This is the very strange book that I finished reading today for my Third Tuesday Book Club meeting next Tuesday (August 16th, 2016). I did wonder why in the world our younger book club male (out of two men) picked this book, but it turned out to be a thought-provoking science fiction fantasy book of undeniable quality. So I may yet have a talk with Jason, but I must confess I enjoyed this book.
As the story opens, Polly is fifteen years old, and has outgrown her clothes, her bed, and the chair in the nursery. She also has green hair and antlers growing out of her head (a sign, their Nanny tells them, of her reaching puberty). Her little brother Rick (nicknamed Tick), ten years old, lives in the nursery with her, in the Boy’s Room, and will soon outgrow his largest school uniform. The only world they know is that of the nursery suite in the house (where they are taken care of by Nanny Warburough); each day they go into the teleportation room and teleport to separate schoolrooms. Nanny has been telling them all their lives that their Mother and Father live somewhere in the house, and will come to get them eventually; their parents are very important people, which is why their Nanny is in charge of child raising. Nanny also tells them that they must never leave the nursery, or else they might be attacked by the creepers; Polly believes in the creepers, but Rick does not. Rick spends a lot of his time drawing pictures of what he imagines his mother looks like, and he has conversations with her in his sleep. To tell more of the book would be counter-productive, but it eventually turns into a very bizarre quest by these children to find their parents after their world is broken apart.
This was a very strange book, and one that makes you start to question your own hold on sanity, in determining what is real and what is not real. And I anticipate that we will have a very interesting discussion at our Book Club meeting about the book.
From The Recamier 