Nostalgic affection or genuine book ardor?: The Dollhouse Murders

Betty Ren Wright’s THE DOLLHOUSE MURDERS is one of those books that I always assumed was never particularly famous, but that somehow got into my main shelf rotation and was read by me many times as a child.

That assumption has been called into question, though, since I randomly threw in a small reference to it in my first blog post and somehow it became one of our main sources of search engine traffic.

It seems people are searching for things like “the dollhouse murders summary chapter 12,” and I’m like, “…Really? 1) Are they assigning this in schools now? Why? (No offense to the book; like I said, I’m a fan. But really: why?) 2) You need a summary of one chapter of a book whose chapters are maybe six pages long?”*

But anyway. As with many books, I can’t sort out whether I love this book on its own merits, or merely because I did read it again and again and again in my youth.

As the blogger from whom I stole the image of my original ’80s cover notes, the resolution to the book’s central mystery is really anti-climactic and a bit lame. I also thought that it too neatly wrapped up one character’s personality flaws in a neat little deterministic package, like her whole life can now all be understood as a reaction to this one event a quarter century ago.

On the other hand, that same character’s flaws are one of the things I appreciated about the book, rereading it as an adult. The character is our protagonist Amy’s beloved Aunt Clare. She’s prickly and can be almost a bit mean, but you also see her real strengths and kindness. It’s relatively rare to have that nuanced a portrait of an adult even in a young adult novel, much more so in (publishing jargon alert!) a “middle-grade” book like this one.

The most interesting aspect of the book, for me, is Amy’s relationship with her retarded sister Louann.

Even this newer cover somehow still screams '80s

This relationship is extremely well portrayed. Amy is frustrated by Louann, resentful of her, embarrassed by her… and will also rise to her defense against anyone outside the family, judging them by their acceptance of her. Isn’t that how most of us feel about our own families?

I particularly like that Wright shows us Louann’s needs for autonomy in spite of the disability that will inherently limit that freedom. I have developmentally disabled people in my extended family, and this very much rings true to my experiences.

It also raises my biggest question about the book. The conflict in this subplot is primarily with Amy and Louann’s mom, who needs to learn, despite her instincts, to let Louann go. Internally to the book I feel like this works.

...Whereas this new cover is totally creepy

But when I reread it within the last couple years, it was after having done a lot of reading about the long history of mother-blaming in this arena. Like, the prevailing “scientific” theory of autism, well into the 1960s until parents of autistic kids began successfully challenging it, was the “refrigerator mother” theory — the specter of mothers who were so cold and unloving that they made their kids autistic.

Wright’s book is totally on another plane from that, but somehow, after all the refrigerator mother reading, a book where the disabled child is being held back by her mother made me uncomfortable. I’m wondering if maybe the conventions of drama require a certain kind of conflict and resolution that, in books about developmental disability, actually do involve taking some sides on parents’ roles.

I haven’t read Ann M. Martin’s INSIDE OUT (a book I deeply respect) since I was very small, but there too, part of the development of the story is that the family has to learn to handle James’s autism. And, you know, I’m not very up on my autism research these days, but in a context where Jenny McCarthy is getting a $1 million advance for a book full of bullshit “remedies” and sadly false hope for desperate parents, I feel like you have to be careful with the stories about autistic kids improving because their parents figured out what to do. Can you write those stories without taking sides on controversies much larger than the individual characters you’re creating? Can you do it without implicitly blaming the parents who aren’t doing whatever your characters need to learn to do, when that learning is the emotional engine of your book?

So what do you guys think? This is (yet! another!) case of me overthinking things, isn’t it?

* Other troubling search term: “vampire academy theme.” …Seriously?

Nick and Norah’s (vs. Elizabeth and Emily’s) New York

Emily and I often agree about books, but one where we didn’t was NICK AND NORAH’S INFINITE PLAYLIST, the first Rachel Cohn – David Levithan collaboration, which became a movie with Michael Cera. Emily liked this a lot more than I did, and I’ll let her say why, but one reason I didn’t is that Rachel Cohn’s chapters in particular, especially early on, felt way too self-conscious.* I should have loved it — it’s all about my life! They even had a character from Emily’s and my high school (Hunter from Hunter)! — but it just felt like name-dropping to me.

And I think one reason is that even though it was supposed to be So Very New York, it didn’t really capture New York as I experience it. (Possibly this is because I was not really connected to the private school scene, but hey; there are reasons I’m grateful for that, and some of them I was reminded of reading this book.) What makes New York what it is, for me, is not the fact that you can apparently go see stripping nuns at 3 AM in midtown should you so desire. It’s littler stuff.

Like, Emily and I and everyone else we know from high school all had a problem when we got to college and realized that for normal people, interrupting them is not a sign of enthusiastic engagement with what they’re saying. It’s just… rude. And instead of riffing off our interruption to escalate the intensity of their storytelling, they would politely fall silent and wait for us. It was terrible! We started interacting with others and realized we were all That Guy.

Since I moved to Madison two and a half years ago, I recognize New York less by seeing its absence in other people than by seeing it lacking in myself. Like, when I was home for Christmas I found myself waiting for the light to change to cross the street in the second place, and doing so on the actual curb instead of a third of the way into the street in the first place. It’s like I don’t even know myself!

So how would you guys want a book set in New York to establish its world? Any you think do it particularly well?

Bonus question: How would you convey being in Madison? The only kids’ book I can think of set around here is Betty Ren Wright’s THE DOLLHOUSE MURDERS, which I like for a lot of reasons. Here’s how I would start setting a book in Wisconsin: with the observation that my entire state suffers from a bizarre conceptual difficulty. You’ll hear even the most intelligent and thoughtful of Madisonians say things like, “…a high of -12.” Am I the only one who sees that -12 degrees is, by definition, not high?!

* ReviewerX, whose reviews I generally quite enjoy, agreed with me on Cohn’s early chapters being particularly weak, and has a pretty funny review dramatizing one complaint I didn’t have — maybe because I, too, curse like a motherfucker.