The Raconteur's Commonplace Book

November 1, 2020
Grades 5-8 The wide-reaching world building of Milford's Nagspeake novels gets even more expansive in her latest. Fans of Greenglass House (2014) might recognize the title; it's the book of folktales about Nagspeake that Milo reads, and the stories within bolster just about every other book set in the world, with familiar characters, objects, and places periodically appearing. Beyond that, though, the stories are purely enjoyable, playfully toying with folktale conventions, offering a compelling variety of genres, and allowing each teller's voice to clearly come through in their tale. Some are eerie, like "The Hollow-Ware Man," which tells of someone making a desperate bargain, or "The Game of Maps," about a house with violent tendencies. Others are sweet, like "The Ferryman," featuring a boy who desperately loves riddles, or "The Coldway," about a seemingly doomed romance. As the stories go on, touchpoints emerge that gradually shape into revealing truths about the travelers. Though the importance of those truths might be lost on readers unfamiliar with Milford's other novels, the marvelous descriptions, delicious tension, and palpable atmosphere are plenty appealing on their own.

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December 15, 2020
Rain pours down and waters rise as a group of travelers, trapped by the weather in an inn above the river Skidwrack, tell stories. Twelve guests plus innkeeper, maid, and neighbor Phineas Amalgam (compiler of these tales, according to the title page) make up the company of 15, including one child, Maisie, who is traveling alone. The stories, part morality tales and part facets of a drawing-room mystery, suggest a hidden conversation among the assembly: supplicating, surmising, interpreting, warning. Each guest is matched with an activity: dancing, building with cards, whittling, offering cigars, binding papers into books. Milford's rich, complex language hints of magic and connection, of interwoven fates and tragedies. The stories celebrate patterns, numbers, marvelous inventions, puzzles, and possibilities. Several stories of peddlers, choices, crossroads, and arcane clockwork devices point to the mystery, and maps, keys, and music figure prominently. Madame Grisaille, Maisie, Petra, and Gregory Sangwin have darker skin while others are assumed White or, in the cases of the beautiful young man Sullivan and the tattooed brothers Negret and Reever, possibly other than human. The inn is full of its own secrets. Its rooms and layout will feel familiar to Greenglass House fans, but it's set earlier in time, with a steampunk focus on cartography, gearwork, and combustion. At times wryly humorous and at others marvelously unnerving and superbly menacing, this novel delights. Deliciously immersive and captivating. (Mystery. 9-14)

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