Through the Dolls' House Door

by Jane Gardam

When Mary and her friend Claire were younger they spent many happy times playing with their special dolls and their antique dollhouse. The dollhouse was home to Miss Bossy, a Dutch doll: Cry, a sad rag doll: Sigger the girls' pretend friend, and other doll friends.

Over the years the dolls keep each other company. Now Mary and Claire have children of their own. No one has played with the dolls for a long time. They are worried about Sigger, who has almost disappeared, and can't be saved until children play with the dolls again.

Will new children come back in time to save Sigger and look through the dolls' house door once again?

Genres: Childrens, Fiction

128 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1987

About the author

Jane Mary Gardam was an English writer of children's and adult fiction and literary critic. She also penned reviews for The Spectator and The Telegraph, and wrote for BBC Radio. She lived in Kent, Wimbledon, and Yorkshire. She won numerous literary awards, including the Whitbread Award twice. She was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in the 2009 New Year Honours.

Reviews

[Manybooks · Rating 3 out of 5]

Jane Gardam's Through the Dolls' House Door (1987) revolves around a group of dolls residing in an antique dollhouse which is shared by British schoolgirls (best friends) Marie and Claire who imaginatively and with much delight play with the dollhouse and its inhabitants during their childhood, before growing up, no longer playing with toys and finally starting families of their own. And during the time that the girls' dollhouse sits abandoned (for many years), Gardam has the dolls coming to life in Through the Dolls' House Door and sustaining themselves by recounting their individual histories, showing and telling their varied biographies to one another (ranging from mythical tales of ancient battles to the craftsmanship behind their creation), that is until the dollhouse in Through the Dolls' House Door is finally rediscovered by the next generation of children and played with again (and thus giving once more increased energy, vigour and life to the dolls, to wooden Dutch doll Miss Bossy, to sad rag doll Cry, to toy soldier the General but especially to Sigger, who as an imaginary playmate for Marie and Claire is therefore most in danger of fading away without children playing with the dollhouse).

Now I tend to very much enjoy Jane Gardam as an author, and yes, I do appreciate (and also enjoy) the thematics of Through the Dolls' House Door (see above) and how Gardam nicely employs humour and inventive storytelling to portray the dolls' personalities and backstories, creating a whimsical and poignant reflection on childhood, on memory, on the magic inherent in toys that have been passed down through families, and that playthings such as dolls also do need to be actively played with to become real but also to remain alive and vital. Therefore regarding the textual building blocks of and for Through the Dolls' House Door, concerning Jane Gardam's specific details of the dollhouse, of the dolls' stories and the necessity of active and imaginative play, indeed for both my inner middle grade reader and for adult me, Through the Dolls' House Door is solidly four stars (but not yet quite five stars for Through the Dolls' House Door either, since rag dog Cry with her constant whining and complaining does get a bit on my, or rather on our nerves and feels too much like a frustrating sob-fest).

But just to say and to point out why my rating for Through the Dolls' House Door (albeit themes and contents are generally and most definitely delightful) has to be lowered from four to three stars, well, with Gardam's narrative style of Through the Doll's House Door being primarily multi-perspective narration (as the dolls, as Bossy, Cry, the General and Sigger telling their own stories to one another thus have and equally so need their own voices), sorry, but the non-linear elements of Through the Dolls' House Door due to frequent jumps back and forth in time, this does result in rather a lot of confusion regarding timelines and pacing. And indeed, while my inner child and adult I have certainly appreciated (and also enjoyed) what Jane Gardam has penned with Through the Dolls' House Door, the above mentioned pacing issues, time jumps and the like are hugely textually distracting and have also as such taken away quite a goodly chunk of our reading pleasure (and to the point that our three star rating for and of Through the Dolls' House Door is in fact quite generous).

[WF · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a whimsical, niche book. I enjoyed it as an escape from work, but don't expect many people today to like it much, including its target audience, children.

[Bethany · Rating 3 out of 5]

I love doll/dollhouse stories and have since childhood. It hits me hard as an adult how intrinsically melancholic they are. You'd think as a child I would've understood more how sad it can be to have no control over one's life. I suppose I didn't have to consider it much, having had a happy childhood.

The timeline and pacing of this book confused me a lot. At one point, I read the back of the book and got further confused because it gave a piece of information that the book hadn't revealed and I thought that I had missed even more. Sigger is an imaginary friend/doll. Which was an interesting and emotional element that I wish hadn't been spoiled!

Ultimately, I was not as charmed by this as I wanted to be. Child-me might've liked it better, but I don't think it would've been a favorite.

[Charlotte · Rating 3 out of 5]

I really really liked the first book by Gardam I read (Bilgewater), and all her other books have disappointed me. I also have come to the conclusion that I don't actually like stories about the sentient dolls in dollhouses. Oh well. I gave it three stars because it's fine, and not without interest, but will not every want to read it again.

[David Goodday · Rating 2 out of 5]

A dolls house and the toys that were its occupants, are abandoned by the family's children as they grew older. However the toys within its walls lived on. Eventually, as the children (now adult) reminisce about their upbringing, they recall how wonderful the dolls house was.
They find their cherished dolls house abandoned in an outside store of the house in which their parents moved too and although in a sorry state, its occupants are found relatively intact within, much to their delight.
This is a rather strange book. The stories that are narrated by the abandoned toys as they wait to be rediscovered are not what I would call, childrens stories, although they do contain a fantasy element.

[Daniel Polansky]

Toy Story but done with a precious smallness. A lovely digression, very different from the other stuff I read by Gardam, all of which if memory serves were well-drawn character studies of serious English people. Always impressive to see a skilled writer break successfully in an unfamiliar direction.

[Sherry · Rating 3 out of 5]

a book to be read to children but it has this oddly adult attitude...with snide commentary.
Amusing

[Dani · Rating 1 out of 5]

Booooring. Who wants to read dialog between dolls. Way too cutesy. But I only got a few pages in, so it might have gotten good. Who knows. But I loved the first two lines.

[False · Rating 3 out of 5]

A children's book. Fantasy. The history of a childhood, a dollhouse, and the dolls that inhabit it...are abandoned, recovered in adulthood and cherished for ever after.