Peter D. Sieruta's Reviews > The Kneebone Boy

THE KNEEBONE’S CONNECTED TO THE....

I probably never would have picked up THE KNEEBONE BOY on my own accord. I hate the cover with its awful staring kids (I thought of them as Wednesday, Pugsley, and Cousin It) and am not at all fond of books where characters have last names like “Hardscrabble.” Well, it’s okay when Dickens does it, but otherwise I find it a rather arch and lemony (if you know what I mean) device that almost always signals a parody and makes me think I shouldn’t take the book too seriously. I find this kind of affected writing usually provides more style than substance. Still, a great many people whose opinions I respect are trumpeting this book -- with at least one saying it deserves Newbery consideration -- so I knew I’d better read it.

Thirteen-year-old Otto Hardscrabble (who suffers from that disease which impacts children’s book characters in epidemic proportions – elective mutism) and his younger siblings Lucia and Max live in the English village of Little Tunks. Their mother is missing. Their artist father frequently leaves town to paint portraits of deposed royalty. When Dad must quickly go away on business, the kids end up -- through a series of confusions and complications (let’s call the “unfortunate events”) -- traveling to a seaside village where they find lodgings in a miniature castle, meet their surprisingly-young great aunt, and learn the local legend of the Kneebone Boy, who was kept captive in his own family’s castle many years earlier.

The book contains some intriguing elements, including an unidentified narrator (“I can’t tell you which Hardscrabble I am – Otto, Lucia, or Max – because I’ve sworn on pain of torture not to”) but the story takes a long time to get going (it’s ages before we hear much about the Kneebone Boy) and the conclusion is darker, sadder and more “real world” than the whimsical antics that have led up to it. The denouement also opens up a whole new set of questions that probably shouldn’t be examined too closely or the whole plot of the book gets shaky.

The arch prose makes Otto, Lucia, and Max seem remote, while other characters, such as Great-aunt Haddie, remain vague and contradictory. And while the kids sound British enough in their dialogue, the narrative of the book -- which is supposed to have been written by one of the siblings -- doesn’t much reflect the “Britishness” of the narrator. One seldom feels an English kid is telling this story.

THE KNEEBONE BOY has entertaining moments, yet some readers may find that reaching the jarring and unsatisfying conclusion after nearly 300 pages of stylized writing matches the dictionary definition of “hardscrabble” -- yielding meagerly in return for much effort.