Illustrated: Ewa Beniak-Haremska
Special from the start
Here is an ideal book for the spooky season, although it would make a thrilling read at any time. The classic follow-up to which would be, ‘If you’re brave enough.’ In this case it may just be true. Delicate sensibilities beware. However, I think many young readers will revel in its macabre thrills.
A striking first sentence is often the precursor of a fine book. This is not invariably so, but it certainly is here. The opening of Eiblís Carcione’s Welcome to Dead Town, Raven McKay may also qualify as one of the longest sentences in contemporary children’s fiction. But then her writing often belies expectation - and is all the more exciting for it.
The author opens her story in media res and plunges the reader, and protagonist, Raven, straight into arrival in Grave’s Pass (‘DeadTown’) which has an immediately engaging effect. The opening catalogue of the ghosts and ghouls Raven sees on her first day also helps establish a wonderful traditional Irish ethnicity (‘pooka horses’ and ‘banshees’), a clever mix of the folkloric and the contemporary (‘a zombie in ripped jeans staring in the window of a phone shop’) and delightful touches of humour to lighten the mix (‘a bogeyman walking a labradoodle’).
The conjuring of her weird characters and almost uber-gothic setting are nothing if not viscerally descriptive. Her prose bursts with strikingly original, idiosyncratic simile and metaphor, which does not always hit home, but it often does, and, overall, this gives her writing a richness that is vivid and evocative.
Original and richly imagined
The initial premise of the story is that Raven, is a twelve year-old girl whose parents have mysteriously disappeared. Following a series of unhappy foster placements, she is taken to live in a strange town with a previously unknown distant relative. Thus far, the scenario is only a minor variation on the opening of countless other children’s books. But here the unoriginality ends and the wild, weirdly idiosyncratic imagination of this exciting author kicks in. Grave’s Pass, the place where Raven pitches up, is a town which the dead (together with an assortment of of their ghoulish creatures) inhabit alongside the living. These are not ghosts occasionally seen haunting particular locations, but regular residents with their own enclave, ‘Dead Town’. However, a fair degreee of mixing between the living humans (‘humes’) and their deceased neighbours seems to be both commonplace and accepted.
A wonderful cavalcade of richly imagined ‘dead’ is cleverly paraded when Raven witnesses one of their midnight processions. It is a delightful passage - a real literary coup. Raven does not initially seem to be particularly frighted by these unusual presences, but is, rather, fascinated by the strangeness of her new co-inhabitants. She even manages to make a couple of friends amongst both the dead as well as the living.
Amidst all this freaky oddness, the author beautifully captures Raven’s clearly very genuine distress about the loss of her parents. As the narrative’s protagonist, she elicits all our empathy, yet, in truth she is somewhat odd herself. Her feelings may be touchingly human, but her clothing, a tall black hat adorned with a sleek raven feather, and an old-fashioned dress, its cuffs skilfully embroidered with black butterflies, somewhat distance her from the role of contemporary Irish girl. There is further mystery in her passionate attachment to a battered suitcase that turns out to contain only a single, live black butterfly. It is all most intriguing and keeps the pages turning frantically.
Don’t go there - Oh, you did!
Like the heroine of a horror movie, who enters the deserted house whilst all the audience mental shriek at her not to go in, Raven is drawn to explore the Dead Town area of Grave’s Pass, despite her new guardian’s extortions against it. And the consequences are as disastrous as might be expected. Eibhlís Carcione skilfully builds up tension and horror, and when, after spending the night in a creepy disused funfair, Raven is led into the Fun House by one of her few new-found friends, her experience starts to descend into nightmare.
The author’s richly idiosyncratic style of writing is ideally suited to her subject matter and her somewhat fractured narration only adds to the nightmare ethos. It does not matter that the string of events are weirdly beyond normal logic, this is a children’s version of Franz-Kafka-meets-Salvador-Dali-meets-Susan-Hill. The unnatural events of this world are not so much ‘magic’ as symptoms of the completely alternate reality. It is all weirdly wonderful, engaging and spine-tinglingly thrilling. And in the end, it is, thankfully, as befits the outcome of a book for this readership, a world where dreams supersede the nightmares. It is still a strange world, an odd one, even a macabre one, but it is also a world of flowers and fluttering wings.
Eibhlís Carcione’s is another name to add to the impressive list of fine Irish children’s writers. I hope she is read well beyond her home shores too. She certainly deserves to be.
Stunning illustration
Alongside the excitingly fresh writing in this book, I was also thrilled by the copious illustrations by artist Ewa Beniak-Haremska. Her marginal vignettes are excellent, but it is her rich, complex whole-page images which really enthralled me. They succeed quite magnificent in representing both the quirky oddness and the developing nightmare of the text. She seems to have understood, absorbed and caught the essence of this novel perfectly, adding much of her own to complement and enhance it remarkably. She adds considerable impact but also contributes emotional nuance and narrative depth.
A little Googling seems to indicate that Ewa Benjamin-Haremska is well-used as an illustrator in her native Poland, but I would like to see her work better recognised and in more books over here too. She is a breathtaking talent.
Ewa Beniak-Haremska