ADA GOTH 3: THE WUTHERING FRIGHT

ADA IS BACK IN SPAIN THIS WINTER!!!

Look up to the entourage of Lord Goth.

THE HALL IS VAST AND FULL OF AUTHORS...

It's Christmas in the Regency countryside in which Ghastlygorm Hall is situated. Sleigh bells ring in the crisp winter air, snowflakes twirl around, and Lord Goth hosts a Literary Show which fills his estate with renowned authors of the historical period. Though ominous howls echo throughout the Hall, and thus, Ada and friends, with their newfound club members the Brontë... er... Vicarage siblings, find themselves entangled in another sinister, addictive, and thrilling Regency mystery...

Inventor Charles Cabbage is now finished with his difference engine (a device that will surely make a difference!), but he also has time to invent a new remarkably simple toy he calls hooligan hoop (we now call it hula hoop), as his children William and Em return from their respective boarding schools for winter break having made the acquaintance of the Vicarage siblings: wannabe writers Charlotte, Emily, and Anne in their sonnet bonnets, and their awkward, shy brother Bramble (Spoiler alert: Bramble is a werewolf, since he was wounded in a gorse bush and injected with some drool from werewolf typographer the Hound of the Baskervilles.), aside from Rugby School bully/jock Harry Flushman (the scourge of Bramble Vicarage and William Cabbage!), eldest son and heir to water-closet tycoon Josiah Flushman...

The authors who visit Ghastlygorm include historical novel writer Sir Walter Scott... er... Splott (not in a kilt, but tartan trousers will do); romance novelist (Ada's handmaid's favourite) Jane... er... Plain Austen; balletic wordsmith (female in men's clothing) George... er... Georgie Eliot; sharply dressed society satirist William Makepeace... er... Timepiece Thackeray... Foreign authors are present as well: representing the former Thirteen Colonies, poetess Emily... er... Homily Dickinson; and, straight from Scandinavia, Danish fairytaler Hans Christian... Hands Christmas Andersen and Swedish Countess (slender though super strong, able to lift two horses, sporting twin braids but blond and freckle-less... an ancestor?) Pippi Shortstocking (it would be Kortstrump in Swedish). 

What's more, renowned British illustrator Sir Christopher Riddle-of-the-Sphinx R.A., founder of the Arts and Crufts Movement, also makes a stellar appearance (yes, the author has placed himself, drawn in his own style and Regency clothes, in his own novel!!). Just like Velázquez in Las Meninas, Sir Christopher crosses the fourth wall to literally live among his characters.

After all, Zacharias Topelius opens his Surgeon's Stories (Fältskärns berättelser) with a preface, adscribed to the titular Surgeon, the third-person narrator of the epic historical saga, from which I stress the following quote:

"Därför - har du förmågan att lida eller jubla med släkten som varit, att hata med dem, att älska med dem, att hänryckas, att beundra, att förakta, att förbanna, såsom de gjort, med ett ord, att leva bland dem med hela ditt hjärta och icke blott med ditt kalla betraktande förstånd, välan så följ mig! Jag leder dig ned i dälderna; min hand är svag och mina tavlor ringa, men ditt hjärta skall leda dig bättre än jag, på det förtröstar jag - och begynner. "

"Therefore, if you have the capacity to suffer or rejoice with the generations that have been—to hate with them—to love with them—to be transported—to admire, to despise, to curse as they have done—in a word, to live among them with your whole heart and not alone with your cold, reflecting judgement, then follow me. I will lead you down into the veil. My hand is weak and my sketch humble, but your heart will guide you better than I. Upon that I rely - and begin."

These words, a real creed for readers of historical fiction and fantasy, make me reflect upon what Riddell has done here in this book. Literally lived among his creations with his whole heart and soul, for who knows Ada and her friends better, or who would take the plunge head first into their Regency estate and take to its ways like a fish takes to water? Which is what makes his appearance far more interesting than any other simple author's cameo, comparable to Velázquez is Riddle's endeavour.

There are more references scattered all over the pages of The Wuthering Fright:

The inventor Cabbage has got three monkey assistants, dressed in Oz-style fezes and waistcoats, but without any wings, called William, Heath, and Robinson.

What's more, Marianne Delacroix (who still covers her tits under a blouse) is revealed to have a little son called Eugène, with a remarkable artistic talent.

And also that she taught Ada needlework (think Mme. Defarge...)

Hebe Poppins, married to her chimney-sweep Bert, has also become a mother, but of a daughter (Eugène's age), called... Mary, of course!

Nanny Darling guards a kindergarten in Kensington Gardens.

