In which I read Kari Maaren's Weave A Circle Round
I read this book last March and I STILL don’t know how to talk about it. Other than “I absolutely love it and Freddy is my new favourite”, I don’t know what to say about this book. See, it was pitched to me as “Diana Wynne Jones meets Madeleine L’Engle” and weirdly enough, that’s exactly how it felt like to me, like these two favourites of mine got together and made this weird lovable baby.
But first, the plot. Or maybe, what plot? It was kind of a messy story in which nothing happens and also too many things happen, which I did not mind at all because it was a fun ride. There was Freddy, a young girl who only wanted to be invisible. She knew that she was different and that different was bad (as far as getting along at school went) and that to survive she needed to not be noticed by others.
But this became increasingly difficult for her, as her step-brother was not only deaf; he was very smart and didn’t mind letting others know it. And then there was her sister Mel, who was also smart, and imagined herself a private detective of sorts.
And just when things seemed like they couldn’t get worse for Freddy, the siblings became acquainted to their new neighbours, who were definitely nowhere near normal. When Cuerva Lachance and Josiah moved in next door, Freddy began to notice things that were too strange to ignore.
This story felt like if you mushed the weirdness of Hexwood and Homeward Bounderstogether with the Time Quartet which I guess is very good and also kind of not. It was very good for me, because I loved all of these things and think that this book pulled it off rather well. But the end result meant that it read kind of like a YA novel but also not, with kind of a Middle Grade vibe (or rather, that of an old-fashioned children’s book, which is what DWJ and ML books are, I guess) despite being a little more sophisticated than the newer MG being published now. It shouldn’t matter because what it was was a Really Good Book, but as a bookseller I did think that these things made selling this book a little more difficult, and that readers of mostly grown-up fantasy may be a little baffled by this book because much like my favourite old-timey children’s fiction, this book didn’t go out of the way to explain every little thing. I was reminded of the assumption Diana Wynne Jones wrote about in her essay “Two Kinds of Writing?”, on the difference between writing for children and writing for adults:
I found myself thinking as I wrote, “These poor adults are never going to understand this; I must explain it to them twice more and then remind them again later in different terms.” Now this is something I never have to think when I write for younger readers. Children are used to making an effort to understand. They are asked for this effort every hour of every school day and, though they may not make the effort willingly, they at least expect it. In addition, nearly everyone between the ages of nine and fifteen is amazingly good at solving puzzles and following complicated plots - this being the happy result of many hours spent at computer games and watching television. I can rely on this. I can make my plots for them as complex as I please, and yet I know I never have to explain them more than once (or twice at the very most).
This seemed to be the problem with this book, at least with the adults I’ve spoken to who couldn’t get into it. (I’m happy to say that I know more adults who are used to reading kids’ books and therefore did not find Weave A Circle Round a difficult or confusing read.)
Still, I absolutely loved this book and wished I could’ve read it when I was younger, so that Freddy’s story could sit on my shelves with Meg Murry’s and Polly Whittacker’s and Ann Staveley’s. I loved that the kids had parents that were “nice” but also neglectful, rather than sticking to being all-good or all-bad - it made them more real to me, especially having grown up with equally neglectful adults. I loved that Freddy was smart and prickly and annoying and all-around amazing, but all that she wanted was to be ordinary. I loved the use of poetry in the magic of the story which made me think of Howl’s Moving Castle, but only because it was the only other book I’ve read that used poetry this well. And most of all, I loved that this was a story about how stories were important, and not just that - that stories in ALL FORMS were important, and that a storyteller is a storyteller, whether you’re a skald or a famous writer or a Dungeons & Dragons GM.