CHRIS RIDDELL'S GOTH GIRL BOOKS

Meet Ada Goth.
Born and raised at Ghastlygorm Hall, daughter of an aristocratic Romantic poet Lord Goth (read Lord Byron) and a Thessalian tightrope dancer (the beautiful Parthenope fell from a tightrope when her daughter was a rather young child), Ada is most often on her own, though the child servants of her household and the offspring of local eccentric inventor Charles Cabbage are eager to befriend her, leading to the foundation of a rather special adventure club.
This is more than just the Victorian version of The Famous Five.
It's a stunning work of art, to which you come for the characters... and stay for the shout-outs to art and literature, cleverly hidden by Riddell like Easter eggs. In fact, reading the Goth Girl books is like taking part in an Easter egg hunt... retooled in my favourite way!
This book can be thoroughly mined for its wealth of literary references such as governesses rejoicing in names like Hebe Poppins and Becky Blunt, a Secret Garden and an Even-More-Secret-Garden in the hall’s grounds, not to mention a lady novelist called Mary Shellfish and a surely self referential Martin Puzzlewit, the radical cartoonist. Chris Riddell has drawn his characters in loving detail and they appear in profusion throughout this book which is a beautiful and desirable object. With some of Ada’s previous governesses being Hebe Poppins, who ran away with a chimney sweep, and Jane Ear, who seemed far too preoccupied with Lord Goth... or another of the previous governesses, Marianne Delacroix, who had called herself a revolutionary and had taught Ada “several rousing songs in French, how to knit and how to construct a sturdy barricade…” – oh and “a contraption for slicing the heads off dolls…”).

The story is packed with references to classical literature, Gothic tales, and fictional and historical characters, most of which will go over the heads of young readers. Where kids do recognise the references – whether from books they have read or films or made-for-TV movies they have seen – it will make them giggle. For example, the previous governesses  Hebe Poppins who “walked like a penguin and was always bursting into song”, and “Jane Ear” who “wasn’t really very interested in being a governess at all. Instead she spent all her time making cups of tea and knocking on Lord Goth’s study door.”  Likewise the discovery of and images of the door not just to “The Secret Garden” but also to “The Even More Secret Garden”.

As an adult reading this book, it’s like a treasure hunt for historical, mythological, literary and popular culture references. Here are just a few (click on the link if you need the answer):

• A landscape gardener called Metaphorical Smith
• Former Governesses: Morag Macbee who had a single tooth and a large wart on the end of her nose; Hebe Poppins, who walked like a penguin, burst into song and ran away with a chimney sweep; Jane Ear, who was more interested in the heroine’s widowed father and tried to burn down the West Wing; Nannie Darling, a sheepdog and more… (or Becky Blunt, or Marianne Delacroix!!)
• Mary Shellfish, a lady novelist
• The housekeeper, Mrs Beat ‘em
• Charles Cabbage, an inventor, who is building a calculating machine
• Fabercrombie & Itch – intellectual weavers of West London

The plot of the book is very much a framework for showcasing the literary references. The heroine, Ada Goth, is the daughter of a thinly disguised Byron (although Riddell doesn’t go so far as to try and introduce Byron’s real daughter, Ada Lovelace’s mathematical prowess and contribution to the development of computing, perhaps slightly surprisingly given that a version of Charles Babbage does appear and his daughter “Emily Cabbage” is a character in the book). She is visited by Ishmael the ghost of a mouse who is haunting the sprawling Ghastly-Gorm Hall (so, we get the line from Moby Dick “Call me Ishmael” and are, as adults, lined up to view the setting as inspired by Gormenghast). The plot and characters then take in Frankenstein, Dracula, Jane Eyre, Mary Poppins, Tristram Shandy, Dr Johnson, Martin Chuzzlewit (here as a pugnatious political cartoonist perpetually in boxing gloves in the expectation of being fought by the subjects of his cartoons despite the fact that those cartoons are so obscure that nobody gets offended by them…), Gulliver's Travels and most likely dozens of others. You get the idea.

Clearly, lots of the literary and other allusions and references, from Homer to Fight Club and Abercrombie and Fitch, and the presence of parodies of historical figures like Mary Shelley and Samuel Johnson, aren’t going to be picked up by child readers.

Culturally rich, references include Mervyn Peake, Charles Babbage, Frances Hodgson Burnett, Charlotte Bronte, William Hogarth, Laurence Sterne, Greek mythology, Mrs Beeton, J M Barrie, Henry David Thoreau, Lewis Carroll, Christianna Brand, P L Traverts, Mary Shelley, Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Bram Stoker.

The point of this lovely book is its oddball characters, witty details and literary references.

Much of our session was spent comparing notes on how many literary allusions and jokes there were in the text. (The eponymous ghost of a mouse introduces himself by saying: “Call me Ishmael”.) We spotted Frankenstein, Mary Shelley, Capability Brown, the albatross from ‘The Rime of the Ancient Mariner’, Mary Poppins, Van Helsing, Dr Johnson and Boswell,  the Yellow Wallpaper, Tristam Shandy, the list goes on and on. Thus Goth Girl works brilliantly for adults and children. It’s also a great way of unconsciously introducing children to classic texts. I can imagine a child who has read this story reading Frankenstein with glee in their teen years as it reminds them of Goth Girl - which they can then re-read with this knowledge.

And now, this book (translated into Castilian, of course) is available in Spain! So I was drawn to it by a picture of Ada on the bookshop wall, I started reading it... and whoa! As I read Goth Girl, I was dying with elation! One allusion piled upon another, piled upon another, piled upon another... like the layers of a sky-high cake with all of my favourite ingredients! So... guess whether I purchased such a reference-loaded novel!
So, if you like intertextuality, classical literary allusions, historical references, and/or crossovers, you're going to LOVE Ada and everyone around her!!