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Title: House of Dolls by Francesca Lia Block, illustrated by Barbara McClintock
Details: Copyright 2010, HarperCollins
Synopsis (By Way of Front Flap): "In a little house from another time, with lace curtains in every window and paintings hung in gold doily frames, Wildflower, Rockstar, and Miss Selene live a warm and cozy life. They wear fancy dresses, bake play-dough cakes, and spend their days enjoying one another's company.
For the three dolls, life is small but good.
But life is not good for Madison Blackberry, the owner of the dollhouse. Her grandmother pays more attention to the dolls than to her. The dolls have one another, but she is lonely in her big, empty apartment.
Then one day, as things always do— even for dolls— everything changes.
This beautiful story from the acclaimed team of Francesca Lia Block, author of such novels as Weetzie Bat, and Barbara McClintock, author and illustrator of many picture books, including Adèle & Simon, brings to life the power of love, family, and friendship."
Why I Wanted to Read It: I've loved the work of Francesca Lia Block since I was a kid. Recently, I've been delighted to rediscover her and find out her work, even her work from decades ago, holds up stunningly well. With that in mind and with the wonderful magic I got from reading her work recently, I set out to find all of her work that I had missed.
How I Liked It: Now here's a funny story. Stephen King, the famous author, tells it frequently at public events and he told it in a recent short story collection. Once, a woman recognized him and told him that him writing horror, that was fine. But why can't he write something inspirational, like The Shawshank Redemption? Stephen King replied that he had wrote The Shawshank Redemption. The woman stared at him for a beat, and then responded,
"No, you didn't."
He tells the story in part because it's funny (Stephen King obviously wrote the short story "Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption" that would later become the famous film The Shawshank Redemption), and in part because writers usually get a reputation for only writing in the genre of the their most famous work; in King's case, horror.
So what happens when a legendary YA author like Francesca Lia Block decides to write a children's book?
First, the book! Poor Madison Blackberry. The little girl lives a lonely life in the family's spotless gray and white penthouse, with a mother too busy socializing and father too busy with work and the news. A bratty little brother, Dallas George, takes whatever attention is left, and Madison is so lonesome she's started to envy her dolls their happy-seeming life, wishing she could live in the dollhouse with them. The dollhouse, passed on from Madison's grandmother (it was hers as a girl; her father made it) contains Wildflower, Madison's grandmother's doll (her boyfriend Guy, an army figure, is a far more recent addition), Rockstar, a disappointing gift one Hanukkah (wanting a glamorous doll, Madison gave the bookish doll she received instead the name to "remind herself of her mother's injustice", pg 8) who is dating a stuffed bear boy doll named B. Friend (his name was "Boyfriend" but "because he was not really a boy, the dolls called him B. (as in bear) Friend for short", pg 9), and lastly Miss Selene, a beautiful delicate fairy doll with pointed ears and beautiful clothing, who is partaking of beautiful clothing (made by Madison's grandmother) to fill a strange void that she forgot something.
Madison Blackberry doesn't play with the dolls much, since they make her feel even lonelier, so the dolls pretty much remember and discuss glory days when Madison Blackberry's grandmother controlled the dollhouse. Bored, unhappy, and without friends, one day Madison Blackberry sends Guy off to war (a box in the closet) having been given the idea by her father's attention to the news, and poor B. Friend has disappeared to Dallas George's toybox with one arm ripped out and his handmade glasses ruined. That not being enough apparently, she also strips away the dolls' beautiful clothing. The dolls themselves undergo changes as a result. Wildflower wants to change the world, something she had felt "during another war, when she belonged to Grandmother" (pg 28). Rockstar takes up reading, reading all the books in the dollhouse bookcase. Miss Selene, without her beautiful clothes as distraction, falls into despair, mourning for something she'd been trying to forget, evidenced by the empty baby's cradle she tends.
Wildflower finds Miss Selene by the empty cradle rocking it gently, and decides to reach out to Madison Blackberry's grandmother. She leaves a scrap of paper that says only "dress" and, noting the disrepair of the dollhouse, Madison Blackberry's grandmother leaves additional paper scraps for the dolls to tell her more. Miss Selene sketches three dresses and makes a big wish for Madison Blackberry's grandmother to make Madison Blackberry a dress, and to love Madison Blackberry the way her grandmother's mother had loved her. Grandmother gets the message and grants the wishes, spending time with her granddaughter and telling her about her great-grandmother. She makes her a beautiful dress and full of the love and attention she's finally been shown, Madison Blackberry returns Guy from the war. She goes looking for B. Friend and though he's missing an arm and his handmade glasses, she stitches him up. And finally, she retrieves a matchbox she'd hidden that contains what Miss Selene missed most of all (a tiny baby doll that Madison Blackberry had apparently taken before the story started). She brings back the doll's clothes as well and starts playing with them, really, for what sounds like the first time.
The dolls are happy, and Madison Blackberry's mother decides to spend some time with her daughter, reading her The Doll's House, her book as a girl. Madison Blackberry's father checks back in as well, coming in as his wife is reading to their daughter to announce, with tears in his eyes, that the war is over.
If you've noticed a theme of war and change within even my short summary of the story, you're not wrong. War is a recurring theme in the book.
Grandmother sat in front of the dollhouse and talked. She said, "My name is Rose; Wildflower knows that. She belonged to me when I was a girl. Came with the house. I was so excited! My very own world where nothing could go wrong. Everything that was beautiful about the real world and none of the sadness. Even after my mother was killed during the war..."
