Reviewed by Carrie Spellman for TeensReadToo.com

Time is not behaving itself. Trains stall in time, then rush ahead as if to catch up, pyramids appear in London, a school bus gets sucked into a Time Tornado and vanishes, and there have been woolly mammoth sightings in the park. Most people can't make any sense of it, and it's getting worse. And the people who do understand it, well, they might be the most dangerous of all.

Silver is an eleven-year-old orphan, alone in the world. Well, not completely alone. She has Mrs. Rockabye, the aunt who mysteriously appeared after the death (or maybe disappearance) of Silver's family. Silver thinks that she'd rather be alone than with Mrs. Rockabye, but it doesn't look like that's going to happen any time soon. For now Silver's greatest comfort is her house, Tanglewreck. It comforts her, soothes her, and even speaks to her. She knows about the strangeness of time, but as long as she can stay at Tanglewreck, she doesn't seem to be too concerned.

Abel Darkwater knows about time, and he understands why it's behaving strangely. Abel is sure that time can be controlled, and that whoever controls time will control the universe. Abel intends to be that person. He's sure that all he needs is the Timekeeper. And he's positive that Silver knows where it is. After all, Silver's dad was bringing it to Abel on the day the family died.

Silver is in a race against time, literally, to keep the Timekeeper safe. If only she knew where it was. Or what it was. With the help of her strange, new, old friend, Gabriel, Silver will have to travel to unknown places and times on a quest for something she's never seen.

I've always loved time travel stories, and this one is no exception. This is the first story I've read that has dealt with the actual alteration of time as opposed to the adjustments of the main character inside a particular time. Although that's in here, too. And, I have to say that this is the closest I've ever come to understanding Quantum Theory. (Something I'm sure would be very disappointing to all of the science teachers I've ever had.) Don't let that intimidate you though. Previous knowledge is (obviously) not required. Whether or not you come away with an understanding of that is not really even the point, though a nice side benefit. The point is that this is a very good, interesting, and well-written story. Plain and simple. You should read it. ( )

Alright, I admit it. The shiny text on the spine lured me into borrowing this from the library. Well, the shiny text and the supremely interesting title-- and once again I have been lucky in that this was actually, happily, a really good book!

There's a lot I love about Tanglewreck, but the biggest thing is how weird it is. It's hard to pick out specific things because the whole thing is just a little off-center, like how Alice in Wonderland is just a little different from what our own world is like. It all starts off very normally, but then quickly proceeds to throw out these strange little facts and people and events, and it's all a lot of fun.

Take, for instance, the people who live below ground, deep within London's sewers and lower. Or the fact that Silver's house talks to her of the future and that it sets up traps for burglars to fall into. Or what about Bigamy the rabbit, who spies on Silver and reports her doings to his owner (and Silver's caretaker), Mrs. Rokabye? Strange, and fun.

The plot is terribly exciting, but it doesn't go in a straight line from start to finish. It meanders, goes a little slow in parts, and when the end comes it was as much a surprise to me as it was to the characters. It's a good plot, though, and worth following to the end.

Tanglewreck is a little confusing in the way that I'm still not entirely sure what happens in A Wrinkle In Time, but there's much less science (no tesseracts at all) and I'm pretty sure I figured everything out. I do think the emphasis is more on the characters and their relationships with each other than the science/magic bits, and surprisingly those relationships aren't complicated at all.

When science isn't being discussed the prose can be a bit sappy (love moves faster than the speed of light? O-kay.), but I didn't mind most of the time. It wasn't too sappy, and some sweetness is a nice thing, I think.

The only real issue I had with Tanglewreck is that I had a hard time connecting emotionally to the characters. I liked them, and I was interested in reading about them, but I never felt close to them. I was always slightly distanced from them, and that's a tough thing to have to read with, a lot of times. Also I think the characters came off sometimes like cardboard props waiting to say their lines-- Mrs Rokabye, especially, comes off as a prop character. If Tanglewreck had characters with more depth, I think it would have been even more enjoyable than it is now. And also I think sometimes the explanations of what a black hole is, or describing something Einstein said, etc., can come off as rather teach-y, but not in an entirely annoying way. Sometimes it was pretty useful-- like how fast exactly the speed of light is. All I remembered before was "really, really fast."

Despite those problems, I had a really good time reading Tanglewreck. It's a little surreal, a little strange, and a lot of fun.

Birdbrain(ed) Book Blog ( )

This is a great children's story... it's less complex than some of its peers, but I think it's aimed at a younger audience (certainly younger than His Dark Materials). It's sweet, it has powerful female characters, and really -- even just the phrase "time tornadoes" is pretty fun. ( )

There is much to like in Winterson's novel for older children (upwards) I thoroughly enjoyed it and hope it might have a sequel some time.

This fast-moving Fantasy/SF novel (it's a bit of both), about the power to control time, owes a lot to Philips Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy - it has a sparky young heroine, a Mrs Coulter-esque chief baddy who experiments on children, and most importantly, the McGuffin - the Timekeeper - the powerful device that everybody wants. Mix in a dash of quantum physics, teleportation, time travel, an underground world beneath London, an Egyptian temple and a strong supporting cast including a giant rabbit, and you have all the ingredients for a heady adventure full of excitement, thrills, spills and some rather scary moments too.

Silver, our heroine, lives in her old family home - Tanglewreck, with weird Mrs Rockabye as her guardian; her parents and sister had vanished previously. Weird things are beginning to happen with time - it's warping, and time tornadoes have started to suck up and spit out people from different times and places. When Silver and Mrs Rockabye are approached by Abel Darkwater, a clock specialist who is searching for a old clock called the Timekeeper that Silver's father had been custodian of, Mrs Rockabye sees her chance to make a fortune - if only Silver could remember where the clock is ...

As an adult reader, I enjoyed the novel immensely, spotting all the references and influences and chuckling at the way the author warped space/time to work the plot. I think younger readers may be confused with the SF side of things reading it on their own, but it would make a great adventure for reading together; older readers will get the gist and will probably know a little about many of the historical characters mentioned. ( )

See A Winterson Fairytale at From Word to Word