The Magic Toyshop

Oh man, what do I love more than a young, plucky female protagonist? It’s always refreshing to have one not only in my own personal reading, but in my syllabi at school. I had no idea what to expect when we started The Magic Toyshop, but finding out the protagonist was a spirited fifteen-year-old girl had me ready to dive in.

This book made me even more scared of swans. Thanks, college. 

This book was capital-C Creepy and capital-D Disturbing (what I’m assuming the author was going for). We talked a lot about this book in conversation with Gothic novels—it’s got similar imagery and a literal creepy uncle.

                
What this book does that’s really interesting is that it unabashedly tackles a lot of issues at once without being too overwhelming. There’s the Gothic element, the damsel-in-distress problems (in two characters, interestingly enough), and the “typical” teenage-girl-finding-herself issues. That last one doesn’t seem cliché in this book, though, because Carter writes about Melanie’s problems in such a way that you don’t feel like they’re the same problems you’ve read over and over again.

                
A lot of people in class were pretty disturbed by the protagonist’s blatant ownership of her sexuality. Right off the bat, Melanie (who is fifteen at the beginning of the novel) takes possession of her own body. She’s not ashamed to talk about herself—something that’s refreshing to see. Remember all those Judy Blume books you read as a kid? This is those books, sped up times a hundred and mixed together with a mysterious/creepy/fascinating story of two groups of siblings and their attempts to escape the tyranny of the patriarch of the house.

4/5