I can’t recall when I was last so scared when reading a book. It’s all very well with horror stories, which even if really quite scary, tend to be so far removed from reality as to be easier to stop thinking about. But this, this was that kind of treacly, sweet, slow, real nightmare stuff. You know you are in it, but you still can’t work out how to escape. If there is an escape.
Pauline Fisk did well for prizes and good reviews when Midnight Blue was first published twenty years ago, and now she has re-published her debut novel as an ebook. If you like this kind of heart-stopper, then Midnight Blue is the perfect book for you. It is remarkably well written and you quickly get sucked into the strange fantasy/fairy tale style and setting.
It’s all so real! And so sweet and ordinary. Until the menacing treacle gets you. Midnight Blue also seems to be aimed at a younger reader than I had imagined. Bonnie feels pretty young, and so does Arabella whom she meets in this odd world where she suddenly finds herself. The book starts in an ordinary way, with Bonnie having returned to live with her single mother, after years with her grandmother.
And then before the reader quite knows what’s happened, she’s somewhere else. I found it hard to work out where this was, why she was there, and how she could get away again. Because of the perceived age of the reader, I felt sure that a good ending must be possible, although it seemed very unlikely at times. I had no way of working out what kind of happy end, though.
Ultimately the story is about getting to know yourself, what you want and what you can do. But before Bonnie gets that far she’s stuck, living in the sweetest of nightmares.
I’d like to comment, but I’m, uh, stuck…
I love Midnight Blue – and you’re right about the ‘sweet nightmare’ – one of those books you don’t forget!
This sounds like a fascinating reads, and will momentarily be going on my Goodreads TBR list!
I had an odd sort of dream/possibly nightmare last night. No monsters, but quite frightening. I’ll need to get out of this mood.
This sounds like it would feed my imagination too much in the night time.
I remember reading a scary Steven King when I was a teenager on holiday with 2 girlfriends and then hearing someone walk up the steps at the side of the house at 10pm, talk about tension – it was the last King I ever read.
It was a teenage boy who saw the lights on and came looking for the younger brother of our friend, spooked!
I’m no Stephen King, but I am the author of Midnight Blue. So glad I scared you Book Witch and, Claire, it’s a subtle sort of scariness – no hammers and claws.
I wasn’t scared, but I was enthralled, reading this book again. I’d forgotten the enticing way Pauline’s language and imagery creates a child’s internal world, her real, family world and the homely, yet strange; beautiful, yet unsettling, other world that she finds herself in and is nourished by. There is so much here, the pastoral beauty, the psychological subtlety and truth, and the sheer adventure and magic and sense of possibility. I felt I lived through it all with Bonnie, felt her hurt, vulnerability and longing to belong, and faced with her the darker emotions and the demons we all encounter, in ourselves and our relationships, personified by the brilliantly realised ‘Grandbag.’ The book brings all to a poignant conclusion. Thank you, Pauline for an amazing journey, satisfying on so many levels, for the child in me, and the adult …
Subtle scariness is the worst. Things make you want to move, and you find you can’t. Typical nightmare stuff.