Posted on by TracyC

The Dollhouse Murders

The Dollhouse Murders by Betty Ren Wright, 1983.

Amy is upset because she constantly has to look after her sister Louann, who has developmental problems. Louann is only a year younger than Amy, but her condition makes her think and act like a small child all the time. Amy loves Louann, but having her around all the time makes it difficult for her do things on her own and to make friends.  It’s frustrating because the girls’ mother doesn’t seem to understand the pressure Amy feels.

One day, she has an argument with her mother about it and runs away to her aunt’s house. Aunt Clare normally lives in Chicago, but she has returned to her home town to sort out the things in her grandparents’ old house. Sympathizing with Amy, Aunt Clare offers Amy the chance to stay with her for a couple of weeks, without Louann.

Aunt Clare and her brother, Amy’s father, used to live with their grandparents when they were young, and Aunt Clare says that she has unhappy memories of that time.  While helping her aunt go through some of the old things in the house, Amy discovers that there is a dollhouse in the attic made to look exactly like the grandparents’ house and dolls which look like the grandparents, Clare, and her brother. Amy thinks the dollhouse is wonderful, but Aunt Clare seems to find it disturbing.

When Aunt Clare refuses to talk about her deceased grandparents, Amy looks at some old newspapers at the library to learn more about them. To her shock, she learns that they were murdered in the house and that the killer was never found. Soon, strange things begin happening with the dollhouse. The dolls move around on their own, mysterious lights appear, and crying noises can be heard. The dolls seem to be acting out the events of the night of the murder. After all this time, the dolls seem to be trying to tell them something, if they have the courage to listen.

The book is currently available online through Internet Archive (multiple copies). There was a movie version of this book made in 1992 (Sometimes called Secrets in the Attic), but it’s difficult to find copies of it now.  Sometimes, the movie or clips of it appear on YouTube.  Apart from that, it’s very difficult to see it.

My Reaction and Spoilers

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I remember liking this book when I was a kid, although I was often a timid kid who was easily scared by scary stories. I think it was the mystery angle, solving the old murder, that intrigued me the most, although I also enjoyed the characters in the story. I felt impatient with both Amy and her mother at times, but I liked the way the family eventually worked through their problems and came to understand each other better.

Aside from revealing the murderer’s true identity, the dolls settle other troubling matters in Amy’s family.  For years, Aunt Clare has blamed herself for the way she behaved around the time her grandparents were killed.  She was afraid that something she did might have even led to their deaths.  But, none of it was really her fault, and her grandparents want her to know that she needn’t blame herself anymore. In some ways, I felt a little cheated by the answer to the murder mystery because the murderer is a person we never see and who has been dead for years, so there was no way readers could have known it was him, and he is never brought to justice. However, learning the identity of the murderer is important because it gives Aunt Clare some closure. When Aunt Clare realizes the truth, she feels like a great weight has been lifted from her.  She begins coming to terms with her past and appears to be headed for a better future. 

Amy also comes to terms with her sister’s condition and values her even more highly when Louann’s lack of fear of the dollhouse gives Amy the courage to see the dolls’ final message. Louann might have been less scared by the dolls than Amy was because Amy understands more of the situation behind the haunting, but the dolls aren’t actually malicious, and there’s no need for the girls to be afraid. Louann is a tender-hearted girl who loves the dolls and dollhouse immediately, and Amy finds that Louann’s willingness to see what the dolls have to show them gives her comfort and courage. Because Aunt Clare understand the feeling of guilt, she helps Amy to see that some of the ways that her mother behaves regarding Louann, babying her a little too much and trying to make Amy more responsible for her, also come from a feeling of guilt. There was nothing Amy’s mother could have done that would have changed Louann’s condition, but Amy’s mother feels guilty anyway. Her guilt is a problem because she’s been holding Louann back from experiences that would help her develop more and give Amy a little more freedom from having to look after Louann so much.  In the end, Amy’s family does make changes to help Louann become a little more independent and to allow Amy a little more independence of her own.

Posted on by TracyC

Susan’s Magic

SusansMagicSusan’s Magic by Nan Hayden Agle, 1973.

Susan Prescott believes in magic, although her mother tries to tell her that it’s all imagination.  Susan gets feelings about things and sometimes seems to have the ability to make things work the way she wants them to.  That’s part of the reason why she can believe that old Mrs. Gaffney is really a witch.  People say that Mrs. Gaffney used to be a fortune teller but had to stop when one of her predictions became frightening true and people got scared of her.  Now, Mrs. Gaffney runs an antique shop, living in a small apartment above it.  But, whether Mrs. Gaffney is really a witch or not, Susan’s life soon becomes entangled with hers through a series of unforeseen events.

Susan lives with her mother, who is a practical, down-to-earth woman, and her older brother Mike, who likes to play football.  Her parents are divorced, and her father lives in another state, only visiting occasionally, often at unpredictable times.  Susan’s father is known for not being very dependable, and he apparently left the family to be with another woman, although the story doesn’t provide many details.  Susan misses her father and is hurt by his absence, lack of dependability, and that he is more interested in being with someone else, somewhere else, instead of with her, her mother, and her brother.

