The Haunting

This is such a lovely novella. It's told from the perspective of young Barney, for whom his family is the center of his world. Barney adores his step-mother and is a bit in awe of both his older sisters, loud future novelist Tabitha and silent bookish Troy. Barney's real issue is that he is being haunted by a recently rediscovered grand-uncle, Cole but the way the haunting is dealt with is the way any problem a child of eight has is deal with, you tell your siblings and your parents and they help you.




The good stepmother, the decisive girls and the shy sensitive boy, all make for wonderful role reversals but Mahy doesn't overdo it either. The wonderful stepmother is pregnant and a stay-at-home-parent and the father is distant in a way show more that is no longer acceptable but was standard at the time. The family relationships are so complex you end up feeling you've read a saga when the book does not get even close to 200 pages. show less

This is such a lovely novella. It's told from the perspective of young Barney, for whom his family is the center of his world. Barney adores his step-mother and is a bit in awe of both his older sisters, loud future novelist Tabitha and silent bookish Troy. Barney's real issue is that he is being haunted by a recently rediscovered grand-uncle, Cole but the way the haunting is dealt with is the way any problem a child of eight has is deal with, you tell your siblings and your parents and they help you.




The good stepmother, the decisive girls and the shy sensitive boy, all make for wonderful role reversals but Mahy doesn't overdo it either. The wonderful stepmother is pregnant and a stay-at-home-parent and the father is distant in a way show more that is no longer acceptable but was standard at the time. The family relationships are so complex you end up feeling you've read a saga when the book does not get even close to 200 pages. show less

Barney is being haunted by his possibly-dead Great Uncle Cole, but he doesn't want to tell anyone because it would just upset them.
A neat premise with a couple of fun twists and a flash of lovely writing here and there, but it felt like more of a quick sketch than a fully fleshed-out story. That's a shame; if the characters had been given more depth and the story more time and detail, this could have been a real corker.

Barney wants his family to be ordinary as possible. His oldest sister Troy scarcely says anything. Barney sees ghosts, but doesn’t want anyone to know. Tabitha, his other sister, finds out, and wants to know all about what’s going on, in great detail, so she can write about it in her soon-to-be blockbuster novel. Together, the three children gradually unravel the mystery of their long-lost great uncle, and find out many unexpected things about their family in the process.

The characters in this story are wonderfully, realistically detailed. Each child is different from their siblings, yet the relationships are still unmistakable. Also it’s a refreshing change to have a stepmother cast in a positive role- Barney adores his show more stepmother, and spends much of the book fretting about how she’d react if she knew what was going on with him.

On the fringes of the main family in the story are their extended family, comprised of Great-Granny, a pair of grandparents, and a handful of great-uncles. Here, too, are an assortment of personalities, interwoven into the strange pattern of relationships that form what society calls a family. Like all families, they turn out to have some significant secrets!

One of these secrets is the mysterious great-uncle Cole, who the children have never heard of, until a photograph reveals him at the time of a family funeral. Tabitha, the determined novelist, begins asking questions about the boy in the photograph, and becomes increasingly intrigued by the answers the other great-uncles give her.

Barney figures out that it is Cole who is haunting him, but he can’t figure out why. The messages Cole sends are more baffling than frightening, but the experience is still alarming for Barney, who just wants to be left in peace. Eventually, Cole expresses his intention to take Barney away with him, and Barney must, with the help of his family, find the courage to say no, and stay where he belongs.

This book is quite short, but the plot is fairly complicated for a reader to follow. I would recommend it particularly for readers 13 years of age or older. show less

Gorgeous writing, original premise. Twisty plot, revelatory characterizations. Discussable themes. I'd love to read this aloud to a classroom. And I recommend it to fans of ghost stories and magic. I had to use paperbackswap to get a copy so I will reread it before passing it on back.

One concern I noted: I'm heavy, but have never been teased or dissed for my weight; I don't know about the respectful way for an author to avoid body-shaming. But this seems reasonable to me: The second child, an outgoing girl of 10 (?) responds to a poke at her lunch choice with a cheerful, "If I don't mind being fat, I don't see why other people should mind for me."

A quote from a child's schoolbook is her adaptation from *On First Looking into Chapman's show more Homer*
By John Keats. The poem has its own Wikipedia page; it has been very widely taught. show less

This book, published in 1982, won the Carnegie Medal and is a nice spooky tale for middle grade children, with a difference. It is quite short being a children's book from the era when such books were fairly short, but tells the tale of a quiet boy, Barney, who just wants to be normal but to whom extraordinary things begin to happen. It starts when he is coming home from school and is confronted on the way by what appears to be a lifesize paper model of a Victorian boy which then tells him Barnaby is dead and it is going to be very lonely. I did like the description of the figure swinging this way and that and then spinning round faster and faster until it vanishes in flakes of blue paper - not your average ghost!

The story takes a twist show more as Barney begins to realise that it is perhaps not a ghost at all but that he is being haunted by a living mysterious member of his family, a member who had uncanny powers and was in effect banished. This person now wants Barney for his own and is coming back, inflicting Barney with all kinds of 'hauntings' such as audible footsteps and visions of what is witnessed on the journey.

There is a nice spooky atmosphere, and the characters are also well realised, with even Barney's talkative sister, a would-be novelist, covering over as interesting rather than annoying. And there is a good twist at the end and a nice acknowledgement of the tensions within even happy families. show less

Barney is the youngest in his family of two sisters, a dad and a stepmother. Just an average boy in an average family. When he starts having strange dreams, sightings and experiences that coincide with the death of a great-uncle he isn't sure what to think or do.

His older sister, Troy, is distant and a bit reclusive. Tabitha, his middle sister is a note-jotting novelist in training who wants to know everything that is going on. Does he dare let his parents know what strange things are going on?

What is the tie-in with Great-uncle Barnaby, who Barney is named for and another estranged great-uncle Cole, who is rumoured to be dead?

Margaret Mahy give enough clues, as the story goes along, to keep you reading and guessing and yet not quite show more solving this mystery. Fun to read to yourself, but could be fun to read aloud or have read aloud with a child. Spooky but not frightening.

A Goodread for me. show less