Pam's Book Log

26 February, 2003

I've heard recommendations for John Bellairs' kids' books for years, pretty much since the Harry Potter phenomenon took hold. (Often the recommendations were in the form, "Rowling is a hack. Harry Potter is just warmed-over John Bellairs.") So, I figured I should give him a try. This book was chosen on the basis of it being the only Bellairs book in the particular used book store I was at, when I thought of trying him out.

The Dark Secret of Weatherend is about a teenage boy, Anthony Monday, who lives in a small town in Minnesota, in 1954, and how he saves the world from destruction by an evil sorcerer who can control the weather. Anthony doesn't do it alone, he's helped out by an eccentric old-lady librarian, Miss Eells.

I'm sorry to say that, on the basis of this book, I don't really see what the pro-Bellairs fuss is about.

There are several elements which go into making a story, the most important (IMO) of which are style, setting, character, and plot. The Dark Secret of Weatherend tries to get by on plot alone. The prose is so stilted and monotonous that it's actively off-putting:

Now Anthony had an after-school job as a page at the Hoosac Public Library, which he had gotten through Miss Eells, who was the head librarian. Anthony liked Miss Eells because she was fun to be around. They played chess and Scrabble and went places together. Also Miss Eels listened to Anthony. He could tell her his troubles and his secrets and know that she would not blab about him to anybody else. On this particular day, however, he was not burdened with any secrets that needed to be told. He was just going out to see Miss Eells for fun.

(I dunno, maybe it doesn't bother you as much as it does me. Maybe I'm just weird.) The setting-- 1950s middle America-- is practically the textbook definition of "generic." The fact that the story takes place in Minnesota has absolutely no bearing on the plot whatsoever. Even Minnesota's legendary bad winter weather, which would be a natural and obvious way for the setting to play a role in the story, has no place in the book. All the bad weather is the fault of Evil Sorcery, not Minnesota.

Just as the setting is featureless, so are the characters. Most of them don't even amount to one-dimensional clichés, they're just there to fill character-shaped spaces in the plot: the Main Character, the Villain, Basil Exposition, and so forth. Anthony Monday himself seems to have no personality at all; even the fact that he's a kid is only relevant in how it directly affects the plot (e.g. his mom grounds him, making it difficult for him to get out and save the world). The villain is simply villainous: he looks evil, he talk evilly, he lives in an evil house. There's no subtlety or style. The only character who has a modicum of personality is Miss Eels. She's not only a Sidekick, she's Eccentric. (Oh, wait, I'm not being totally fair; there is also a minor character who is Jolly.) The drabness of the characters is only exacerbated by the fact that Bellairs tells us what they are thinking and feeling, rather than showing us through dialogue or whatever. That's the Number One Rule of Good Writing: Show, don't Tell!

So, no style, no setting, no characterization. That leaves us with the plot. Is it any good? Well, I think it was pretty stupid, and poorly executed. It proceeds entirely by auctorial fiat, and the final resolution comes through some religious mumbo-jumbo (along the lines of "Religious relics have magical power against evil") which struck me as completely unconnected to anything else which happenned in the book. That being said, I must admit that I did get interested in the stupid plot, in spite of myself. I wanted to know how in the world Anthony and Miss Eells were going to save the world, when they had absolutely no idea what they were doing. (Answer: pure luck, combined with a magic religious artifact.)

I'm willing to give Bellairs one more try, if somebody tells me that this book is not typical of his writing, and can point me to his best book. ('Cause, I figure, if I read his best book and I don't like it, I can save myself the trouble of reading anything else he wrote.)