![]() ![]() Lewis ends up raising the dead and it sets off a chain of events that lead to the conclusion of the book. If you listen to the walls there is a loud ticking you can hear in any room in the house behind the wall. Lewis finds out his relatives is a witch and he has some magic interest in himself. It is this awesome Adams family or Munsters type house. I love the picture of the house they live in. I know Michigan is a big state with lots of different settings in it, but the setting felt more like New England to me than Michigan. Lewis Barnavelt is an orphan and he goes to live with his uncle in Michigan. It was almost like reading this for the first time with some deja vu thrown in. It was interesting, as I read this it was like little puffs of smoke which were memories went off in my head and I would think, 'oh yeah', I remember that now. I have to admit that most of the book faded from my memory till not much was left. I wanted to read it again before the movie came out this month. he does not go on a quest and he does not save the day instead he grows by bits and starts, the shedding of each of his dark layers a small triumph - quickly forgotten by Lewis, almost unbearably affecting to me. Lewis Barnevelt is akin to Narnia's Edmund or Eustace - except Aslan does not step in to help him slough off his self-hating nature. reading about him, reading the story of a boy filled with anxiety and doubt and even self-loathing, was almost like a tonic: now here was an author who lived in the real world! here was a protagonist who knew exactly how i felt that day. the protagonist Lewis Barnavelt of House With a Clock was the first time i'd read about a hero who was unheroic, who lied to avoid embarrassment, who rather despised himself. a memory of a memory! i was never a bullied or angst-ridden child, so that memory pops out as almost uniquely painful. I recently re-read House with a Clock in Its Walls and was taken aback by the memory of reading it for the first time at age 10 or so - and the memory i had had back then of my moment of mortification and sudden femininity. it is interesting to think about the complicated emotions that my youthful self had to wrestle with. I laugh at the story now but i also can't help but remember the sharp flash of humiliation, the quick decision that it was less embarrassing to be a girl mistaken for a boy than to admit that i could have been a boy who looked like a girl, and then of course the ample self-loathing that followed. i died a little bit, then squeaked out: "I'm a little girl". a young man came down to use the vending machines there, looked at me, and asked conversationally, "Are you a little boy or a little girl?". One day when i was about 8 or 9, living in some chilly state, i bundled myself up until i looked like a little gray egg, hood over head, the hood's furry fringe making my face a cameo portrait of a round genderless blob, and proceded to wait for my ride in the lobby of my apartment building. ![]()
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