Waterstones The Time of the Ghost
129 ratings
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Price: £7.99
Brand: Waterstones
Description: Can a ghost from the future save a life in the past? A chilling tale of dark forces and revenge. The ghost turns up one summer day, alone in a world she once knew, among people who were once her family. She knows she is one of four sisters, but which one? She can be sure of only one thing - that there's been an accident. As she struggles to find her identity, she becomes aware of a malevolent force stirring around her. Something terrible is about to happen. One of the sisters will die - unless the ghost can use the future to reshape the past. But how can she warn them, when they don't even know she exists?. Waterstones The Time of the Ghost - shop the best deal online on thebookbug.co.uk
Category: Books
Merchant: Waterstones
Product ID: 9780007112173
Delivery cost: 2.99
ISBN: 9780007112173
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Author: Ms Louise Wilford
Rating: 5
Review: I have only been a fan of Diana Wynne Jones for a year or two, and so I'm not as much of an expert on her as some other reviewers on this site. However, I have noticed some recurring tropes in her fiction, including the notion of absent or incompetent parents, which is a theme brought out particularly vividly in this novel. The parents here are hideously neglectful and Jones conveys the potential for damage that such behaviour can cause very effectively. The four sisters, as children, are in many ways awful and unattractive - the gap-toothed, goblin-like Fenella, the large and loud Cart, the neurotic Imogen and Selina who seems to be embracing the dark arts. Their behaviour is both ignored and controlled, in that they are allowed extraordinary freedom to do as they please due to their parents' lack of interest, but at the same time they are constrained by the circumstances of their living in a boarding-school environment, and being expected to behave in a way that fits with their parents' vague ideas about propriety. Their father's reference to them as 'bitches' and his inability to tell them apart, and their mother's failure to notice that one of them is missing, or to care that her youngest daughter appears to be wearing a sack and has tied her hair in knots, is both astounding and horrifying, but also has the ring of truth. These children appear incredibly vulnerable and Jones constructs a wonderful atmosphere of impending danger in the first part of the story - when Imogen is almost killed by being suspended from the rafters on a rope, or when Sally creeps out of her friend's homely farm in the middle of the night, or when Fenella and Cart have to virtually steal food from the unpleasant school cooks, these events all feel like part of the gradually building tension. And the second part of the story shows how this sense of danger is grounded in reality. This ability to create atmosphere is a particularly admirable skill in Jones's work and it is demonstrated very effectively in this book. The weird life the sisters experience as children lends itself to the weird supernatural experience in which they become embroiled, and the clever plot-device of having the viewpoint of the tale that of a 'ghost' who doesn't even know who or what she is adds to the disconcerting and disturbing effect the story has right from the beginning. A shocking mini-climax in the centre of the tale suddenly alters the reader's perspective as we are pushed forward in time (then back and forth several times) and our view of the sisters changes considerably. Jones conveys the fact that these unpreposessing young women have managed to grow up well, despite their problems, but a terrible pall still hangs over their lives until the ghost can help to defeat Monigan. I felt that, while the whole 'Monigan' story was interesting and well done and added an appropriately gothic creepiness to the story, the actual story of the girls themselves, their individual psychologies, was enough to keep me hooked - and I actually wanted to know more about their lives. Jones does not shy away from presenting the truth about people; even when her stories are in themselves implausible fantasies, I find the insides of her characters' heads almost always convincing. They may not be like me, or even like anyone I know, but nevertheless I believe in them as people. I think this is a real gift in a writer, particularly a writer of children's literature.
Author: M. King
Rating: 3
Review: There's no real punchline to this story and it sort of winds on to its weary conclusion. The characters are well written for the most part and sympathetic enough, but you can't really bring yourself to care too much. More whimsy than scary.
