For such a short story, TOEL packs a lot of narrative and drama into its pages. A man returning to his hometown for a funeral decides to pay a visit to his childhood home and is drawn to the farmhouse down the lane from where he grew up. A girl he once knew, Lettie Hempstock lived there and he feels compelled to revisit her home. Upon arriving, his childhood begins to come back to him, in particular a rather harrowing few days following his seventh birthday party.
A lonely and friendless child, the boy happens upon Lettie Hempstock while his father is being questioned by police after a dead body is found in the family car parked on the Hempstock property line. Lettie decides to take the boy with her on an errand. Things around Lettie aren't quite what they seem and while on their errand in Lettie's fields, the boy is bitten on the foot by something. Later that evening, the boy finds a worm in a hole in his foot and attempts to pull it out. The following day, a woman bearing a strange resemblance to the worm arrives at the home to occupy a spare room in the house and serve as the boy and his sister's nanny while their mother returns to work. The nanny, Ursula Monkton brings with her a variety of strange happenings.
There are many things that are really impossible to briefly explain over the rest of the book, but the boy fights against Ursula Monkton for his freedom and the freedom of his family.
The book is so wonderfully strange, but very rich in detail and imagination. In finishing it last night, I was thinking about my own childhood, and what kind of truths I may have learned that are now forgotten. What kinds of things do children understand that adults will never know? What fullness and richness of experience do children live in when everything is new and instructive. I like asking myself these questions and I live even better the books which cause me to ask them.
5/5 Stars.
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