Good morning dear internet strangers, we’re closing out
January with “The House with a Clock in Its Walls” by John Bellairs. Full
disclosure upfront—I read this book because I loved the Jack Black movie and
was pleased to find out I like the book too, it’s YA fantasy/gothic horror.
***The Non-Spoiler part of this review***
What I love about
this book:
I love the atmosphere of this novel and the people who
inhabit it—the mansion Lewis and Jonathan live in is a bit creepy, but it also
has a lighthearted charm that is somehow relaxing. Personally, I think everyone
wishes deep down, they had a mysterious magical uncle like Jonathan. I also
really enjoy every conversation between Jonathan and Mrs. Zimmerman, they’re usually
bickering like an old married couple, but you can tell there is real affection
there.
This is clearly a young adult novel, with the classic fears
of growing up—fears like insecurity and making friends in a strange new place,
et cetera, et cetera, but I appreciate that it doesn’t pull its punches. The
stakes are genuine and deadly, I like that it doesn’t sugar coat for its young
audience. So for every charming scene where Mrs. Zimmerman bakes them all
cookies, and they play cards or fiddle with some magical doodad or whatnot,
there is still the looming threat of the clock in the walls. They aren’t sure
initially what its ill purpose is, given to it by its evil creator, but they
all know it’s terrible.
The story feels like a period piece because while that
probably wasn’t exactly the intention when it was published in 1973, the plot
starts in 1948. To explain why I like this, we need a little history, at that
time in America—immediately after world war two—optimism in the United States
was at an all-time high. Collectively, we just escaped from not only the
horrors of the worst war in modern human history but also an economic
depression. As a country, we could take pride in the idea that, for the
most part, we were heroic—on the right side of history.
So reading this novel is like stepping back in time and
wrapping that moment in history comfortingly around you like a warm blanket.
Nevermind, perceptions aside, that objectively speaking, it wasn’t that great a time for everybody or even most people. For
instance, if you were a woman who was a riveter during the war, you got to
experience all of the joy of losing your job, probably to a less qualified man,
and return to unpaid kitchen and babymaking duties. If you were a minority—you
could just multiply all the usual stressors, but this is a topic for another
day.
What I don’t love
about this book:
The magic in the novel is a little unfocussed, you never
really get a sense of the rules and limitations on what the warlocks and
witches can or can’t do with their magic. At one point, a warlock and a witch
are being chased by a car while in their car, and their solution isn’t to turn
it to dust or vanish it away—they just drive faster. Subsequently, one of the
two that were being chased, during a later scene, has to deal with an evil
sorceress and marches across the street and gives her what for, so clearly,
these people aren’t helpless.
My instinct is part of the undefinable nature of the magic
in the story comes from when this book is published. Rigorously detailed and
internally consistent systems of magic, where there are rules and whatnot, is
more a modern taste than anything. I’m sure there are contrary examples, but
consider something like Brandon Sanderson’s Mistborn books or J.K. Rowling’s
Harry Potter—how the magic in those stories work is talked about in great detail.
Now compare that with the Wicked Witch of the West or Gandalf, they just do magic and how they do it doesn’t need to be understood by
us mere mortals. It’s a little point, but I prefer the modern approach with
internally consistent magic systems in stories.
***The Spoiler part of this review***
***Ye be warned to turn back now***
The quick and dirty
synopsis:
Lewis Barnavelt is traveling to New Zebedee to live with his
uncle Jonathan Barnavelt because his parents are dead—fantasy is a tough genre
on parents just ask Harry Potter. Lewis doesn’t really know his Uncle Jonathan
because Jonathan has always been regarded as the black sheep of the family.
When Lewis arrives in New Zebedee, he meets his kindly but odd uncle right away
and is whisked off to Jonathan’s gigantic house.
Soon after arriving, Lewis meets Jonathan’s equally
eccentric—if different—friend Mrs. Zimmerman who has an antagonistic friendship
with Jonathan. Shortly after meeting Mrs. Zimmerman, Lewis starts to notice
some odd things about his uncle, Mrs. Zimmerman, and especially the house.
Jonathan then reveals to Lewis that the former owner of the house was an evil
warlock, and furthermore, Jonathan himself is a warlock, and Mrs. Zimmerman is
a witch—though they aren’t evil. Jonathan further explains that he has so many
clocks in the house to drown out the ticking from a clock the previous owner
put somewhere in the walls of the house, which despite his best efforts,
Jonathan hasn’t been able to find.
After a couple weeks, Lewis starts school at New Zebedee,
and as a new kid who isn’t particularly athletic, he has trouble fitting in
with his new classmates. Luckily, another boy, Tarby, who is the most popular
kid in school, takes Lewis under his wing because, like Lewis, Tarby can’t join
in and play baseball either, but only because he has a broken arm. The two
become friends, and Tarby even tries to teach Lewis how to hit a baseball. As
Tarby’s arm heals though, the two become more-and-more estranged as Tarby
returns to his normal life.
