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Synopsis:

An intoxicating, haunting new novel from New York Times bestselling author Melissa Albert, in which the estranged adult children of a legendary author, written into their dead mother’s beloved fantasy series, contend with the vine-like creep of legacy, memory, and magic.

Guinevere Sharpe has two childhoods.

In one, she lives in the wooded shadow of her family’s isolated Vermont farmhouse; in the other, the pages of her mother’s world-famous Ninth City books, where her magical adventures have made her a household name. In reality, Guinevere’s childhood isn’t the enchanted idyll her mother’s readers imagine: she and her older brother are growing up near-feral, unwashed and underfed, escaping each day to the lichen-clotted woods they’ve made their playland. As Edith Sharpe’s books explode into epic popularity, the threats of a rural childhood give way to the escalating perils of fame—until the night it all goes up in flames, leaving Edith’s series unfinished and her children the sole survivors.

Now an adult coasting on her mother’s name, Guinevere is mid-promotion for a ghostwritten memoir when her estranged brother, an artist who has until now spurned his family’s legacy, announces an upcoming installation titled Mother. As rumors swirl around a death connected to his last show, unsettling recollections from Guinevere’s childhood begin to surface. Her public facade starts to crack, forcing her to confront the questions she’s spent the last twenty years running from: What really happened the night of the fire? And what dark history lies behind their mother’s creative genius?

Wise to the mythic weight childhood memories gather over time, The Children whispers to you from the hallway outside your bedroom, lights flickering as you turn the pages of a book that didn’t seem so scary a moment ago. It’s a story for anyone who’s ever revisited an old favorite and found it cast in a darker light, the line separating magic and memory blurring as the gap widens between the authors we imagined and the people they turn out to be.

Review:

The Children is the story about Guinevere and Ennis Sharpe, two children with two unhappy parents. Their father Llewellyn was a brilliant stage actor who quit when he met their mother Edith. By the time the children are old enough to understand what is happening, the couple are running from troubles, looking for a place where they can settle down in a world where they find nothing but discomfort. They end up at a house in Vermont as a last ditch attempt to get their life together. This house is where everything changes but also stays the same. Their mother Edith becomes the writer of a famous series of books, using her two children as the basis of her characters. When this book series grows in popularity, the whole family becomes famous, and more artists start to show up to Vermont to get advice, to spend time on their craft, but most importantly to party. The parallel story is Guin and Ennis being grown and seen as the children they are in those book. They have not talked at all since the night that both parents died. Guin is getting ready to publish a memoir and Ennis is a controversial artist, including his next project, one randomly announced when Guin is on a talk show about her memoir, a secret instillation simply titled “Mother.” This and the memoir she is releasing causes her to go into a panic about her mother, all of the things that she saw in her childhood, and all of the things that have been kept a secret.

The story is interesting enough and the writing is very strong, but I did not feel very engaged in the story. I like the parts individually. I like the mystery about how the house changed the mother into a writer. I like the artist lifestyle, with people coming and going, with grownups being irresponsible toward their children due to their own artistic vision and focus. I like the idea of two children pretty much neglected to their own devices so they do whatever they want. I like the mystery behind why the Guin and Ennis are so close during childhood but suddenly have not talked to each other for decades. I even like the house itself because you know something strange is going on, not necessarily a ghost or a haunting but something that is not quite right. I like story about the pressures of living with fame simply because of the legacy of their mother. All of these things are interesting on their own, but the way the pieces are put together The Children does not live up to the potential. This is because all of the pieces are being constructed for a big reveal, but there are no significant little reveals. This is a story where many moments could be bigger than they are, but these moments are not written with enough significance to create a small climaxes. The only focus is the slow steady journey to the one big one. These small climax moments are there, but they are ignored. For example one of the writers wants an underaged Guin to sit on his lap. When her father sees, he hits the guy and the guy leaves immediately leaves the house. That’s the story. There is no real fallout besides him leaving, no fight between husband and wife who is allowing these strangers to come stay at the house without any sense of who they are, no conversation with Guin as to why she needs to stay away from the adults, that none of them can be trusted. Instead it is just a small incident with no repercussions, no family fallout, and no real change in behavior. This is just a story. This is one of many examples of what makes this novel one of those books that is beautiful to read but that needs more tension and more peaks and valleys in the plot. All of this could happen without showing any of the final big reveal. 

A story about family dynamics is one that I enjoy reading, especially when the parents are artists and trying to balance the fantasy world that they are living in with the art and the reality of the everyday care of their household. Unfortunately in The Children, we get the potential of some really good exploration in this balance and the results of being horrible at it. Instead we get a story that feels flat and static. At the end of the story, the reveal is not interesting enough to carry the hundreds of pages it took to lead up to the finale. 

I received this as an ARC from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.