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Revision as of 19:20, 27 September 2010
, 19:20, 27 September 2010no edit summary
But Molly, like her sister, and her father, and the Oak King, has to follow the cycle. Grief has its stages, just as the year does, and the real lesson is that life is all about following them through. Nobody is perfect, even the Oak King, as Molly discovers when he is ascendant and the hunt is reversed, and that includes her father. He has done a terrible thing in abandoning his children, but it's still part of the cycle, and it can be put right.
It's a simple story, told simply, but it's dealing with some complicated and intense emotional issues and it does it in a tremendously accessible way - the influences of people like Alan Garner and David Almond are obvious in the supernatural elements, but there are also echoes of the confidence and ease of other writers such as Jacqueline Wilson in the way Nicholls is talking to her readers. There's a moment where she breaks the fourth wall to recommend [[Pippi Longstocking by Astrid Lindgren|Pippi Longstocking]] as a fictional heroine, and even I felt reassured by it! Her previous book was very different, talking about a little boy dying of leukaemia, and it's clear Nicholls is shaping up to be a writer of great versatility. ''Season of Secrets'' comes highly recommended and Bookbag is looking forward to seeing what she does next.
My thanks to the nice people at Marion Lloyd for sending the book.
