Read All The Books Aaaaaah! discussion
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The House with a Clock in Its Walls
Joy 2022
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The House with a Clock in Its Walls
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So the plot is that there are lots of witches and warlocks in this town, and the previous owner of the titular house (now deceased) was an evil warlock who has hidden a magic clock somewhere literally in the walls, and now Lewis' uncle Jonathan (who is also a warlock) owns the house and has been alternately trying to find the clock, or drown out its ticking by filling the house with clocks of his own. Since the old warlock was said to be evil, one presumes that the hidden clock is there to fulfill some evil purpose.
This was published in 1973, but is set in 1948. But unlike in The Ghost Belonged to Me, which I read last year, John Bellairs isn't including much period-specific flavour like Richard Peck did in his books. So far all I've really noticed is that Lewis is really into reading travel books by John L. Stoddard, and that Jonathan has a car with running boards along the sides.There is, however, a lot of witchcraft flavour. Bellairs is dropping names of real historical occultists and describing real rituals and witchy holidays.
Another thing I've noticed is a plot development that's suspiciously similar to the main plot development in A Wizard of Earthsea, which surprisingly to me was published in 1968, five years before this book. In both books, the main character is a socially-awkward youth who is driven to recklessly prove himself in front of a popular kid by performing a dangerous necromantic ritual, which sets something loose that he'll have to deal with over the course of the rest of the book.
A very quick read. The big threat is dealt with pretty quickly, maybe a little too easily and conveniently at the very end, and the subplot of Lewis trying to save his uneven friendship with the popular kid is sort of dealt with offscreen as Lewis just reports that he's made a new friend that we don't see.It was an interesting choice for Bellairs to show the evil witch using a Hand of Glory without telling the reader its name or explaining how it works, just describing it and showing its effects, though unless you knew what a Hand of Glory was already, it wasn't clear that the effects were being caused by it, rather than by the staff she was carrying. Bellairs gives its name and explains its use after the climax is dealt with, and explains that Lewis knew what it was from reading those John L. Stoddard books that were mentioned before, where he apparently describes them. I knew what they were already thanks to Vincent Price, and I expect that Seanan McGuire book Middlegame has probably taught a lot of people about them more recently.
The stakes in this book were actually huge, but the characters didn't really treat them as if they were. Jonathan and Florence are the only wizards we actually meet in this book aside from the evil witch and warlock, but they've mentioned numerous others, so one would think that they'd want to call in some help against this world-ending threat instead of sitting around biding their time wondering what to do until Lewis went over to set things in motion.
I had no idea this book was the first in a series, let alone that it's 12 books long! Bellairs wrote the first 4, and then it was taken over by Brad Strickland after Bellairs' death (with Strickland also completing the unfinished book 4). This was fun enough, but I don't think I'll be exploring the rest of them, as it's middle grade.
So far, it's been pretty upbeat aside from the fact that the main character is going to live at his uncle's mansion because his parents were killed. But this uncle isn't anything like Count Olaf of A Series of Unfortunate Events, despite my comparison. He seems to be a cheerful and fun person, and I can totally picture Jack Black playing him.
The only hint of the plot so far is that whenever the clocks chime, Uncle Jonathan goes into some kind of trance until the chimes stop. Maybe other people do, too, but it's not clear about that yet.