Beatrice Beecham''s Fearsome Feast
(Dave Jeffery)
What a wondrous beginning (after the dreadfully amateurish cover)! There''s an exhilarating account of an ancient ship wreck, then we flash forward as an eccentric father who''s lost his job, his wife, a younger brother absorbed in sci-fi technology and the brainy narrator who hears voices of?this is too brilliant for words?popular TV chefs make their way to the house of a strange aunt in the costal village of Dorsal Finn. This combination of traditional bedtime-story elements and contemporary references to cell phones, I-Pods, Star Wars and Harry Potter will make children (7 through early teens), their parents and even grandparents feel comfortably at home. But there''s adventure afoot: treasure with anagram clues, villains (including the notorious Chorley brothers), reenactment of an historic masque (shades of Edgar Allan Poe), a past murder uncovered and, last but not least, the "fearsome feast" in which entrants concoct hideous entrees (the one that can''t be eaten by the notorious Vladimir Karlof wins). "A tale''s not worth tellin'' if it''s not told right!" proclaims Aunt Maud. And this one abounds in treasures of its own. For example, the Aunt''s little comments "...she''s as reliable as a one handed alarm clock" and unobtrusive bits of psychological insight? when Beatrice feels like a stranger in her new bedroom, Aunt Maud tells her about her own experience as a child in a strange bedroom when she was transported into the country during the bombing of London during World War II, "But I think the real reason I didn''t want it to be mine. I was scared that if I accepted it then I would never see the world I knew ever again." There are four very short surreal chapters from a second person point of view that may be confusing to young readers since we don''t know who the "you" is and the cinematic ending seems unnecessarily complicated to me. But overall this is a great feast with course after course of satisfying dishes. It is the book as treasure hunt. Or like Aunt Maud would say, a story that "fills the coal scuttle."
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