newbery section a title caught my eye, a book that was set in the Middle Ages, during the bubonic plague. Sounds more like my kind of book than a kid's book, so I had to check it out. The Door in the Wall is a lovely little book by Marguerite de Angeli about a young boy named Robin set in England during the Middle Ages. The story takes place during the reign of Edward the III (1327-77), but that is as specific time-wise as de Angeli gets.

The protagonist, young Robin, is a bit of a brat at the beginning of the story, but if you consider his circumstances. At the age of ten he is deemed old enough to not be a child anymore. His parents arrange to ship him off to a friend's, Sir Peter de Lindsay's castle to begin his training as a knight. His father has been away for quite some time, fighting with the King against the Scots. His mother has gone to become a lady-in-waiting to the Queen, leaving Robin with their servants until someone comes to take him to his new home, while the plague is raging through London. But soon after his mother leaves, Robin contracts a serious illness that leaves him lame. Little by little he is left alone, as his servants either get the plague, or abandon him and London to escape it. His last remaining servant, Dame Ellen, is also struck down with the plague. Luckily for Robin, Brother Luke at the neighboring monastery, St. Mark's, finds out about Ellen and comes to check on the boy and take him in.

This is pretty heavy stuff for a book aimed at 3rd grade and up. It may move a little slowly at first for today's kids, who have been raised on sparkly vampires and Spongebob. It's a bit like the classic The Secret Garden in terms of pacing. The action takes place in the 1300s, an era that may seem too far away to be interesting, but The Door in the Wall struck a chord. As I was reading I couldn't help but think a bit of Bran from Game of Thrones, and some other current pop culture references, especially Artie and Quinn's current storyline on Glee. It was nice to read an older novel (the book was published in 1949 and won the 1950 Newbery medal) and see such a positive story centered around a disabled character.

How many 10 year olds would cope as well as Robin with suddenly not being able to walk, or run, or play— or being told by their parents that their childhood was essentially over and that they were being shipped off to live in a stranger's house? Robin may not immediately know what Brother Luke means when he tells him, "Thou hast only to follow the wall far enough and there will be a door in it," but he soon comes to understand.

The Door in the Wall's metaphor's may be a little predictable, but it is far from an easy or predictable read. Robin and his two closest friends, Brother Luke and the minstrel John-go-in-the-Wynd, are forced to deal with many difficult issues: the plague, illness, dangerous travel, a castle siege. De Angeli does a nice job of depicting the daily life of the 14th century, and of the part of England Robin travels through,

"'The weather was neither rainy nor fair, neither hot nor cold, but somewhere in between, as English weather is like to be,' said the friar." 

The Door in the Wall may be a children's book, but she doesn't shy away from using some words that may require looking up: pease porridge, flambeaux, bannock. A glossary would have been useful. An added bonus are the beautiful illustrations by de Angeli, in color and black and white, that are found throughout the story.

It was interesting reading how Robin and everyone he encountered dealt with his illness/infirmity. The virus or illness that causes Robin to lose the use of his legs is never named, but it sounds a lot like polio. Robin, of course, hopes to recover use of his legs, and quickly. Brother Luke never shoots that idea down, but keeps introducing Robin to other goals he can achieve in the present. He helps him build his upper body strength by encouraging him to swim daily, as well as taking part in other activities that engage both his mind and body — woodcarving, archery, and learning to read and write.

Robin is never made to feel that his physical handicap is a burden or couldn't be dealt with. He was able to travel, swim, and eventually becomes strong enough to both carve and use his own crutches. By the time that he has to accept that he may probably not recover the use of his legs he has already found so many ways to be useful and independent that it no longer seems as great a concern for him — his major worry is how his parents might react to the change in him since they had last seen each other. But readers can be assured that Robin's story ends happily. The Door in the Wall is a nice trip into the past, as well as a look at how even the most daunting obstacles can be overcome if you are able to look at things from another angle, use a different approach.

Related articles

• Medieval History - the best children's books (reaberg.com)

symmetry in a cemetery

Tyger, tyger burning bright
In the forests of the night
What immortal hand or eye
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?—William Blake, The Tyger

Image via Wikipedia
My mother used to read that poem to us at bedtime. I never got the "fearful" in it at a young age, I just liked the sound of the language. Her Fearful Symmetry, by Audrey Niffenegger, gives me a similar feeling. I like how she writes, how she uses language. She creates unusual, but interesting characters. People I wouldn't necessarily like in real life. In fact, I would decidedly find them creepy, or at least unsettling. But still interesting to read about. I don't need the character of a book to be my best buddy. And like Blake's Tyger, some of these characters, no matter how attractive, should be avoided at all costs. Her Fearful Symmetry is very voyeuristic—for the reader who chooses to look on and watch these characters grapple with their emotions and situations, for a ghost who desperately wants to do more than just watch.

One of the most intriguing ideas in the book for me was not so much the fairly mundane way the ghost and her subsequent haunting was accepted by all of the characters (although that was noteworthy, and as in her first novel, The Time Traveler's Wife, added an instant authenticity to an unbelievable situation)—but that even though a ghost might retain many features of its person's personality after death—emotions, likes, dislikes, etc.—what might actually provide humanity is a body. That shell, that mortal coil that will someday turn to dust. What if the body, as opposed to the soul,  is what essentially gives us our humanity, our kindness? What if the soul is not love, but more our specificity, our personality? This possibility becomes important for one of the main characters, a ghost. As the ghost of Elspeth Noblin struggles with decisions regarding her human nieces, she is analytical, conflicted, sometimes regretful. But she never exhibits empathy or softness, or humanity. She is free, as a ghost, even when restricted to her old apartment, to be her essential, selfish, self. Lack of a body, lack of compassion.




