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Read Aunt Maria by Diana Wynne Jones
May. 7th, 2015 11:13 pmAunt Maria ( also published under the title Black Maria in some places) is a story about a girl called Mig, her older brother, Chris, and their mother, who all end up going to stay with their Aunt Maria in the town of Cranbury-on-Sea, shortly after their father dies.
It soon becomes obvious their stay is not going to be pleasant. Aunt Maria looks like a sweet, teddy bearish old woman, but she is a master of using passive-aggression, guilt, peer pressure, verbal domination, and selective deafness in order to manipulate people into doing exactly what she wants. She manipulates Mig and her mother into keeping house for her and tries to force Mig and Chris into the roles of her dear little relations. While presenting herself as a demure and polite little old lady, Aunt Maria serves as the matriarch of Cranbury and little goes on in the small town that she doesn't know about.
As if that wasn't bad enough, it quickly becomes apparent that there's something very strange going on in Cranbury. There's a cat who looks exactly like Lavinia, Aunt Maria's former carer who abruptly left Cranbury, a car that closely resembles the one Mig and Chris's father died in, a ghost that keeps appearing in Chris's bedroom, and all the men and children of Cranbury appear to have no will of their own. And the more Mig and Chris investigate Cranbury, the more it becomes apparent their family is in serious danger.
Although the book is marketed as a children's fantasy novel, most of it reads like a horror novel to me. It's just that the horror this plays off of is a particularly adolescent one- the horror of being trapped in the same boring, narrow-minded community where your parents grew up, trapped under the thumb of emotionally abusive adults who disrespect your personal identity in order to mold you into being what they want you to be. (Aunt Maria, for instance, insists that Mig be called by her disliked birth name, Naomi, since that was the name of Aunt Maria's daughter.)
Around the second half of the book however, a "Battle of the Sexes" theme becomes apparent and you realize that DWJ is trying to make a point about gender equality. Nothing wrong with this theme, but it does read like DWJ is trying to write through her own issues with sexism and gender identity and since this book was published over two decades ago some of the way it's presented can feel a bit awkward. So I personally felt this part of the book was less compelling than the horror aspects.
It soon becomes obvious their stay is not going to be pleasant. Aunt Maria looks like a sweet, teddy bearish old woman, but she is a master of using passive-aggression, guilt, peer pressure, verbal domination, and selective deafness in order to manipulate people into doing exactly what she wants. She manipulates Mig and her mother into keeping house for her and tries to force Mig and Chris into the roles of her dear little relations. While presenting herself as a demure and polite little old lady, Aunt Maria serves as the matriarch of Cranbury and little goes on in the small town that she doesn't know about.
As if that wasn't bad enough, it quickly becomes apparent that there's something very strange going on in Cranbury. There's a cat who looks exactly like Lavinia, Aunt Maria's former carer who abruptly left Cranbury, a car that closely resembles the one Mig and Chris's father died in, a ghost that keeps appearing in Chris's bedroom, and all the men and children of Cranbury appear to have no will of their own. And the more Mig and Chris investigate Cranbury, the more it becomes apparent their family is in serious danger.
Although the book is marketed as a children's fantasy novel, most of it reads like a horror novel to me. It's just that the horror this plays off of is a particularly adolescent one- the horror of being trapped in the same boring, narrow-minded community where your parents grew up, trapped under the thumb of emotionally abusive adults who disrespect your personal identity in order to mold you into being what they want you to be. (Aunt Maria, for instance, insists that Mig be called by her disliked birth name, Naomi, since that was the name of Aunt Maria's daughter.)
Around the second half of the book however, a "Battle of the Sexes" theme becomes apparent and you realize that DWJ is trying to make a point about gender equality. Nothing wrong with this theme, but it does read like DWJ is trying to write through her own issues with sexism and gender identity and since this book was published over two decades ago some of the way it's presented can feel a bit awkward. So I personally felt this part of the book was less compelling than the horror aspects.
