THE WISH HOUSE by Celia Rees

Celia Rees, The Wish House ((Cambridge, Massachusetts: Candlewick Press, 2006).

Cecelia Rees, The Wish House, read by Christopher Cazenove (Random House Audio, 2007).

(YOUNG ADULT NOVEL)

Reviewed by Wilda Morris

Richard receives and invitation to a gallery in Soho (in London). He doesn’t know why Clio has invited him. He is afraid he is opening himself up to more hurt if he goes. He hasn’t seen her for six years and he hadn’t expected to see her again. But he can’t quite resist.

Of all the summers of his life, one summer stands out in Richard’s memory: the summer of the Wish House.

Richard is the only child in a fairly conservative family. Each summer for years they have taken their camper to the same seaside town. His father fished while his mother sat outside and read books. In previous summers, Richard had spent most of his time with Dylan, the son of the owners of the campground. Dylan is a couple years older than Richard, and this summer, he is working fulltime for his father. Richard is on his own.

Richard and Dylan used to play in the garden of an abandoned house, one they called “the Wish House,” so it seems like a good place to begin his summer adventures. This time, however, as he enters the garden alone he comes upon a big surprise: a naked woman lying on the grass. He had never seen a naked woman before. This was his first introduction to the family of artist Jethro Dalton, a family whose motto seems to be “nothing forbidden.” A witches’ garden sports poisonous plants, children call their parents by their first names, mother and son smoke pot together, the ex-wife comes to visit, “magic mushrooms” are hunted in the woods, the mother tells fortunes—Richard learns that the ways of this strange family with their “bohemian” life-style are very unlike the ways of his own family.

It is a summer of first love, first sex, first betrayal, first death. This is a coming-of-age novel with some surprising plot turns. The structure of the novel is creative. Rees goes back and forth between descriptions or notes on the paintings and drawing exhibited in the gallery and the memories they evoke in Richard. There is a final meeting between Richard and Clio, and the reader gets the sense that this exhibit has helped both of them make sense of much of what happened that summer and gain some healing.

Maybe I’m too old fashioned, but I wouldn’t give this book to a teenager to read, though it is listed as a Young Adult novel. College students might have an interesting discussion of this book, however. The structure, plot and characters kept me reading to the end.