I haven’t posted in awhile because I’ve been reading Inkheart, which is 534 pages long and therefore about 4 times as long as most of the books I read these days. But I managed to stay awake on my commute this morning to finish the book — which is a testament to Funke’s skill, as I stumble out of my house at 6:15 a.m. and usually nap on the train — so I can post, at long last!
Inkheart begins, like A Wrinkle in Time, with a rainy night and a strange visitor:
Rain fell that night, a fine, whispering rain. Many years later, Meggie had only to close her eyes and she could still hear it, like tiny fingers tapping on the windowpane. A dog barked somewhere in the darkness, and however often she tossed and turned Meggie couldn’t get to sleep.
The visitor is Dustfinger, an odd man who shares a secret with Meggie’s father Mo. What the secret is, and where it takes Meggie and Mo, I won’t say. (You’ll find out if you read the flap or any reviews, but I think the book would have been more enjoyable if I hadn’t known the premise before I started.)
I mention A Wrinkle in Time because Inkheart is a lovely homage to all the best children’s stories of magic. It’s a love letter to books and readers, my favorite childhood reading nook and cup of tea all bound up in book form. I’m relying more on flowery vagueness than I usually do because, like I said, I don’t want to say much about what actually happens, but also because if you’re the sort of person who’ll love this book, you’ll recognize it immediately from what I’ve said and won’t need to know more.
Read-alikes: The Neverending Story, by Michael Ende (which is my favorite book of all time, and I’ll admit I sniffled a little when Funke used a quote from it to introduce a chapter near the end of Inkheart); The Last Unicorn, by Peter S. Beagle; A Wrinkle in Time and the rest of the series, by Madeleine L’Engle. Inkheart belongs right next to all the classics of children’s fantasy.
10 responses so far ↓
1 jfpbookworm // May 14, 2008 at 9:27 am
You’ll find out if you read the flap or any reviews, but I think the book would have been more enjoyable if I hadn’t known the premise before I started.
There really needs to be a rant-blog for book-jacket spoilers (I’m looking at you, The Curious Incident of the Dog In the Night-Time).
Also, that read-alike list has got to be the best recommendation I’ve ever seen.
2 redbeard // May 14, 2008 at 10:19 am
And apparently, soon to be a movie.
3 Sam // May 14, 2008 at 12:09 pm
Jarrett:
So I had heard, but I didn’t realize it was that far along. Andy Serkis and Helen Mirren — yay! According to IMDB, Brendan Fraser was Cornelia Funke’s first choice for Mo. I probably would have picked someone more… British. But I do heart Brendan Fraser, and I can see him being a good choice. Man, I hope the movie doesn’t suck…
4 Jaime // May 14, 2008 at 12:31 pm
Oh, I hate to disagree, and I love ALL those read alikes, but… I thought this book was really lame. I read it in the fall, and had heard only good things, but I thought while the premise was cut, the plot was exceedingly weak,the characters flat, and the writing unimpressive. I did, however, think Dustfinger ws a cool character, and I think he’s the subject of a sequel, which I’d consider.
5 Sam // May 14, 2008 at 12:32 pm
Thanks for the vote of confidence, Bookworm!
6 Sam // May 14, 2008 at 12:47 pm
Jaime:
Disagreement is not allowed — get off my comments page!
Seriously, I hear you on some of the writing issues — more the sometimes-flat characterization than the description, which I found lovely and vivid — but I’m going to blame them at least partly on the translation. The Thief Lord was translated by someone else, and I don’t remember seeing the seams in that translation as much. (Dear Anthea Bell, I’m pretty sure that native English speakers — even non-American ones — don’t say “What’s the [big] idea?” nearly as often as you seem to think they do.) Unfortunately, my German isn’t fluent enough to read it in the original and compare.
SPOILERS BELOW!
What bugged you about the plot? (I think we’re far enough down the comments page that you can post spoilers, so long as you write “Spoilers” in bold at the top.) The only thing that jumped out at me was it made no sense for Darius (the other reader who wasn’t as good at it) to exist, except to create a reason for Resa to be mute — and that could have been accomplished to greater effect by having Capricorn cut out her tongue, which is what I first thought had happened anyway. Am I being naive and missing other stuff?
Dustfinger was also my favorite character — he was the most tortured and had the most shades of grey, so of course I loved him!
7 Doug Orleans // May 14, 2008 at 2:01 pm
What, no Amazon link?
8 Sam // May 14, 2008 at 2:06 pm
Doug:
Nope, because I would prefer that you check it out of a library or buy it from your local independent bookstore, of course! :)
9 Jame // May 30, 2008 at 12:59 pm
Hmmmm…. meant to get back to this sooner… I dunno, the plot just felt thrown together. And then something happened… and the something else did! And SPOILERS) guess what there’s mom! It neither felt like things happened randomly as in real life, nor like it was carefully plotted for maximum emotional effect. And why can these people do this (and no one else)? And why can some do it well and some badly? neat premise, poor results; but i will give you that it might be translation issues.
10 Sam // May 31, 2008 at 4:58 pm
Jaime:
The “why can these people do it and no one else” bugged me too, and that can’t be blamed on translation. I’m hoping, perhaps vainly, that it’s explained in the sequel. It’s funny — I would have been completely fine with its having no explanation if Mo was the only person in the whole world who could do it. But once she introduced Darius… well, now it’s a thing *people* can do, which my suspension of disbelief doesn’t handle as well.
(And of course, as I said in a previous comment, there was no reason for Darius to exist anyway.)
As for mom showing up, you knew she had to, didn’t you? It was just a question of how, and I was actually surprised about who she turned out to be. This is probably because I’m notoriously dumb about plot twists, but still.
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