Afraid to lose his new friend, Lewis tries to impress Tarby
by proving to him that his uncle Jonathan is a real-life warlock. Jonathan
agrees to put on a little actual magic show in his backyard for Lewis, Tarby,
and Mrs. Zimmerman, and at first, everyone is impressed. Tarby, however,
eventually decides that the whole thing was a fake, and Jonathan must have just
hypnotized them all. Lewis decides to up the ante by doing something
irrefutably magical, something like raising the dead, always a good idea to
which nothing has ever gone wrong before in fiction. It, of course, goes
wrong, who could have seen that coming, because it turns out Lewis
resurrected the wife of the evil warlock who previously owned Jonathan’s house.
This sets off a series of events where Lewis, Jonathan, and
Mrs. Zimmerman need to battle the resurrected sorceress before she likewise
raises her late husband. The two evil sorcerers apparently created the clock in
the walls of Jonathan’s house to cause doomsday. In the end, Lewis is the one
who saves everyone by helping them find the evil clock with his magic eight
ball, then smashes the clock, preventing the evil warlock from returning and
causing the end of the world.
Analysis:
The plot of this novel isn’t in any hurry to get anywhere,
so be prepared for a relaxed pace. I believe at least some of this is because
of the era in which its portraying, leisure was becoming a highly valued thing
then. The other reason I think is the author wanted to marinate the reader in
the setting.
The setting is essential in this novel because like any
good gothic horror, the evil of the story emanates mainly from one location.
The twist with this novel is that the place the evil emanates from is the very house
the main characters live. This in itself isn’t odd for gothic horror—à la Amityville Horror—but there is a dissonance with
this story because the house with a clock in its walls, seems like a cool place
to live from start to finish. It never seems to become sinister—not for very
long, at least. Lewis certainly admires the house several times, even though he
thinks it’s more than a bit scary. It is creepy because the house, while
charming and inviting, also hides secrets, secrets about a dark past, or
possibly things forbidden—elements that are also important to the gothic
tradition of horror.
All of these atmospherics juxtaposed with a conventional
young adult story, make it a special experience. I’d also argue that the
plotting of this YA novel may be traditional, but the characters weren’t for
its time, which only adds to its uniqueness. Remember this novel was published
in 1973, that’s a year before Dungeons and Dragons was a thing, a couple years
before even Star Wars, and nearly twenty years after the Lord of the Rings or
the Chronicles of Narnia. Wizards, witches, and warlocks weren’t typical
traditional heroes for Americans at the time.
You could make a counter-argument that Bewitched came out in
1964 and ran until 1972. To which, I’m going to point out that Bewitched isn’t
a novel, it’s a television show—and it was a show primarily about, “well have
you ever tried not being a witch?” So
the messaging of that show is problematic. Additionally, I Dream of Jeannie was
the exact same show, this time with a blonde lady and the added horror in the
synopsis that describes her as the man’s slave.
Parting thoughts:
Like I said at the beginning of the review, I really did
pick up this book because I liked the Jack Black movie. Movie reviews aren’t
really my thing, but I felt it was a great introduction to this oft-forgotten
little universe of books that came out way before Harry Potter.
Why I bring this up is—while I don’t write movie reviews, I
do often read them, and I feel that a lot of the critical reviews are unduly
harsh toward this movie. One I read—and I’m paraphrasing here—that the film had
reduced John Bellairs’ masterpiece to nothing more than a series of fart jokes
and that it loses all of the finer details of the novel. I find this to be an
incredibly unfair assessment. Are their fart jokes? Sure, it’s a movie
targeting ten-year-olds as the target demographic. Is the movie just one after
another, after another? Of course, not, that is nothing more than hyperbole.
Are some details lost? Yes, of course, it’s a movie, movies are a different medium
possessing less time to tell a story.
In a novel, you can meander, get lost in the story—it’s one
of the reasons I love books. If you do that in a movie, then you’ve just
created the Ten Commandments with Charlton Heston. Do I think that’s a great
movie? Absolutely—but I’m not going to lie, I typically fall asleep every
Easter when it’s on at about the time Moses gets banished to the desert during
the nineteenth thousandth hour of its run time. My point is—this isn’t an
excellent fit for a young audience, a few details need to get trimmed.
Finally, I find that these negative reviews of the movie
miss a few acting moments brought out by its cast. Jack Black is surprisingly
good at not just being a comedic actor, but as just an actor as well. His
version of Jonathan hits all the major points of his literary counterpart, but
he also adds a level of insecurity and vulnerability as a new guardian to his
nephew, which I don’t feel comes across as well in the book.
