ISBN: 0-689-50400-4 Order from: Amazon.com Barnes & Noble.com
A lyrical, slightly sentimental, young-adult story about a teenage girl's wishes affecting reality.
Reviewed by David on May 19, 1998
Genre: Fantasy (Ghosts, Juvenile)
Synopsis: A New Zealand family goes to the beach house for the Mid-summer/Christmas holidays. The middle sister tries to write a book in secret. Her fanciful wish that the real world be affected by her writing suddenly seems less frivolous when mysterious strangers show up at the family gathering, looking very much like her invented characters. In the process, a number of mysteries, both old and recent, get revealed.
Full Review: Mahy has written several young-adult novels with fantastic elements. The Tricksters is the second one I've read. Despite being oriented at a younger audience, her books, like some young adult novels by Jane Yolen, Robin McKinley and Patricia Wrede, combine simplicity of style suitable for the less sophisticated audience, with a precise and powerfully descriptive narrative and likable protagonists.
The novel starts off when the large and someone rambunctious but affectionate Hamilton family move into their beach house for the mid-summer break. The middle sister, Harry, is the quiet and romantic protagonist, writing a bodice-ripper fantasy romance in secret from her parents, and her glittering older sister. The plot start to thicken when her wish that the book be reflected in the real world interacts with old mysteries connected with the beach house.
Partly a mystery, partly a coming of age story, this is a touching, if slightly sentimental story; enhanced by such a deft, almost wistful, description of the beach house and its surroundings, that I was nostalgic for New Zealand (and I've never been there!).
The book is quite enjoyable, almost as much as The Changeover, an even better young adult fantasy by the same author.
Overall: 5.5; Plot: 4; Characters: 6; Style: 7; World-building: 4; Originality: 4;
Macmillan Publishing Company, 1986, Cloth, 266 pages
ISBN: 0-689-50400-4 Order from: Amazon.com Barnes & Noble.com