I have long been a fan of Melissa Albert since I read her Hazel Wood duology a few years back. With every novel, her work just gets better and better. Her newest novel, THE CHILDREN, is her first foray into the adult space and wow, does it leave a bee sting of an impression.
The best way to describe THE CHILDREN would be if David Lynch (rest in peace) tackled a fairy tale. The story follows Guinevere Sharpe, daughter of famed children’s novelist Edith Sharpe. When she and her brother, Ennis, were children, their mother wrote a successful series of fantasy novels inspired by them and their life on a remote farmhouse in Vermont. To the world, Guin’s childhood is one of adventure and magic, with their home becoming a place of pilgrimage for ambitious artists looking to bask in the shadow of Edith’s spotlight, only to find themselves drained of inspiration and talent. To Guin, her childhood is one of neglect. In Guin’s adulthood, she acts as the official stand in for their mother, promoting the series Edith never got to finish before a house fire claimed her life and the lives of several others- save Guin and Ennis. Now estranged from her brother and struggling not only with the legacy of her mother, but also with the complicated and dark reality of her childhood, Guin is forced to come to terms with her trauma and take creative control of her life and likeness. Melissa Albert plays a lot with metaphor and symbolism, which gives the novel a surreal essence that often inspires an edge-of-your-seat dread. Throughout the novel, you get the sense that something very bad happened, but as we are seeing almost everything from the perspective of a child via flashbacks, the details grow hazy and fantastical. THE CHILDREN is dreamy yet brutally real, spectacular and weird yet crushingly sad. The story will stay with me for quite some time.
UnCovered Review by Sam LeRoy, ACLS Mays Landing Branch
