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iceangel9's review
3.0
Timothy and Abigail are having nightmares that seem very very real. When they team up for a school project they realize their nightmares may be related to a curse. The curse stems from a strange artifact that is stolen from the museum the day their school science class goes there on a field trip. The two friends realize that if they don't solve this mystery they, and others, they care about will die. What will they have to do to make "the nightmarys" go away?
audreyintheheadphones's review
4.0
"Your father's journal was in the safe?" said Abigail.
"I slipped it into my coat pocket when that librarian wasn't looking," said Jack. "No one ever suspects the old man." He winked. "We get away with so much."
Synopsis: In the fine John Bellairs tradition of Old Men Are Fucking Dangerous, Y'All, an old man kidnaps children in Massachusetts and Shirley Jackson arm-wrestles Michael McDowell to get them back.
Bear with me on this.
I started talking about John Bellairs' theme of Crazy Old Men Will Destroy Us All over at Smash Attack Reads yesterday, and I remain convinced that this is one of two main takeaways from Bellairs' books. The other is Listen To Children, but that's not what's important right now. What's important is that I must find and consume Dan Poblocki's new book*, which apparently takes place in an abandoned mental asylum because sometimes your prayers to the gods really do get answered.
In The Nightmarys, there's a boy with ineffective parents, a Gulf War vet brother and a complicated friendship. He meets up with a girl with an awesome matriarchal family and creepy-ass nightmares: specifically nightmares about two mean girls from her old school (both named Mary) who now manifest in her bedroom at night looking like something shlupped out of a sump pump but with frilly dresses. There's a trip to a museum, swimming practice, a cranky librarian, a lighthouse, a decades-old mystery, a cursed book, some bat-shit crazy old men and a variety of awesome hallucinations.
At least I hope they're hallucinations. And therein lies the best part of the book: the hallucinightmares. (What else can you call it when your nightmares invade your waking space?)
Like this, for example:
[Timothy] noticed that his own closet light was on. At the base of the door, a small white line reflected onto the dark wood floor. The light had not been on when he'd gotten into bed an hour earlier.
Take just a moment with me and focus on those three lines.
Read them again.
Now, think back to your younger self -- hell, think about your self last night in bed, because let me tell you: if I had been in bed for an hour, and I was positive that the light in my closet had not been on when I'd gotten into the bed but I can see it on now? I would have some sort of moment of the sort where you're torn between running screaming from the room and just lying there quietly shitting yourself unconscious.
It's a great moment, the kind of thing that was basically always happening in The Haunting of Hill House and Michael McDowell's books, this kind of terror of the mundane: things that should be dependable with their constancy refuse to cooperate. And there are more than a few in this book AND THEY'RE ALL AWESOME.
Additionally, I have the paperback version of this book and it's just really well designed. I know that's dorky but hello, look where you are. The cover's great, the book is a strange and hand-happy size, the paper's nice and thick, the font is actually lickable (I checked) and there are epigraphssssssss yesssssss. My only complaint is that the title on the cover has been puffed up with some weird font effects thing, but I'll live. I can soldier on past that.
Oh, and this book passes the Bechdel Test. :D
According the Acknowledgements section (yes, I do read those -- introductions too), part of the book was inspired by a series of Victorian ghost paintings by Charles Beyer, so now, if you'll excuse me, I'm off to track those down. If I'm not back in a week, send help. Just don't leave my closet light on, because I know for certain that my closet doesn't even have a light, so I'm just opening that door with a flamethrower.
*His first book involves banishing monster lake-dogs, and as I am generally pro-monster-lake-dogs, I'm going to skip books where they get banished. Or even whupped on the tentacle-laden snouts with a rolled-up newspaper. It is just how I roll, people.
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