House With a Clock in its Walls – Book Review

The House With a Clock in Its Walls

(Lewis Barnavelt #1)

by John Bellairs

Dial Press,1973

179 Pages

Middle Grade (8 and up)

Secret panels, raising the dead, witches and wizards, naval battles… what else could you ask for in a scary book?

Lewis has lost both parents, and is sent to live in New Zebedee with an uncle he has never met. He is alone. When Tarby offers to help him learn baseball, is it any wonder the overweight, nerdy boy wants to be accepted so badly by one of the cool kids? So badly… he shows off his crazy uncle’s forbidden magic book of necromancy?

Never play with a forbidden book of necromancy. It may cost you your soul. Never draw ancient symbols despised by God on the flagstones before the cracked mausoleum of a witch on Halloween. The glowing eyes shall surely follow you home.

We discover the dark history of Isaac Izard, a sky wizard who once owned Uncle Barnavelt’s mansion, and his hateful wife Selenna,* who conspired to construct a doomsday clock. Should it ever strike the hour, it will usher in the end of the world.

We feel the hair on our arms rise as we see the headlights of a car following us over the winding country roads of New England in Edward Gorey’s illustrations. We watch as Lewis keeps his mistake a secret from his uncle and their neighbor Mrs. Zimmerman, (a purple-laced, powerful enchantress who just might be the only one strong enough to challenge an evil witch resurrected from the dead… but that ticking! Where is the clock? Selenna is coming, and she has sorcery enough to freeze all the grownups dead in their tracks!

Bellairs’ story does a great job addressing themes of mourning and the desire to be accepted, and the banter between Uncle Jonathan and Mrs. Zimmerman is priceless, a bickering old couple that reflect their own unique, modern relationship. In the end, Lewis must discover what makes him unique in order to combat the carnage-craving couple.

It’s the things left unsaid that really inspire the young imagination: What was the bottle of reddish brown liquid in the icebox? What happened to old mm, is he still hanging in the cellar across the street? Where… who… did that hand of glory come from, anyway?

There is a mediocre, but exciting sequel about Rose Rita Pottinger and Mrs. Zimmerman called The Ghost in the Mirror (finished posthumously by Brad Strickland after Bellairs’ death,) for those looking for further adventures with a female protagonist.

*Her name is pronounced “Sell-enna,” not Selena like the singer, despite the choice they made for the movie.