A Great Little Book

I recently read a book that surprised me more than any book has done in quite some time. It's a children's/young adult novel by Gregory Maguire, the author of Wicked, and it's called What the Dickens.

The front cover bills its contents as being the story of a rogue tooth fairy, which I would never have guessed from the title, but that is a bit misleading. Don't expect any whimsical romps through dreamland - unless they're part of simpery traditional stage productions. Also don't look for the overwrought violence or adventure that some authors like to use to get people to take faerie seriously. No, the tooth fairies (yes, plural) in this story don't do anything more unexpected than participate in their ordinary communal life and try to retrieve teeth.

While the majority of the pages contain the story of two tooth (teeth?) fairies named What-the-dickens and Pepper, the book itself actually tells the story of the three Ormsby children being guided by their cousin through a night spent in the path of a hurricane. The dynamics that exist among them are interesting. The Ormsbys are (presumably) born-again Christians whose parents feel embattled against the wicked world and show it by living atop a high hill where they home school their children and allow as little worldly influence as possible. Although they never appear in the book, they pass this feeling in varying degrees to their progeny. The oldest, Zeke, is a pre-teen zealot - continually encouraging faith, pronouncing judgment, and preferring "meaty" books like The Totally Excellent Adventures of Saint Paul. Dinah, the next in line, is somewhat less exclusionary, though no less converted. She associates with "downslope" children and actually cares what happens to them when their town is evacuated prior to the storm. The Ormsbys are determined to weather this physical storm the way the weather the spiritual ones - at home. Dinah's perspective drives the narrative of the book as she tries to "use [her] good mind" and make sense of what is happening around her.

The youngest Ormsby, Rebbecca Ruth, is on the eve of her second birthday on the night our story takes place. She responds to most of the problems by sleeping through them, which has no little significance to the meaning of the book, in my opinion.

Finally, the cousin, Gage Tavenner, is a 21-year-old English teacher who is visiting the family when the storm hits and an emergency situation drives the parents from the house. Gage, more worldly than his cousins, though hardly capable at anything but language, is deemed an "adequate miracle" for the occasion and is left to watch the children through the dark and stormy night, which he passes for them by relating (making up) the story of What-the-dickens, in which he plays a role.

So from the beginning of the tale, we are set up to perceive it as make-believe, which is scorned by Zeke, tolerated by Dinah, embraced by Gage, and ignored by Rebbecca Ruth. At many points throughout the book, we are pulled from the fairy story back to the real-world happenings at the Ormsby house, which inevitably lead back to the other. The skill with which Gage weaves the family's current situation, including the objects that surround them, into his tale is delightful, but the story itself has a somber and thoughtful tone - appropriate to the setting in which it is told.

Without going on at much greater length, let me say that the book explores issues of faith in God, faith in language, and faith in other human beings. It addresses many possible ways of looking at the world and speaks specifically to how story - true or not (which the book asserts may not matter) - impacts real life. What impressed me most about this book was how all the perspectives were given a fair shake. Nobody was ridiculed, nobody was vilified, and in the end, the importance of faith in something was affirmed, as was the complex relationship among the many things there are to have faith in. Each character had a different mixture, and that ended up being okay.

This, to me, was not a children's book, although it's fine for the younger crowd. Rather, it struck me as more truly grown up than many books geared towards older audiences that I've read. I'm not calling it perfect, or advocating it as a source of utmost wisdom. There's not pick-me-up ending. The story sort of makes a point of refusing to end, although the book must, but not in a "here comes the sequel" way either. The thing that What the Dickens has going for it is charity - not only in the sense that it treats characters and subjects charitably, but also in the sense that it encourages charity in the reader - though not didactically. Instead, the reader has the privilege of seeing through the eyes of a child as she tries to see through the eyes of others, and comes to understand them, the world, and herself better in the process.