The Meat
So here's the deal: the author—who has one of the coolest
first names ever!—is a vintage photograph collector, and he noticed that old
photos of children are sometimes pretty weird. From among his vast collection,
he chose some of the weirdest and decided to use these peculiar photographs as
the skeleton of a supernatural story. He even interweaves the fifty chosen
photos, almost all of which are unaltered, into the text of the story, which is
a wonderful idea. Beyond helping readers visualize the sort of strange, magical
children he had in mind in his story, it also gives us an unusual degree of
insight into how and why he was inspired to write the story as he did. In other
words, the photos are a kind of glimpse into authorial process and intent.
All of this is
great, and it's made better by, in terms of style, the distinctly above average
quality of the writing. This was his first book, and for a first effort it's
very well written, though the dialogue and exposition in the second half leave
something to be desired. And in some ways, the story is intriguing—in the
current cycle of superhero worship, who can't get behind the idea of kids with
bizarre powers, after all? And for existentialists, or simply jaded
ex-fantasy/superhero/ sci fi junkies bored of the usual fare, the experience of
reading this image-integrated book is almost unique, and should win points for
the value the photos and the format added.
Where the book
definitely loses points, though, is in the development of the plot and
characters. Without giving too much away, there is a strong resemblance to the central
conceit of the movie Groundhog Day at
work in the story, but unlike the mesmerizing character development of Phil, the
characters ensconced in this particular story's temporal anomaly show not a
single trace of the 'sadder and a wiser man' effect of having to relive the
same period of time. Moreover, roughly halfway through the reader is savaged by
a sustained barrage of exposition—bad enough on general principle—but made
worse still by the strikingly arbitrary nature of many of the rules governing
the magical aspects of the world. So we readers have no choice but simply to
accept, no questions asked, that the mysterious antagonists are invisible to
almost everyone (why?) but their shadows can be seen (double why?) and they
become fully visible when feeding (triple why?) but they can't enter time
anomalies (sigh) but their more evolved bad guy handlers can (double sigh) and
plus only women who can change into a certain flighty type of animal can
manipulate time (triple sigh).
To be sure, many
stories of the supernatural suffer from this sort of totally arbitrary
provision (why can't vampires cross running water? Is it just me, or is
Quiddich total nonsense? And don't even get me started on the infuriatingly
random 'rules' of the magic charms in I Am Number Four!). But I think
there are two kinds of arbitrariness in such stories, or rather two types of
stories that contain arbitrariness: 1) stories which are very well thought out
and planned, in which such 'take on faith' provisos have been reduced to the fewest
possible number; and 2) unmanaged 'hey, I saw a guy without visible pupils in one
of my photos so I'm just going to make all the bad guys pupil-less!' chaos. I'm
sure you can guess into which category Miss
Peregrine falls, or rather plummets.
This might one of
those exceedingly rare cases where the ridiculous phrase 'one's greatest
strength is also one's greatest weakness' is accurate. The strength of this
story is the integration of the photos and, to some extent, the inspiration the
author drew from them to shape the story. But that is certainly also a serious
weakness, because if those photos are the bones on which the flesh of the story
is hung, it resembles no skeleton I've ever seen—it's all a-jumble, haphazard,
ad hoc. The author mentioned in an interview included at the back of the book
that he's worked in the T.V. and film worlds, which I paradoxically find hard
to believe (surely no trained film writer could get away with such clumsy
exposition, where after a certain point the main characters just sit around for
ages and, essentially, say 'on camera' everything the reader must know for the
story to make sense?) and all too easy (the brainstorming 'hey, let's make the
monsters have lots of tongues and stuff cause that'd look cool!' kind of aspect).
 |
| All I could think of when I read the lengthy exposition about the monsters--full of made-up-on-the-spot rules and provisos--was "Yeah, sure, like how the Golden Snitch is worth 150 points and ends the game--cause that makes sense!" |
So I'm deeply
ambivalent about the creative process out of which this book sprang, fully if
bizarrely formed. On one hand, it's a true pleasure to read a story integrated
with (as opposed to merely decorated with) visual stimuli. But to let said
stimuli shape and limit the story feels like kind of a questionable move.
Sequels are planned, but now the die is cast and all the silly, totally
arbitrary rules Riggs made up off the cuff while looking at his photographs are
set in stone, and he has to try to write himself out of the consequences of
those haphazard decisions in later books. For myself, I hope he succeeds,
because despite its faults, Miss
Peregrine was great fun and a unique experience!
The Math
Baseline assessment: 7/10
Bonuses: +1 for having photos and +1 for seamlessly
integrating them into the story/text
Penalties: -1 for huge slabs of rather clumsy exposition, -1
for the 'hey, that'd be cool!' vibe in making of the rules of the world, -1 for
failing to deliver, characterization-wise, any of the Groundhog Day-esque dividends one might reasonably expect from the
time anomaly plot device
Nerd coefficient: 6/10
"Still enjoyable, but the flaws are hard to ignore"
Before you get on my case for unnecessary harshness, know
this: 6/10 is actually pretty good!
