The House On Parchment Street (1978) - Plot & Excerpts
This book reminded me of Maggie Prince's "The House on Hound Hill" and Penelope Lively's "The Ghost of Thomas Kempe" because of the similarity in plot and atmosphere, and also the historical period of the respective ghosts. One of the things that stood out for me was how independent the children are in this book. It is hard to imagine a modern preteen casually assuming nobody would pick her up at the airport, catching several buses, and making her way to the right house! I think that was meant to show that Carol was unusually independent even for the 70s, but today it would trigger an Amber Alert (or the English equivalent), I suspect.Carol has come to visit her aunt and uncle in England, and slowly becomes friends with their son Bruce, as she discovers that their 17th century house is haunted. Carol and Bruce unravel the mystery by deduction, luck, and hauling a lot of masonry in the basement.The prickly relationship between Bruce and has dad is handled well. When Carol and Bruce are talking with the priest about their ghosts, and Bruce is reluctant to tell his skeptic historian father about them, the priest says, rather directly, "Your father has a clear, sensible mind and a generous personality. I think you could hurt him very deeply if you wanted to." Bruce says, "What makes you think I want that?" and the priest replies, "Because you do hurt him."
This book isn’t really quite what you’d expect if you know McKillip’s other work; it’s for a younger audience, and it feels like a different sort of story altogether. It’s more like… Famous Five, with ghosts; it’s not the total magic of The Forgotten Beasts of Eld or Winter Rose. It’s fairly specifically placed in time and space, and it has a lot of concrete, real-world detail.The writing is still absorbing, the characters well portrayed, but the magic is really what I read McKillip’s work for, and this wasn’t at all like that. It’s also, as I said, rather younger; the kids are very frustratingly kids. Realistically, but yeesh. Puberty is not so interesting when you’re out on the other side of it.I’m fairly lukewarm about it, in the end; it was fun enough to read, but it’s not by any measure a favourite and I wouldn’t have minded having to skip it.
What do You think about The House On Parchment Street (1978)?
Much of what I said about The Night Gift applies here as well.This is one of her earliest books (her second, I think?) and it still doesn't have that trademark "McKillip" style. And, also like Night Gift, it doesn't seem the slightest bit dated, despite it having been written nearly forty years ago. It's the story of two cousins who discover ghosts in their basement and decide to find out what they're doing there. It's a lovely, sweet story, and I suspect that if I'd found and read it at a younger age, I would have adored it.Alas, I've grown up.
—Melanti
Ms McKillip writes a wonderfully realistic book about three teens investigating a ghost in the cellar. The kids are well drawn and subject to the moods, tempers and pressures of being fourteen. Lessons are learned about how one is judged based on behavior, but they are not heavy handed nor does the author dwell on them. The adults are as well drawn and diverse instead of the caricatures often found in YA fiction. Ms McKillip infuses humor and quite a bit of understatement into the story. I also like that she left most of the mystery unsolved, so no ones really knows who these people wereand exactly what really happened 300 years earlier.
—Kris
Recommended for people who are perhaps searching for something like Elizabeth Marie Pope's The Sherwood Ring: it's a children's story nominally about ghosts, but with historical context rather than in the told-to-shivers-by-campfire genre. It's actually about the children themselves, charmingly full of faults and differences, with all the wry appeal that McKillip invests in characters even in her later works for older readers. I closed this book quite taken with the girl of disastrous clumsiness and forthright spirit; the (non-motorized) biker gang boy of reckless stunts who spends his free time doing something else entirely; the scholarly-inclined uncle; even the priest and the ill-tempered landlady. It's refreshing to have a children's tale with so much personality, thin though the plot may be.
—Yune
