Book Review: “Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children”
The late great short story writer and novelist Richard Matheson (1926-2013) had this to say about writing the fantastical:
To me, fantasy at its best . . . consists of putting in one drop of fantasy into a mixture which is, otherwise, completely factual, realistic. And, once that drop of fantasy has been put into the mixture, I try to forget that am writing a fantasy and write as realistic a story as I can.*
It was a formula that Matheson used with great success in his books I Am Legend and The Shrinking Man, and in such well-known Twilight Zone episodes as “Nightmare at 20,000 Feet,” and “The Invaders.” Author Ransom Riggs has used that same magical “drop of fantasy” principal to great effect in his unusual and delightful novel, Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children (Quirk Books, 2013).
He’s used it twice, in fact. The first involves selecting some ordinary old photos (from real life) and weaving them into a tapestry of fantasy. And the second entails creating a happy domestic environment involving a bunch of kids, who just happen to be able to stop time to avoid a World War II bomb from falling on them.
These ‘peculiar’ kids aren’t weird—they’re exceptional, with each of them possessing a unique magical power. (Think an ability to temporariliy change one’s hands into balls of fire, or to see monsters where everyone else only notices ordinary people and you’ll get the idea.)
Sixteen-year-old Jacob learns about them after the death of his beloved grandfather, a mysterious figure that was once one of the “peculiar children.” Like them, he lived on an island off Wales in a grand old mansion that defied time. Or it did, until the present time catches up with it, and the children’s carefree way of life is threatened by some of those monsters.
There is also a story of young love, and the coming-of-age decision that Jacob has to make. But it’s the sheer inventiveness of the author that makes this fantasy novel sparkle, without the need for flights of fancy too far removed from our own. It’s that drop of fantasy, you see. There’s nothing so engaging for readers as an author who takes the world we recognize around us . . . and gives it just a little twist, so that we see everything we thought we knew in a delightfully new light.
* Marc Scott Zicree, The Twilight Zone Companion, 2d ed. (New York: Bantam Books, 1989), 57.
House photo credit: Tama66 at pixabay.com.
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