The story begins when Susan sets out one day to buy a present for her mother’s birthday, and another girl she knows from school tells her to have a look at the flea market being held that day at a church.  Susan doesn’t have much money, and even most of the used items at the flea market are beyond her small savings.  Then, she foolishly spends what little money she has on cupcakes and lemonade.  Susan is angry with herself for her  foolishness, but her mistake leads her to greater adventures.

SusansMagicPic1One of the things at the sale which especially captures Susan’s attention is a small stuffed toy elephant.  The elephant is very worn, and Susan feels sorry for him, wanting to take him home and take care of him.  However, her money is gone, and she still has no present for her mother.  Then Mrs. Gaffney spots her looking sad and offers to lend her the 25 cents she would need to buy the elephant.  Although Susan has reservations about accepting such a loan, she does anyway, telling Mrs. Gaffney that she’ll pay her back.

Susan brings the elephant, which she names Trunko, home, and when her mother thinks that Susan meant to give it to her for her birthday, she doesn’t correct her although she has become very attached to him herself.  Her mother, sensing Susan’s attachment to the toy, says that they can share it and that Susan can sleep with it.  Susan thinks this is a good arrangement until someone calls the house to say that the toy elephant was donated by mistake and that the original owner is sad and wants it back.

At first, Susan can’t bear the thought of giving up Trunko. But when she learns that the real owner is Hugo, a member of her brother’s football team, that he has had the toy ever since he was small, and that he really misses it, she realizes that she has to let him have it back.  To thank Susan for giving him back Trunko (originally named Stanley), Hugo gives Susan a stray cat that had been living under his porch.  Susan loves the cat immediately and names her Sereena.

However, Susan’s mother says that they can’t keep the cat because the hill nearby is a bird sanctuary.  Susan tries to persuade her mother otherwise, but she says that they’ll just have to find another home for Sereena.  Susan tries to get an older girl from school to look after the cat for awhile while she tries to persuade her mother to let her keep her, but the other girl refuses.  Then, unexpectedly, the cat runs into Mrs. Gaffney’s shop as Susan is walking past it.

In Mrs. Gaffney’s shop, Susan accidentally breaks a teapot, increasing her debt to Mrs. Gaffney.  However, Mrs. Gaffney turns out to be a cat lover and agrees to look after Sereena for Susan.  This is the beginning of a new relationship between Susan and Mrs. Gaffney as Susan offers to work for her in order to pay off her debt.  Mrs. Gaffney could use some help in her shop because sales haven’t been good, and she’s worried about losing it.

Sereena herself turns out to be good for Mrs. Gaffney’s shop, attracting customers’ attention to the items for sale.  Susan feels jealous about how much Sereena likes Mrs. Gaffney and her shop, as if Sereena has abandoned her like her father and Trunko have.  But, when a beautiful dollhouse in Mrs. Gaffney’s shop catches her eye and it turns out to be even more valuable than Mrs. Gaffney believed it was at first, Susan has to decide whether she is willing to give it up to help Mrs. Gaffney earn enough money to fix up her shop or if she will hold Mrs. Gaffney to her earlier promise to sell it to her for much less.

SusansMagicPic2In spite of the talk about magic and witches, this is not a fantasy story at all.  Susan’s concept of magic has more to do with a way of living, dealing with change, and solving life’s problems.  For the first part of the book, Susan’s “magic” focuses on getting what she wants for herself and getting things to work out the way she wants them to.  But, as the book goes on, Susan matures in the way she deals with the complications in her life.

Toward the end of the book, Susan thinks about reality and fantasy: “The magic part of living was how you fit yourself around real things, she guessed.  A magician was extra good at fitting. That’s why being one was important.”  What Susan really wants and the kind of person she wants to be change.  She comes to realize that, while she can’t get and keep everything she wants in life in the sense that it’s always with her all the time, caring about people and things is also a kind of ownership.  Giving up the toy elephant and sharing the cat with Mrs. Gaffney do not mean losing them completely because she still cares about them and the people connected with them.

Susan also realizes that, even if she doesn’t get exactly what she wants in the beginning, as long as things work out for the people she cares about, she can still be happy.  Although she has to make sacrifices at times for the people she cares about, she earns the love and respect of the people who mean the most to her.  Susan says, “Anyway, magicians don’t lose. They win. Dad, Trunko, and Sereena are mine still in a way.”  She will always be close to her mother and brother, even without her father’s presence, and Hugo, Mrs. Gaffney, and Sereena are all her friends.  Susan is a winner not because she gets what she wants for herself but because she knows how to make things work out in the best possible way for everyone she cares about, and that’s a kind of magic.

The book is currently available online through Internet Archive.

In some ways, this story reminds me a little of the Miyazki movie Whisper of the Heart, which also features a young girl who likes making up stories and who is led to an antique store by a friendly cat and meets an older person who helps her to learn about the person she wants to be and the kind of life she wants to live.  The two stories are not the same, though, and Whisper of the Heart was based on Japanese manga, not this book.  In some ways, however, both this book and Whisper of the Heart are the kind of stories that take on a new life when you read them as an adult because, at that point, you understand some of the feelings behind them better.