Reviews

Gr 9 Up A Christmas story that takes place on the beach in a sunny New Zealand December. Mahy's fans will not be surprised to learn that it is also a love story in which one of the lovers is a ghost. To most of the Hamilton family, the three young men who drop in on their holiday seem to be ordinary, although eccentric, visitors. To 17-year-old Ariadne (always called Harry), they are much more than that, perhaps ghosts, or even characters come alive from a story she is writing. Mahy has caught the essence of the adolescent's painful separateness; cut off from her childhood, Harry stands alone in her family. Whatever they are, the Tricksters act as a catalyst, drawing Harry out of childhood and causing her to raise the family's tensions and reveal their secrets. A theme touched on in The Changeover: a Supernatural Romance (Atheneum, 1984) reappears here, that of a young girl coming to terms not only with her own sexuality, but with her parents' sexuality as well. The intricate threads of personalities and plot weave together into a fine web of vivid language. Few writers have Mahy's skill at integrating the supernatural with daily life. She manages to enrich each in the process, just as the revelation precipitated by the visitors, painful as it is, ends by enriching the Hamiltons' lives and changing the three spirits as well. Ruth S. Vose, San Francisco Public Library

In one of Mahy's best works, three brothers show up at Harry's house and she doesn't know whether they are aspects of her own imagination, or terrifying supernatural forces. Ages 12-up. (Oct.)