Book Review: The Enchanted Castle by E. Nesbit, illustrated by H.R. Millar

Title: The Enchanted Castle
Author: E. Nesbit
Illustrator: H.R. Millar
Published: Middlesex: Puffin Books, 1985 (1980)
Rating: 4 of 5
Page Count: 253
Total Page Count: 101,607
Text Number: 291
Read Because: interest in the author following reviews by rushthatspeaks, from my personal collection
Review: When three children discover a castle, a sleeping princess, and a magic ring over their summer holiday, what they find are magics false and true and tricky, beginning them on a rambling journey of enchanted adventure. The Enchanted Castle is a book of fluff and whimsy, but it's not without heart. Much of the plot is the near-episodic doing and undoing of mischievous magics—tales of "be careful what you wish for," but never quite in the way either characters or audience expect. Characterization is slightly more colorful than realistic, and Nesbit's voice is wry, humorous, and hugely enjoyable to read—and while it's antiquated, that serves to make it quaint rather than unapproachable. These adventures are simply fun, and the book's other aspects help to sustain their longevity, but for me they nonetheless began to run a little long. It's not that aren't some wonderful moments: it's just that they begin to run together after a while, with too little forward movement to give them purpose. Luckily the book's final third revives it, rediscovering the plot to give the story backbone. And what a plot it is: there's still plenty of fluff and fun and silly character interaction, but the truth of the remarkable enchanted castle is original and gently breathtaking. In the end, sprinkled selectively within the froth are a few sympathetic events, some beautiful images, and true enchantment—which is never a small thing to find, and in The Enchanted Castle it twinkles brilliantly from the hidden corners of our own real world. This book is engaging, color, clever, unusual, and well stands the test of time—and though its architecture was not always to my personal taste, I enjoyed it. I recommend it.

Review posted here on Amazon.com.

Book Review: The Magic Toyshop by Angela Carter

Title: The Magic Toyshop
Author: Angela Carter
Published: New York: Penguin Books, 1996 (1967)
Rating: 4 of 5
Page Count: 200
Total Page Count: 101,807
Text Number: 292
Read Because: fan of the author, purchased used at the Corvallis Book Bin
Review: Melaine walks through the garden at night in her mother's wedding dress, and the next morning discovers that everything has changed: her parents dead, she and her sibling must leave the comfort of their home to live with her strange, poor relatives above a toyshop. From here, Melanie's story blossoms into a beautifully inexplicit, haunted, magic-tinged coming of age. Her adolescence is troubled but joyful—Carter of course has a particular knack for finding both the beauty and blood in this sort of thing. I wouldn't quite call The Magic Toyshop magical realism, but it leans that way, in atmosphere more than event, putting Melanie's story in terms somewhat more large and vibrant than life, to the benefit, rather than detriment, of its truth. A supporting cast at once finely detailed and slightly caricatured supports this real-world fairy tale sense. And Carter's prose is also a delight, poetic and precise, here somewhat subdued and shadowed, but with an undulled perceptive edge.

And yet The Magic Toyshop pales, for me, in comparison to Carter's short fiction, in particular The Bloody Chamber. This is an issue I can't quite seem to overcome, and so I can't hold it against this book: I love those short works so fiercely I don't know if anything, even from Carter's own hand, can ever measure up to them. Perhaps it's the intensity fostered by their brevity—there are some remarkable moments in The Magic Toyshop (and much of the first chapter is simply breathtaking), but in a novel-length work these can both run long and get a bit lost within a sea of words, and the quieter, less fantastic imagery of this book (lovely as it is) exacerbates that. Perhaps it's just that The Bloody Chamber was my introduction to Carter, and first love is strong. Whatever it is, it makes it hard for me to review this book: it was a joy to read and I reflect favorably upon it now, but it wasn't all I hoped it would be—and I suspect that nothing, no matter how good, could be. I'm left with a tinge of disappointment as a result, but I still recommend The Magic Toyshop: for all my personal caveats, it remains a piece of art.

Review posted here on Amazon.com.