The book tells the stories of two sets of twins, two generations. Its characters are all trapped in one way or another. The newly-minted ghost of Elspeth is confined to her London flat. She's not sure why, or what the "ghost rules" are, so she starts creating her own and happily, even gleefully, starts haunting. Julia and Valentina, her twin nieces who have inherited her flat, are bound together, more tightly than I ever wanted to imagine twins could be. This works for Julia, the stronger of the two (or is she?), but not for Valentina, who desperately wants to break free and experience life on her own. Robert, Elspeth's lover who lives in the downstairs flat, is trapped by his grief at Elspeth's death from leukemia and also by the book he is attempting to finish on the history of Highgate Cemetery, which is next-door to the apartment building. Martin, the upstairs neighbor, has OCD and has created a prison for himself of his flat, full of rituals, rules and regulations which have recently driven his wife away. Even a feral stray from over the cemetery walls, which the twins dub The Little Kitten of Death, is trapped by the girls in the flat as a pet.

All these trapped feelings and desires lead to some interesting character interactions and some outlandish plot turns. As Her Fearful Symmetry unfolds, I may not have liked the choices made by some of the characters, but I was engaged enough to see what would happen next. It was unusual, but successful, how Niffenegger was able to shift perspective from character to character, sometimes even within a sentence. This led to the feeling that there was no hero or heroine in the story, as everyone got their say. Valentina's story may turn out to be the most important for me, but other readers might think Elspeth's was the central story being told, or Martin's. Her Fearful Symmetry makes me want to visit Highgate Cemetery, maybe a tad relieved that I had one daughter and not twins, and hope that ghosts don't really become such intimate companions in one's home.

Book #1 in reading challenge Cannonball Read 3, sponsored by Pajiba

Related articles

• Audrey Niffenegger, artist and author: The world of (telegraph.co.uk)
• Highgate cemetery (bbc.co.uk)

underground

I just finished Neil Gaiman's Neverwhere. I enjoyed it. What really struck me, as I read it, were all the "links" I could make. Some placed within the novel by Gaiman, some brought to the experience of reading by the particular reader, me.

Neverwhere tells the story of an everyman, Richard Mayhew, who is swept into another world beneath the streets of London, called London Below. This other London is peopled by those who have fallen through the cracks of our world, as well as some fanciful and pretty horrible characters, and also ones with otherworldly powers. I enjoyed the character and in-joke of the Marquis of Carabas and was concerned about his fate, maybe more than any other character in the story. Not that I didn't like Richard, but the Marquis was more engaging. But that's true of the Wizard of Oz (film), too, which is numerously referenced in Neverwhere. Everyone has a favorite character from that classic film. Mine was and still is the Tin Man, although I think the most intrepid member of Dorothy's crew may well have been Toto. Richard, like Dorothy, spends much of his time wanting to go back home. In this upside-down fairy tale he gets his wish and then gets to change his mind. What I found most intriguing about Richard was that even though he has completely lost his identity in the London he knows and has become a walking metaphor of the homeless, faceless poor that try to live off the city streets with all-too-short a life, he never completely loses touch with who he is. No matter who he runs across in the strange societies of London Below, he never hesitates to introduce himself, with his full name, "I'm Richard Mayhew." Maybe he's just more polite than my fellow Americans, but I was impressed.

Another interesting aspect of Neverwhere is the idea of youth, and growing up. One could read the story of Richard's adventures in London Below as his maturation process. But I also saw it as a depiction of what it's like to be young in the city. City life and youth itself can be exciting, dirty, scary, sexy, even life-threatening. If Richard chose to return to his (our) normal world, he could always look back on his time with the Marquis and Door and the others as his wild youth, much like many of us have dim but pleasant memories of our own youthful escapades.

While reading Neverwhere I experienced echoes of other books I have recently read and enjoyed. As each step of Richard's journey took him closer to somewhere or someone even stranger or more dangerous than the last, reading can take you on a larger journey, from book to book, weaving a common thread through different stories. A few months back I read Rune by Christopher Fowler, whose Bryant and May mystery series I enjoy. Like Neverwhere, Rune is set in London with a male protagonist who doesn't yet realize he might like to break free from his relationship with a perfect woman who isn't perfect for him. An interesting yet offbeat young woman comes into his life and the story is off and running. More a horror story than fantasy, Rune still makes for a good read. In fact my only quibble with both books is that there is a lot, maybe too much, flowing blood. As good as both of these writers are, I was wondering how horrible Neverwhere's Mr. Croup and Mr. Vandemar could still have been without the need to be overly descriptive of half-eaten kittens and the like.

I also recently finished Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials series, with the wonderful female protagonist Lyra Silvertongue. These books start out in an alternate Oxford and then take off for worlds familiar and imaginary. I can't say enough about this great series of books, except that I look forward to my daughter being old enough to enjoy them. In the meantime I will most likely be reaching for Gaiman's latest and see where the book will take me and what other books and worlds I may discover on the way.