An insight into a peculiar world
Amelie Reeves gives a detailed and passionate review of the fantastical novel 'Miss Peregrine's School For Peculiar Children'.
Most of us dream of having memorable teenage years – times full of thrilling moments with friends and family, to experience the daunting highs and lows before we’re expected to settle down with a job, and leave the best years of our lives behind. But Jacob’s teenage years aren't filled with carefree fun, his teenage years had been nothing more than one steady, mundane slope towards adulthood.
Ransom Riggs, the author of ‘Miss Peregrine’s Home For Peculiar Children’, presents an eerily fascinating tale of sixteen-year-old, Jacob Portman, who appears to lead an average – yet slightly sequestered – life, with school, austere parents and his ‘delinquent’ friend, Ricky, and his supposedly deluded grandfather, Abe Portman. Near the start of the novel, his grandfather falls victim to a bemusing event, altering Jacob’s life forever as he’s flung head-first into a bizarre adventure, left with only a series of cryptic clues to find the way: "Find the bird. In the loop. On the other side of the old man’s grave. September third 1940.”
Similar to many people in our own society, Jacob’s parents are quick to smoulder the remnants of his grandfathers’s unfeasible tales, of tentacle-tonged monsters and peculiar children, claiming they were merely bedtime stories. Eventually, Jacob himself begins to doubt them; they were only stories to give a child bad dreams. He’d grown too old to see any truth in Abe’s fiction; Jacob seeks to believe that “we cling to our fairy tales until the price for believing in them becomes too high.” Nonetheless, he follows the clues to an island off the coast of Wales where his life becomes anything but ordinary…
The backbone of this truly strange novel is the wondrously peculiar characters. ‘Miss Peregrine’s Home For Peculiar Children’ is the epicentre for offbeat characters – they (peculiars) have a second soul that manifests when they’re young, creating odd abilities (known as peculiarities). However, unlike in many stories, each skill has its draw-backs; they’re riddled with flaws. One such character, Enoch O’Connor, has the uncanny ability to bring corpses and inanimate objects to life using animal hearts – this macabre peculiarity, matched only by his morbid humour and severe sarcasm, tends to put people off. Another, less crude, character is Millard Nullings, whose peculiarity is invisibility, an ability we’d probably all kill to have, but for Millard, this doesn’t mean turning invisible when the moment strikes: it’s permanent. He began going invisible at an early age, his body gradually disappearing from sight. Yet Millard, with his boundless positivity, embraces it and uses his invisibility to eavesdrop on others – although remaining inconspicuous does require him to be naked!
Riggs immerses these juxtaposing characters into the book perfectly, along with the eloquent language. You could lose yourself in ‘Miss Peregrine’s Home For Peculiar Children’ and stay up for far too long reading this extraordinary novel, as you become engrossed in their extraordinary lives. The novel invites you into the journey with its intriguing plot and haunting writing, but it will force you to stay, as the story turns sharply from one twist to the next, leading you dangerously towards the final climactic chapters. Moreover, Riggs intertwines the narrative with real vintage photography, which provides the skeletal outline for this series. Every photo is captivating and builds on the sinister atmosphere, making each character, each scene and each monster more tangible.
Overall, Miss Peregrine’s Home For Peculiar Children is wholly unique; it’s a book I would highly recommend everyone read. The unusual storyline and novel concept, threads time travel, monsters and eighty-year-old children together to make a spectacular book – showing what it really means to be peculiar.
Amelie Reeves, Year 11
Most of us dream of having memorable teenage years – times full of thrilling moments with friends and family, to experience the daunting highs and lows before we’re expected to settle down with a job, and leave the best years of our lives behind. But Jacob’s teenage years aren't filled with carefree fun, his teenage years had been nothing more than one steady, mundane slope towards adulthood.
Ransom Riggs, the author of ‘Miss Peregrine’s Home For Peculiar Children’, presents an eerily fascinating tale of sixteen-year-old, Jacob Portman, who appears to lead an average – yet slightly sequestered – life, with school, austere parents and his ‘delinquent’ friend, Ricky, and his supposedly deluded grandfather, Abe Portman. Near the start of the novel, his grandfather falls victim to a bemusing event, altering Jacob’s life forever as he’s flung head-first into a bizarre adventure, left with only a series of cryptic clues to find the way: "Find the bird. In the loop. On the other side of the old man’s grave. September third 1940.”
Similar to many people in our own society, Jacob’s parents are quick to smoulder the remnants of his grandfathers’s unfeasible tales, of tentacle-tonged monsters and peculiar children, claiming they were merely bedtime stories. Eventually, Jacob himself begins to doubt them; they were only stories to give a child bad dreams. He’d grown too old to see any truth in Abe’s fiction; Jacob seeks to believe that “we cling to our fairy tales until the price for believing in them becomes too high.” Nonetheless, he follows the clues to an island off the coast of Wales where his life becomes anything but ordinary…
The backbone of this truly strange novel is the wondrously peculiar characters. ‘Miss Peregrine’s Home For Peculiar Children’ is the epicentre for offbeat characters – they (peculiars) have a second soul that manifests when they’re young, creating odd abilities (known as peculiarities). However, unlike in many stories, each skill has its draw-backs; they’re riddled with flaws. One such character, Enoch O’Connor, has the uncanny ability to bring corpses and inanimate objects to life using animal hearts – this macabre peculiarity, matched only by his morbid humour and severe sarcasm, tends to put people off. Another, less crude, character is Millard Nullings, whose peculiarity is invisibility, an ability we’d probably all kill to have, but for Millard, this doesn’t mean turning invisible when the moment strikes: it’s permanent. He began going invisible at an early age, his body gradually disappearing from sight. Yet Millard, with his boundless positivity, embraces it and uses his invisibility to eavesdrop on others – although remaining inconspicuous does require him to be naked!
Riggs immerses these juxtaposing characters into the book perfectly, along with the eloquent language. You could lose yourself in ‘Miss Peregrine’s Home For Peculiar Children’ and stay up for far too long reading this extraordinary novel, as you become engrossed in their extraordinary lives. The novel invites you into the journey with its intriguing plot and haunting writing, but it will force you to stay, as the story turns sharply from one twist to the next, leading you dangerously towards the final climactic chapters. Moreover, Riggs intertwines the narrative with real vintage photography, which provides the skeletal outline for this series. Every photo is captivating and builds on the sinister atmosphere, making each character, each scene and each monster more tangible.
Overall, Miss Peregrine’s Home For Peculiar Children is wholly unique; it’s a book I would highly recommend everyone read. The unusual storyline and novel concept, threads time travel, monsters and eighty-year-old children together to make a spectacular book – showing what it really means to be peculiar.
Amelie Reeves, Year 11