Much as Hollywood has form for giving Oscars to movies about movies, I love books about books. This one doubles down on that premise by also being about the books we loved when we were young, and the nostalgia and power they can forever hold over a forming bookworm.
Plot in a Nutshell
Jack is a reclusive but previously prolific children’s author who reappears after a long absence to announce a competition: win the only copy of the new book in his long-running series. The catch is that only those invited to solve his clue can play.
One invitee is Lucy, a teaching assistant in California. As a lonely, sad child she found solace in Jack’s books and once met him when she ran away from home. Now older but arguably no happier, she is desperate to become financially secure enough to be a credible foster-to-adopt candidate for a young orphaned boy she taught and has built a powerful bond with.
Lucy ventures to the real Clock Island the setting of the beloved children’s books, where she and three others compete against the clock to win the prize.
Thoughts
My feelings here are conflicted, likely because the novel tries to do too many things at once.
What I loved is its unabashed nostalgia. It holds a mirror up to what reading means to those of us who have been lifelong readers. For me, and Lucy they were a place to escape, a way to learn to be brave. It also reminds us that as children we often read books with surprisingly complex themes, yet ones where things worked out and Important Lessons were Learned. In this context, Lucy is a perfect character who could have stepped out of any children’s classic. She suffered in childhood. There is the framing of a sick sister and disinterested parents as formative experiences. Yet she battles through and learns an important lesson about facing your fears and the power of hope.
What I didn’t love is how simplistic and one-dimensional these lovely ideas make Lucy and her journey in practice. She is a teaching assistant struggling to get by (an Etsy side hustle is involved), yet fixated on adopting a child she teaches. She lavishes love and attention on him in a way that feels more about her than him. There are a couple of equally uncomfortable notes. The love interest, which I’ll admit I was hoping for, glosses over the fact that they met years earlier when she was barely a teenager and he was in his twenties. There is also a child abuse subplot that exists solely to further another character’s arc, a sensationalist device I dislike and call out wherever I find it.
It would be easy to dismiss the book as simplistic and lacking substance which it is, but there is still a magic here I enjoyed.
I loved the snippets of Jack’s novels throughout. I liked Hugo and his backstory, and would love to see his artwork. The whimsy of Jack living on an island where he tries to recreate his fictional world might be considered too much. However I felt that this played out as kind and melancholy rather than creepy. The competition held its own without becoming tedious, and I appreciated the conclusion, neat, but not too neat.
I suspect I bought this because I heard it described as Willy Wonka with books instead of chocolate. That is a fair summary. For those who remember books as formative experiences with a touch of magic it’s easy to forgive it’s flaws. For others it may feel overly simplistic.