Review: House "[A] Ghost Story More Endearing Than Frightful"

Book review: The House with a Clock in its Walls

Billed as a ghost story, this children's novel has much to endear itself to its young readers. The 179-page novel has its share of suspense without inducing nightmares and has black and white drawings sprinkled throughout that encourage the imagination. It is a book that reads quickly and has a quick pace, but never talks down to its readers. Indeed, within the first few pages, Lewis is reciting a prayer and Bellairs gives both the Latin and English versions of it (this is pre-Vatican II, and good Catholic altar boys like Lewis said their prayers in Latin).

It is the characters that put this book on my list of classics. They are wonderfully endearing and the dialog for them is skillfully written, with each character having their own unique voice. Even 20 years after first reading this story, I can still hear the characters’ voices in my mind as clearly as I could the first time I read it.

Lewis is a lonely boy, and not just because his parents are dead. He suffers in the way that only outcast children can. "All his life--all ten years of it--he had been listening to children who chanted: Fatty, fatty, two by four, Can't get through the kitchen door."

While it is set in the 40s and has many anachronisms, it is still a delight for children today to read. The stakes are nothing less than the fate of the world. A clock is ticking within the walls of Uncle Jonathan's mansion. The two wizards have been unable to find it and they are uncertain what it portends. They tell Lewis that the house was once owned by an evil warlock, Isaac Izard and his wife Selenna.

Strange things begin happening and they increase when Lewis tries his own hand at magic in order to impress Tarby. The clock is a doomsday clock and it was built to hasten the Day of Judgment.

Throughout the novel, Lewis learns to trust and to discover within himself what true bravery is.

 
Redlass

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