According to wikipedia, Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children "has been a New York Times best seller. It reached the #1 spot on the Children's Chapter Books list on 29 April 2012 after being on the list for 45 weeks". Yet, I had no idea that this was a YA book -- I've seen its creepy cover at the book stores forever without ever noting that it was shelved alongside other YA fiction -- so if I found it lightweight and kind of a familiar story, that's likely due to my expectations (based on my own ignorance).
This book started off auspiciously: Jacob is a bit of a loner and loves listening to his grandfather's outlandish stories about the enchanted island where he spent time as a child; a happy place populated with strange children and overseen by a benevolent, pipe-smoking bird. Grandpa Abe even has a cigar box filled with black and white photos of these characters and he gravely explains how the enchanted island is necessary to protect these kids from the monsters that would hunt them down.
When Jacob starts school and is bullied by his peers for repeating these tales, his father explains where the old man's stories come from and Jacob is no longer charmed by his grandfather, just saddened:
My grandfather was the only member of his family to escape Poland before the Second World War broke out. He was twelve years old when his parents sent him into the arms of strangers, putting their youngest son on a train to Britain with nothing more than a suitcase and the clothes on his back. It was a one-way ticket. He never saw his mother or father again, or his older brothers, his cousins, his aunts and uncles. Each one would be dead before his sixteenth birthday, killed by the monsters he had so narrowly escaped. But these weren't the kind of monsters that had tentacles and rotting skin, the kind a seven-year-old might be able to wrap his mind around -- they were monsters with human faces, in crisp uniforms, marching in lockstep, so banal you don't recognize them for what they are until it's too late.To this point, I found the whole concept so intriguing: First there's this magical world with peculiar children and frightening monsters, but it turns out to just be an old man's way of dealing with tragedy. But then, when Jacob is on the cusp of turning sixteen and believes that his Grandpa is just a delusional old man, it turns out there may be otherworldly monsters after all. (I'm still on board at this point.) Jacob convinces his father to take him on a trip to the fogbound island of Cairnholm off the coast of Wales, and as Jacob begins testing his grandfather's tales, the book takes a turn into fairly typical YA fantasy territory: plucky kids need to band together to defeat the incredibly powerful forces that overwhelm the adults around them. (And this is where I mentally checked out.)
That's the plot, but the main charm of this book is the photographs, so I'll talk about them, too. At first, I found them pretty creepy, and in the beginning, where Grandpa Abe is showing them to Jacob and talking about who each child was and what made them peculiar, they were organic to the story and enhanced my enjoyment. At some point, however, it felt like photos were just stuck in because the author, Ransom Riggs, liked them. The story would say, "I remember a picture of my grandfather sleeping with a gun in his hand" and there would be that photograph on the next page -- it wasn't important to the story and enhanced nothing. I think the photos would have worked better if they had been grouped together in the middle of the book -- like in a conventional biography -- and the reader could study them all at once. The way this book is structured, the plot needs to serve the pictures instead of the other way around. Annoying.
Something I liked and something I hated that might be spoilerish: I really liked that the gunner on the U-Boat was a wight -- to have that circle back was so clever (there are monsters, there are only monstrous men, oh there are monsters, oh there are monstrous men). And what I hated: That Jacob would have a romantic relationship with his Grandpa's old girlfriend; even if she still looked 16 and was "hot", I could not believe that either one of them would have gotten over the ick factor.
This is a very quick read, with the photographs taking up a lot of the room in this nearly 400 page book. If Miss Peregrine had been intended for an adult audience I would probably give it 2 stars, but since it wasn't, I won't judge it too harshly (but stop short of actually recommending it for more than a time waster in the sunshine like I enjoyed today). I see that there's already a sequel to this book and I don't find myself excited about that fact…
I'm only just a bit of a snob when it comes to reading, but with so many wonderful books out there that promise to speak to me of serious themes, I don't seek out YA fiction on purpose (but will happily always read any book that one of my girls recommends to me). So I was really disappointed when I realised that I had mistaken Miss Peregrine for serious (or at least adult-themed) literature -- I was expecting more Night Film than Percy Jackson. Interesting, then, that I read this book right after a debate in the newspaper this week over whether or not adults should waste their time reading YA books.
Ruth Graham of Slate states that "Adults should feel embarrassed reading literature written for children", and makes her case here.
The National Posts's book editor, Mark Medley, made a satirical response the next day, here.
As always, I love it when my reading life mirrors what's happening out in the world.
