Kate's Reviews > Behind the Attic Wall

[spoiler alert] Sylvia Cassedy's "Behind the Attic Wall," which you would find in the children's books section directed to "older readers," has a number of elements that will be familiar to devotees of classics like "Cindarella," "The Secret Garden," and "The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe." The heroine, an orphan named Maggie, comes to live with her two humorless aunts in an old mansion that used to be a school, now shrouded in mysterious tragedy. Yet though Maggie is a "charity case," she is far from the noble-poor type portrayed by the Brothers Grimm, Frances Hodgson Burnett, and Roald Dahl. Maggie is dour toward adults, combative toward other children, and imaginative when alone. Her curiosity and willfulness leads her, like Mary Lennox and Lucy Pevensie, to discover magic hidden behind forbidden doors: in this case, two knee-high porcelain dolls animated by the spirits of the old school's founders, who, Maggie learns, were killed in a fire that forced the school's closure. Timothy John and Miss Christabel, as the two dolls introduce themselves, invite Maggie into their rituals: pretend "tea" served from an empty teapot, walks in the "garden" (an attic room covered with faded floral wallpaper), and conversation (Alice in Wonderland-like semi-nonsense). The dolls, who mysteriously refer to Maggie as "the right one," become unlikely friends for antisocial Maggie, who had insisted, from the outset, that she doesn't play with dolls ("'They're dumb'").

All of the above would make for a serviceable children's novel, with contours predictable enough to provide comfort in the guise of adventure. What makes "Behind the Attic Wall" a fresh departure from the familiar is its provocative, ultimately ambiguous blend of realism and fantasy. Cassedy's characterizations are completely unsentimental. Maggie--an Indian-burn-inflicting, sassing, stealing, hair-sucking antiheroine--is more raw than any Cindarella. The aunts, nutrition freaks appalled by Maggie's skinniness and listless hair, embark on a crusade to nourish her into their idea of a "wholesome child" (like the obnoxiously self-satisfied Jeanette, whom they invite over as an enforced friend for Maggie--here again, Cassedy won't let superficial goodness go uncritiqued). Yet despite the aunts' apparent concern, they are far from comforting, with their fiercely rouged cheeks and harsh critiques. Even Uncle Morris, whose semi-nonsensical wordplay (tellingly similar to that of the two dolls) incites Maggie's first stirrings of affection, is hardly a Prince Charming; he holds himself at a faux-serious, benevolent distance and never shows his hand.

As with her human characters, Cassedy presents her fantasy characters mostly without sentimentality. Maggie imagines a group of "backwoods girls," poorer than she, to whom she teaches concrete tasks: how indoor plumbing works, how to write on a blackboard, how to "kill" a snowflake (by melting it on one's skin). The dolls are presented, at first as a disappointing alternative to Maggie's occasional sentimental escapism. Unhappy that the voices she's been hearing behind the walls belong to a "pair of old dolls" and instead of the "real" (heavily idealized) family she had imagined, she attempts to figure out the dolls' mechanics. Initially, at least, she refuses to believe in them because she can't figure out how they work. Only when she suspends her disbelief and plays along does she become emotionally connected to them--yet it's clearly described as playing along. The teapot pot remains cold and empty, and Maggie's imagination provides the heat, just as her awakening sense of poetry transforms the faded rose wallpaper into a haven, a literal "child's garden of verses."

Set within such a realistic portrayal, the blurriness of the magic involved raises the question of what Cassedy means by that ambiguity. Perhaps Maggie, a sixth-grader who still entertains herself with imaginary friends, has simply gone around the bend to madness by imagining voices behind walls, ultimately locating the voices in two dolls she finds in the attic. Certainly the aunts, when they discover the dolls, don't perceive anything magical afoot (though it's not uncommon for unbelievers in children's books to have their doubts become self-fulfilling). Yet Uncle Morris's mysterious connection to the dolls seems to substantiate their reality--or perhaps Maggie just imagines his vague allusions are conspiratorial. The ending, which I never felt sure I understood as a kid, suggests they are, with Uncle Morris's presence as a new doll (after the real man dies of a heart condition). Or is it just that Maggie, distraught at the loss of the one adult she had cared about, inventing a more bearable ending whereby Uncle Morris doesn't have to die completely? That Cassedy balances her story perfectly on the lip of this uncertainty is what makes it so affecting.

Ultimately, Cassedy's careful treatment of Maggie's emotional awakening clarifies this balance, though it does so by widening, not reducing, its potential meanings. Though she's outwardly antisocial, Maggie longs for genuine emotional connection with someone else. She doesn't respect that which is entirely within her control; it's why she condescends to the backwoods girls and viciously dents the plastic face of the doll her aunt gives her at the book's outset (when Maggie declares, "'I don't play with dolls'"). It's Uncle Morris's unpredictability that compels her, compared with her predictably critical aunts. It's Timothy John's and Miss Christabel's refusal to comply with her expectations that allows her to suspend disbelief and see them as apart from herself. Considering this, I conclude that Cassedy does intend the dolls to be seen as real, not figments of imagination, since they have done what no aspect of Maggie's embittered mind had been able to achieve thus far: to imagine that emotional connection with other souls is possible despite her unhappy childhood. Belief in magic, that signature childhood perspective, is available to her, and love--which Cassedy presents (remarkably without sentiment) as a most mysterious suspension of disbelief--is her birthright after all.