The Doll Book of the Month Club: Behind the Attic Wall

   This month's Doll Book of the Month Club book is "Behind the Attic Wall", by Sylvia Cassedy, and originally published in 1983.

  This is a creepy book, I have to say. I started it once before, and gave up. It takes a bit of getting into. Some kids may get bored before the really interesting stuff comes up, but hang in there. It gets quite creepy.

  The book concerns a girl named Maggie. Maggie is around 11 or 12 years old. After her parents were killed in a car accident Maggie bounced from one foster home and boarding school to another. As the book opens she has been sent to live with her aunts, after being thrown out of yet another boarding school. It seems Maggie has been something of a problem at all the boarding schools she's been in. The aunts' house she's sent to was once a school too. In fact, the classroom is still there, unchanged.

  Her aunts don't make her feel welcome, and in fact are pretty open with the fact that they don't want her there. They, and Maggie's Uncle Morris, who lives elsewhere, are Maggie's only living relatives, so they don't have much choice. Maggie doesn't like it in the big house where she feels unwanted. Of course, Maggie is pretty unlikable herself. She's been kicked out of foster homes and boarding schools for stealing and generally being a mean, disagreeable character. Her aunts give her a closet full of used, drab clothes and outdated cotton stockings that are worn with a garter belt,as well as a brand new rubber baby doll, for which one aunt has handmade pretty clothes and lace trimmed underwear. Maggie pokes the doll in the face with her thumb and tells the aunts she doesn't play with dolls.

 When Uncle Morris shows up at the house Maggie feels a little better. But Uncle Morris is likeably weird. Everything he says sounds like it's being said by a character in "Alice in Wonderland". If you've read the 'Alice' books you might know what I'm talking about: the strange, over literal answers to everything, that don't really tell you anything. That sort of  backwards reason. At one point one of the aunts, tiring of his 'jokes', tells Uncle Morris, It's time for you to take your leave." Uncle Morris responds with, "Take my leave? Where is my leave? Maggie, have you seen my leave? It's a shame to lose one's leave. Leaves don't grow on trees you know." At one point he cryptically says that Maggie is 'the one'. But at least Uncle Morris is friendly.

  Then we get into the creepiness. Maggie, who has already been creeping me out by having conversations with imaginary girls she calls 'The Backwoods girls", (They're her imaginary...not friends, really. They're not even real and she treats them badly.), starts hearing voices. The voices are faint, and seem to come from another part of the house. Maggie tries to find the source of the voices, and she eventually does. They're coming from the attic. But when Maggie enters the attic, there's no one there, just a couple of old china dolls and a broken china dog.

  The dolls are named Timothy John and Miss Christabel. They tell Maggie she's 'the right one', and that 'it's time' for her to join them. The dolls also talk in an 'Alice' type way, like Uncle Morris. (It seems more understandable with them, because they're dolls who live in an attic. It's reasonable that they don't know what things mean or how the world works. It's a little weird that they talk like Uncle Morris though.) It's not clear if Maggie is pretending the dolls talk, the way she hangs out with the the Backwoods girls, or if maybe Maggie has gone over the edge. The dolls explain that they can't be seen by anyone other than Maggie, or something bad will happen.

  It's a pretty dark story. I left it feeling that Maggie was never going to be a happy person, and maybe she would end up being a bit dangerous. It's not your happy little doll story. That's for sure. It isn't going to appeal  to everybody. Opinions of this book online range from 'beautiful' to ''terrifying'. It's described as 'Unforgettable...a beautifully written and very touching story' by the New Yorker, and 'Intricately woven...at once satire, fantasy, and tragedy', by The New York Times Book review.

  The age range for this book is listed as 8-12, grades 3-6. Sylvia Cassedy also wrote "Lucie Babbidge's  House', another creepy book with dolls. Most opinions seem to find that one even more confusing than "Behind the Attic Wall', and not as good, although some people seem to love it.

  I hate to ruin the ending for anyone, but I feel like this one needs to be told. It seems some people have trouble understanding the ending. If you don't want spoilers, this is the end of the post for you. If you want to read the book and want to read my thoughts on the ending, come back later. If you're leaving me here, I'll see you again soon. If you can't fight the urge for spoilers, read on.

***********************************SPOILERS**************************************

  Maggie's aunts' house used to be a school, run by relatives of Maggie's, a couple who died long ago. Near the end of the book, Maggie and the dolls have a party they've had planned for ages. During a game of blind man's bluff with Timothy John and Miss Christabel, Maggie gets caught in the attic with the dolls, by her aunts. The dolls instantly drop and become only dolls. Maggie can't get any response from them, even when visiting them a week later. (She has to sneak back to see them because her aunts ban her from the attic.)

  Later that day, Maggie finds Uncle Morris visiting the graves of the couple who owned the school. The long planned day of the party happens to be the anniversary of their deaths. It seems they died in a fire. The dolls in the attic had one scrap of newspaper they read all the time. There was a headline in the paper about a fire. The rest of the story was missing though. Obviously it was the couple who ran the school who died in the fire. Maggie realizes Uncle Morris has something to do with the dolls being 'alive', and she begs Uncle Morris to 'bring them back'. Uncle Morris gives his usual 'Alice' type answers at first, but then he gets contemplative, and says he will, 'When it's time." Shortly afterward, Uncle Morris dies of a heart attack.

  Maggie  is adopted, and leaves the aunts' house. The last lines in the book are Maggie, in her new home, with two sisters, remembering the last moments before she left the aunts' house. She had gone to the attic one last time, and found the dolls 'alive' again. She tells them she will visit again one day, and it will once again be just the three of them and the china dog.. The dolls correct her, saying, "Four." Maggie looks around to see a small bowler hat and walking stick like the ones belonging to Uncle Morris, only doll sized.  Timothy John and Christabel are obviously the couple who died in the fire, and obviously, Uncle Morris' spirit will be inhabiting a doll too, and joining them and their china dog. 

    It's a creepy ending. Had Maggie had been hanging out with ghosts the whole time, in the form of haunted or possessed dolls? What did Uncle Morris have to do with the whole thing? Did he somehow put the spirits in the old dolls? Did he control them? (Why did they talk like him if they were the school couple?) Otherwise how did he 'bring them back' when he died? Why is he becoming a doll too? Some people have said that maybe anybody in the family who dies becomes a doll. But Maggie's parents never became dolls. Somebody online suggested that Maggie only imagined Uncle Morris had anything to do with the dolls being 'alive', and that she only imagined Uncle Morris 'becoming' a doll, so she wouldn't have to lose him completely. Maybe Maggie imagined the dolls being alive in the first place, the way she imagined the Backwoods Girls. Maybe Maggie is a little touched. Maybe we aren't meant to be able to explain everything.