12 April, 2002: The Letter, the Witch, and the Ring
I have very fond memories of John Bellairs' books: The House with a Clock in Its Walls, The Dark Secret of Weatherend, The Treasure of Alpheus Winterborn. But if The Letter, the Witch, and the Ring is representative, I'm best off not revisiting Bellairs and leaving the memories unsullied. Bellairs wrote old-fashioned ghost stories in the Jamesian tradition: creepy stuff, but nothing too violent or gory (or even terribly scary, really). But The Letter, the Witch, and the Ring, featuring a trip to rural Michigan, a defrocked witch, a magic ring, and some bad happenings, just moves terribly slowly and it telegraphs all its moves far too early. Genre books should usually not have dull characters -- evil, perhaps, certainly wicked or selfish or irritating -- and their plots should not rest on characters' slow-wittedness. Dare I read The House with a Clock in Its Walls and find out if the appearance of the Hand of Glory, the one scene that I remember with clarity, lives up to how I experienced it as an eight-year-old? I don't think I do.