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One of the very worst things you can hear as a child coming home to find that your room has been ‘Spring Cleaned’ must be: “Oh you didn’t want that did you? I thought you’d finished with it.’ This was clearly a memory from Joan Aiken’s own childhood, and she turned it into one of [...]
I read “The Serial Garden” last night for the first time, and the minute Mrs. Armitage started her spring cleaning I had a feeling something horrible was coming. (My concern was that Mark would be in the garden when the worst occurred.) I had to close the book when I finished the story. I know it’s fiction, “only a story” as my college English teacher, Mr. Carter, would say. How do readers get so invested in fictional characters that they care what happens and want it to turn out differently? (Each time I reread certain tragedies, I keep hoping that this time the author will have pulled some strings and rescued the hero or heroine from an untimely end.) It’s an homage to Joan Aiken’s art that she can make us wish Mrs. Armitage’s cleaning jag had been delayed (or that Mr. Johansen had had fewer dogs in his care).
Absolutely! I found Joan’s capacity for writing fictional tragedy even more alarming, as it made her rather too similar to Mrs Armitage – who was after all the person who had originally wished for her family to have magical adventures – it seems that they could both have an alarming blind spot about magic when they reverted to being a mother!!!
Only recently finished this, but yes I was also shocked by the cavalier tidying up of Mark’s bedroom (though it’s the sort of thing my would do too) and pleased at Joan’s attempts to make some amends. Though having Mr Johansen reappear in the village in a later story after seemingly becoming a magician’s assistant was just a little confusing!
I also loved the way the two siblings scarcely aged despite the world changing around them. Reminded me a bit of the Famous Five who also had uncountable summer holidays apparently without even Julian having to leave for university or a job in the City…