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Children's Book Review: The Amaranth Enchantment Jan 14, 2009
The Amaranth Enchantment by Julie Berry (Bloomsbury, $16.99, 9781599903347/1599903342, 288 pp., ages 10-14, March 2009)
Narrator and heroine Lucinda Chapdelaine is the main attraction of this debut novel, set in a town called Saint Sebastien in a time and country in which royalty still rules and the class system sits securely in place. Orphaned at age five, Lucinda remembers a time when a nanny brushed her hair and her parents attended balls requiring fancy gowns. Now she lives atop Montescue's Goldsmithy with an uncle and aunt who show her few kindnesses, aside from a place to sleep and meager meals, and who treat her like hired help. At the opening of the book, two key characters arrive at her uncle's shop who will change her life: Beryl (called the Amaranth Witch by the town's priest), who wishes to repair the setting for a white stone of great significance to her ("it magnifies the soul of the bearer"), and Prince Gregor, who is searching for "a gift that says 'forever' " for his betrothed, whom he's never met. It's not giving too much away to say that the white stone of great value to Beryl winds up as the gift bound for Gregor's betrothed. Equal parts suspense and farcical elements follow Lucinda on a circuitous route, where she meets a thief whom she unwittingly aids and abets, as well as a villain with ties to Lucinda's parents, Beryl and the royal family. Berry's talent for building credible connections between Lucinda and this orbit of characters carries the novel and creates some memorable moments. If a building could leak remorse, it would be the once-opulent and now decaying Palisades, with its empty flower pots and broken panes of glass where Beryl makes her home. By contrast, the streets pulse with a magnetic quality as the annual Festival gathers momentum, with the aroma of chicken turning on open fire pits, and prostitutes strolling as citizens dance the Gavotte ("Such order, such beauty in the midst of the city's chaos"). These high points compensate for a weaker thread involving Beryl's origins in an alternate world. Given the well-rounded aspects of Beryl's character and emotions, her alien origins seem unnecessary to the plot and also to the machinations of the other traveler from her world. What the author depicts well and confidently is the isolation that Lucinda--and all of the characters around her--experience and how that sense of alienation ultimately draws them all together. This is a writer to watch.--Jennifer M. Brown
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Narrator and heroine Lucinda Chapdelaine is the main attraction of this debut novel, set in a town called Saint Sebastien in a time and country in which royalty still rules and the class system sits securely in place. Orphaned at age five, Lucinda remembers a time when a nanny brushed her hair and her parents attended balls requiring fancy gowns. Now she lives atop Montescue's Goldsmithy with an uncle and aunt who show her few kindnesses, aside from a place to sleep and meager meals, and who treat her like hired help. At the opening of the book, two key characters arrive at her uncle's shop who will change her life: Beryl (called the Amaranth Witch by the town's priest), who wishes to repair the setting for a white stone of great significance to her ("it magnifies the soul of the bearer"), and Prince Gregor, who is searching for "a gift that says 'forever' " for his betrothed, whom he's never met. It's not giving too much away to say that the white stone of great value to Beryl winds up as the gift bound for Gregor's betrothed. Equal parts suspense and farcical elements follow Lucinda on a circuitous route, where she meets a thief whom she unwittingly aids and abets, as well as a villain with ties to Lucinda's parents, Beryl and the royal family. Berry's talent for building credible connections between Lucinda and this orbit of characters carries the novel and creates some memorable moments. If a building could leak remorse, it would be the once-opulent and now decaying Palisades, with its empty flower pots and broken panes of glass where Beryl makes her home. By contrast, the streets pulse with a magnetic quality as the annual Festival gathers momentum, with the aroma of chicken turning on open fire pits, and prostitutes strolling as citizens dance the Gavotte ("Such order, such beauty in the midst of the city's chaos"). These high points compensate for a weaker thread involving Beryl's origins in an alternate world. Given the well-rounded aspects of Beryl's character and emotions, her alien origins seem unnecessary to the plot and also to the machinations of the other traveler from her world. What the author depicts well and confidently is the isolation that Lucinda--and all of the characters around her--experience and how that sense of alienation ultimately draws them all together. This is a writer to watch.--