The dolls heard the word war and shivered where they lay on the parquet floor.
"Even after that time, this house made me feel safe. But now look at you!"(pgs 42 and 43)
"What was war like?" Wildflower asked.
And Guy whispered, "War is being blinded and locked in a box, unable to see, hear, or touch you, my wildflower. War is being reminded that you are completely at the mercy of death at every moment, without the illusion that you are not. Without the distractions that make life worth living." (pgs 54 and 55)
Madison's father was not away on a business trip that night. He had been home watching the news. He came into the room as Madison was falling asleep. He stood in the doorway, a tall shadow surrounded by light from the hall. Madison and her mother looked up at him. Then Madison's father spoke. His voice was soft with tears, almost unrecognizable.
"The war is over, my loves," he said.
Madison saw him through her half-closed eyes. She knew he was right; it was. (pgs 60 and 61)
Block is no stranger to covering serious issues. Her at times downright revolutionary Queer characters in her YA work have kept various titles on the banned list, and the struggles they have (and victories) are largely realistic ones.
So one of my all-time favorite authors tackling a serious subject and in a book about dolls and dollhouses, one of my favorite subjects (From Frances Hodgson Burnett's The Racketty-Packetty House to Marjorie Filley Stover's Midnight in the Dollhouse and When the Dolls Woke to Betty Ren Wright's The Dollhouse Murders, dolls and dollhouses are usually an endlessly evergreen source of entertainment when it comes to kids books), especially for children's stories? This seems like it should be a slam dunk win.
But unfortunately, it just doesn't quite work.
Block is the most beautiful kind of maximalist in her writing, and generally children's books require a kind of minimalism, especially when you're working with an illustrator. Since Block didn't quite reign in or adjust her lushness for this book, already the beat was already a bit off.
On top of that, there's clearly a point to be made here, and that Block is trying to make, a lesson to learn. But she's not sharing it with us. The inattentive parents have created a bored, lonely, unhappy child. So is it a book about that? Kind of. Given the prominence of war in the book, though, and the emphasis on happy distractions to make life worth living, Block's got something else on her mind.
I freely admit, I spend a considerable amount of time trying to figure out when and where this book takes place, trying to have that help for context. Published in 2010 when the US was still embroiled in the war in Iraq and in Afghanistan (and would remain in Afghanistan for over a decade longer), is Block talking about the then-present day? But then to what war is Grandmother referring when she said her mother died in the war? If this isn't America, wouldn't the fact Grandmother is an immigrant perhaps come up? I starting thinking maybe Block is setting this in the 1970s based on some of the illustrations (several of the line work of Barbara McClintock's drawings have a kind of Art Noveau revival style that came back into popularity in the 1960s and '70s). But that would make Grandmother too old for it to be World War II she's referring to and also, there's this line:
Rockstar also read the miniature LIFE magazines from the 70s that were in the wooden magazine stand. Although they were out-of-date, they gave her a sense of the world beyond the dollhouse. (pg 29)
So the present day, although the Iraq War wouldn't be over for another year after publication, so we're not sure to what war Madison Blackberry's father is referring when he tearfully declares it over.
But ultimately, I think (and this is after some consideration) the point Block is trying to make isn't so much about a specific war so much as war in general. Madison Blackberry's parental neglect and lack of love has caused her to enact cruelty on her doll kingdom, to steal a baby from its parent, to separate lovers and send a soldier off to war, to leave behind the missing, to deny resources and otherwise punish her dolls. When properly shown love and attention, she reunites the dolls with each other, gives them back their clothes, and plays with and cares for them again. It could be argued that Block is making the point that world leaders that plunge their countries into war are acting like misbehaving children, or more likely that they were denied love and care themselves as children, and loving childhoods prevent world wars.
But that point is pretty muddled and not as apparent as the book might want you to think, and it's meant to be a children's book.
As for the illustrations, while they have a certain loveliness that might pair well with Block in other circumstances, sadly here they more or less turn into something in which to search for context.
This isn't to say there isn't a whisper of the Block magic still within.
In the garden was a real bonsai tree and a reflecting pool made from a pocket mirror tucked into a lawn of real moss. The floors were tiled with black-and-white parquet or softly carpeted, and the walls were covered with floral paper, foil mirrors, and paintings in gold doily frames. Above the dining room table was a silver chandelier fixed with birthday candles. Silk and lace curtains hung at every window. (pg 4)
Madison Blackberry's grandmother had crocheted the runner that went all the way up the polished wood staircase that led to the nursery with the empty cradle, and she had sewed all the silk and lace curtains at the windows. The dresses she made for the dolls were ornate concoctions, interpretations of styles from every era. There were dresses that made the dolls feel like ice-cream sundaes, flowers, seashells, cocoons, butterflies, angels, goddesses, rock stars, heavenly stars, and moons. In their spellbinding dresses the dolls spent their evenings talking, singing, dancing, and baking tiny play-dough cakes with Guy and B. Friend. (pg 10)
But sadly as a whole, the book just falls flat.
While Block has a reputation for YA and her YA work is considered some of the best the genre has ever produced, certainly she shouldn't be limited to YA. While this venture into children's literature may have flopped, hopefully she'll test the waters again and make the Block magic truly work in a new realm. Who knows, Block could develop a reputation for children's literature after all.
Final Grade: C
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