Jane Ear once overheard a pupil of hers, one Charlie Dodgson, as he drew a comic strip in his Maths textbook, say: "And what is the use of a book without pictures or conversations?" Jane Ear liked to repeat those words as if they were her own, and she passed the sentence on to Ada Goth.

And the ghosts of Tudor queens Anne Bowl-in and Anne of Peeves, both of them killed during a cricket match, also make a cameo...

Charles Cabbage's hooligan hoop was inspired by two unruly child workers, Noel and Liam (read: Gallagher), who, fortunately, when they came of age, became musicians instead

Lord Goth keeps busts of Trajan, Domitian, Vespasian, Julius Caesar, Hadrian, and Augustus on a shelf. And he's also writing a narrative poem titled The Pilgrimage of Harolde the Kid!

The local roadhouse has got a room full of Pickwicks (all of them bald, beer-quaffing, bespectacled, jolly, and overweight) reading newspapers. The Pickwick Snug.

Andersen, who here wrote a story about a mermaid barmaid called "The Little Barmaid", has got a flying trunk which came all the way from Turkey in a hot-air balloon, decorates the Ghastlygorm Christmas tree topping it with a (rather Elsa-like) Snow Queen figurine, and a snowman is made in his likeness by Ada and friends.

Furthermore, here's an excerpt of the opening of a Plain Austen novel, Miss Ambridge's/Fancyday's (Ambridge is the Spanish translation surname, Fancyday the original one) (Ada's new handmaid's) favourite read: "It is a truth universally acknowledged that a talented singer in possession of a good voice must be in want of a musical production." The novel, Prompt and Prejudice, is all about Elizabeth Bonnett, a simple country girl with a song in her heart who meets a dashing dancing master, Mr Darcy-Bussell.

Plus, like every other Ada Goth book, this one has a little tie-in booklet for an Easter egg: here it is an illustrated summary of Bramble Vicarage's stage career, featuring portraits of him in costumes and also portraits of the authors of the plays, operas, and musicals he has starred in: works of Mozart (The Barber of Seville, The Marriage of Figaro), Jack London (Call of the Wild), Shakespeare (A Midsummer Night's Dream), Wilde (The Importance of Being Earnest), Lady Baa-Baa (101 Dalmatians, done by a Lady Gaga parody), and the Lieder of my soulmate Franz Schubert.

The first Ada delighted me with one historical or literary allusion at every turn. So did the second. The third surpasses both of them exceedingly (the Scandinavian characters [I LUV both Andersen stories and Pippi Lângstrump], the Brontë... er... Vicarage siblings, all of the authors at the literary show, the mystery of the ominous howls that echo round the Hall, Harry Flushman already a jock and a bad boy in his teenage years at Rugby School [foreshadowing his expulsion!], the children of Hebe Poppins and Marianne Delacroix...) Here, Riddell really ups the ante, tripling the allusions and the British humour, and even featuring himself in the third installment of this richly-illustrated and highly intertextual Regency fantasy series. Addictive and intoxicating, even more than its predecessors, this third Ada Goth book is truly the jewel in the Snow Queen's icy crown!

And thus...

LET US POP A CORK OF MOËT CHAMPAGNE AND DRINK IT ON ICE! TO THE HEALTH OF ADA GOTH AND TO THAT OF SIR CHRISTOPHER RIDDLE-OF-THE-SPHINX, R.A.!

COMMENTARY:

Even richer layers of allusion are reached when it comes to the referees of the ‘literary show," Hands Christmas Andersen, and especially Countess Pippi Shortstocking, who appears to be a complex melange between the title character from the beloved children’s series Pippi Longstocking by Astrid Lindgren and Princess Anna of Frozen fame. Riddell’s humorous metafictionality is taken even farther in Wuthering Fright by the introduction of the episodic character of ‘Sir Christopher Riddle-of-the-Sphinx R.A., ‘a founder of the Arts and Crufts movement’. This seems like a very ‘meta-meta-‘ gesture, but it actually leads back to a whole tradition of painters more or less subtly inserting self-portraits into their paintings, like Sandro Botticelli in Adoration of the Magi, or Diego Velázquez in Las Meninas, a gesture of auto-mimesis that acts not only as a signature, but also as a meditation upon authorship. This all sounds terribly academic, and whilst it may convince an adult readership that Chris Riddell’s book is full of intellectual goodies, why would a child be willing to read it?

PS. AND THE PIRATE QUEEN?
Ada Goth book 2.5, The Pirate Queen, was only released in the UK because it was a special event book (don't blame me, blame the publisher!)