Review: Behind the Attic Wall by Sylvia Cassedy

Good evening! For my nostalgia, I have posted a humble review of the middle grade urban fantasy novel Behind the Attic Wall by Sylvia Cassedy, a novel I consider to be one of my own personal formative works.

Goodreads Summary: They were watching...and waiting

At twelve, Maggie had been thrown out of more boarding schools than she cared to remember. "Impossible to handle," they said -- nasty, mean, disobedient, rebellious, thieving -- anything they could say to explain why she must be removed from the school.

Maggie was thin and pale, with shabby clothes and stringy hair, when she arrived at her new home. "It was a mistake to bring her here," said Maggie's great-aunts, whose huge stone house looked like another boarding school -- or a prison. But they took her in anyway. After all, aside from Uncle Morris, they were Maggie's only living relatives.

But from behind the closet door in the great and gloomy house, Maggie hears the faint whisperings, the beckoning voices. And in the forbidding house of her ancestors, Maggie finds magic...the kind that lets her, for the first time, love and be loved.

Original reading: Sometime when I was this book's target demographic
Recent reading: 9/1/14-9/7/14

5/5 stars

(There are some light spoilers in this review.)


I'm going to admit right off the bat that I am somewhat biased toward this book. I read it when I was a child, probably around the same age as the main character (12) or maybe a little younger. I got it at the library and just tore into it. And there are scenes in it, little ones, that I remember clear as day - and other scenes I thought I remembered from it, but were apparently from a different book.

Reading it twenty years later is a world of difference. Instead of feeling like I could be the main character, I look at her from the perspective of an adult and I just want to take care of her, adopt her even, and it's heartbreaking right from the beginning. But then I just get into the writing, the voice especially, and I'm blown away. The level of detail that the author puts into this creative childlike mindset is phenomenal.

To be a good reviewer, though, I need to look deeper than just writing glowing praise, right? I mean, for one, the main part of the story, when Maggie is finally spending time with Miss Christabel and Timothy John is pretty late in the book and doesn't last terribly long. And while she clearly gets healthier, based on one observation by her and a few by her aunts, and then loses that health later on after the dolls are seen, it doesn't seem to have any repercussions apart from how she looks, though the dichotomy between good nutrition and a steady diet love is interesting and just clear enough as a message without being too in your face. I guess my biggest critique, then, is that the happy part doesn't last quite long enough and doesn't seem to cause enough of a change, except for some off-camera Something that happens between the very end of the book and the italicized looks into Maggie's future, in which she has a pair of adopted sisters who adore her (not a spoiler, book begins this way). Basically, it feels like there's something missing after the end, where a conversation or something might take place to make Maggie greet her new family with an open mind, when before she had only connected with one other human, Uncle Morris, since she first became an orphan. It's clear that her experience opened her up to love and friendship, but it's still not quite believable for me that she'd finish her metamorphosis for her new family.

Honestly, though, that's all the actual criticism I can think of. I love this book. I loved it as a little girl, no matter how depressing it was, and I love it now. It's a must read for anyone, and has a permanent place on my shelf and in my heart.

Cross-posting of this Review: Goodreads