After she moves into her eerie new house, Miranda discovers an old dollhouse with a strange little girl who appears only when Miranda herself looks through the dollhouse windows. Reprint.
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Kathryn Reiss, the author of several books for young people, teaches in the English Department of Mills College, in Oakland, California.
Grade 5-9-- Moving from New York City to an old house near Boston, Miranda, 14, becomes obsessed with what she sees through the windows of a dollhouse she finds in the attic. She discovers that her new home is haunted by beautiful, angry, abusive Lucinda. In 1904, Lucinda locked her young daughter, Dorothy, in the attic and left her stuffy husband to run away with a lover, and then was killed in a train wreck. Her malignant influence soon begins to work on Miranda's mother. In a page-turning climax, Miranda realizes that only she can save her mother from madness by rescuing Dorothy and changing the past. Although the book raises profound philosophic questions and deals with strong passions, its style, characterization, and emotional trajectory do not match its potential. The greatest problem is Lucinda. Readers are never sure whether she is an archetypal figure of pure evil or a strong-willed woman declaring her independence from a narrow, repressive husband. Is she caricature or character? How and why does she influence the other characters? Also, a love interest between Miranda and the boy across the street occurs with implausible ease. Pam Conrad's Stonewords (HarperCollins, 1990), Eleanor Cameron's The Court of the Stone Children (Dutton, 1973), Diana Wynne Jones's Fire and Hemlock (Greenwillow, 1984), and Ursula K. LeGuin's adult novel The Lathe of Heaven (Bentley, 1982) all create more complex characters while facing the philosophical implications of changing the past. Still, the well-structured mystery, the fast-moving plot, and the accessible prose make this a useful addition to fantasy shelves. --Margaret A. Chang, Buxton School, Williamstown,
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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