reading: The Headless Cupid
Jun. 25th, 2020 12:29 amOur internet is being dreadful. I can't *quite* pin the blame for my being a half-hour after Wednesday on that, but it did contribute!
I read many Zilpha Keatley Snyder stories in my youth. The Greensky books were life-changing for me, but I also really loved The Changeling. I never did read The Headless Cupid, however—until now. (Thank you,![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
osprey_archer!)
The pacing is very leisurely. We meet good-hearted David and his three younger siblings, who are all distinct, charming personalities. We learn that David’s mother died some time ago, that his dad remarried and now they’ve moved to a huge old house out in the country, and that his stepmother’s daughter Amanda is coming to live with them.
She arrives, and she’s an angry mess, but David and younger kids don’t really care, because she’s into the supernatural, has a pet crow, and is training to be a witch, and they’re intrigued. She’s high handed and obnoxious with them, and it just kind of rolls right off them. She tries to lord it over them, and they … just enjoy it.
I don’t know how I would have felt about Amanda if I had been reading the story as a kid. As an adult, I didn’t like her very much. I was offended on behalf of David and the others, and as a parent, I could only think what a trial she’d be.
But she *is* imaginative (even if her first game with the others, slaves and slave driver, just would NOT fly in the present world). And you end up feeling a little sorry for her—though she’d hate that--because she’s always being shown up in small ways by the others (they get along better with her pets than she does, they know more about reptiles and herbs than she does). Furthermore David and his siblings have each other, and David has a good relationship with both his own father and Amanda’s mother. Given those facts, it’s pretty amazing that Amanda is as friendly as she is, and I guess we can intuit from that how much she craves exactly what the other four are offering, even if she can’t admit that fact to herself. And ZKS manages to convey all that without being heavy-handed. It’s all there, but lightly.
I did kind of want more actual supernatural stuff. There was a lot of “is it or isn’t it?” much of which gets placed firmly in the “it isn’t” category, but there was some stuff that remained ambiguous, and I wanted more of that. David’s little brother Jamie has a kind of Charles Wallace vibe going on, and I wanted to see him do more communing with crows—or ghosts.
But for all that, it was a satisfying story—perceptive about human nature, and engaging in its small details.
I read many Zilpha Keatley Snyder stories in my youth. The Greensky books were life-changing for me, but I also really loved The Changeling. I never did read The Headless Cupid, however—until now. (Thank you,
osprey_archer!)The pacing is very leisurely. We meet good-hearted David and his three younger siblings, who are all distinct, charming personalities. We learn that David’s mother died some time ago, that his dad remarried and now they’ve moved to a huge old house out in the country, and that his stepmother’s daughter Amanda is coming to live with them.
She arrives, and she’s an angry mess, but David and younger kids don’t really care, because she’s into the supernatural, has a pet crow, and is training to be a witch, and they’re intrigued. She’s high handed and obnoxious with them, and it just kind of rolls right off them. She tries to lord it over them, and they … just enjoy it.
I don’t know how I would have felt about Amanda if I had been reading the story as a kid. As an adult, I didn’t like her very much. I was offended on behalf of David and the others, and as a parent, I could only think what a trial she’d be.
But she *is* imaginative (even if her first game with the others, slaves and slave driver, just would NOT fly in the present world). And you end up feeling a little sorry for her—though she’d hate that--because she’s always being shown up in small ways by the others (they get along better with her pets than she does, they know more about reptiles and herbs than she does). Furthermore David and his siblings have each other, and David has a good relationship with both his own father and Amanda’s mother. Given those facts, it’s pretty amazing that Amanda is as friendly as she is, and I guess we can intuit from that how much she craves exactly what the other four are offering, even if she can’t admit that fact to herself. And ZKS manages to convey all that without being heavy-handed. It’s all there, but lightly.
I did kind of want more actual supernatural stuff. There was a lot of “is it or isn’t it?” much of which gets placed firmly in the “it isn’t” category, but there was some stuff that remained ambiguous, and I wanted more of that. David’s little brother Jamie has a kind of Charles Wallace vibe going on, and I wanted to see him do more communing with crows—or ghosts.
But for all that, it was a satisfying story—perceptive about human nature, and engaging in its small details.
