In an Absent Dream

The fourth novella in the Wayward Children contemporary fantasy series tells the tragic history of Lundy, the backward-aging therapist of Every Heart a Doorway (2016). In the 1960s, Katherine Lundy is a quiet, observant little girl who likes to read books and follow rules. All of these qualities stand her in good stead when she discovers a door inside a tree that leads to the Goblin Market, a fairyland network of shops and stalls built on a complex architecture of debt and rules which must be obeyed. She learns to love the Goblin Market and the friends she makes there, but the happiness she discovers is balanced by the danger and sorrow she experiences. Frightened and sad, she runs home to the family she left behind. But once she's back with them, she chafes at the societal expectations placed on girls, which feel more restrictive and arbitrary than any stricture of the Goblin Market. Lundy, as she now calls herself, travels back and forth throughout her adolescence, unable to choose between the independence and sense of personal responsibility she values at the Goblin Market and her emotional ties to her family. But the Goblin Market requires her to select one world or the other before she turns 18; if only there were some way she could delay that decision for a while....Lundy's adventures will feel sadly inevitable to readers of the previous books in the series, knowing how she will suffer twice over as a result of her actions, but readers will assuredly not regret going on this journey. The author beautifully portrays the overwhelming experience of being on the threshold of maturity, convinced (sometimes correctly, unfortunately) that the choices one makes now will affect one's entire adult life, struggling to balance obligations to oneself and to others, and feeling paralyzed on that brink. As the warning on the door to the Goblin Market says, "Be Sure." Choose wisely, and choose this book.

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December 1, 2018
In this installment of McGuire's Wayward Children series (after Beneath the Sugar Sky, 2018), readers follow the very serious Lundy, daughter of the school principal, through an impossible door to the Goblin Market. The market has rules for everything, which appeals to Lundy's sense of order. It is also one of the few worlds where a person can pass back and forth, which she does. In the market, she has adventures, makes friends and secures a chosen family, and learns the rules. Back in her world, she knows the rules and makes different promises to her family. In the way of fairy tales, bargains don't generally work quite as one expects, so when Lundy makes a particular bargain in a desperate situation, nothing turns out the way she wants; every promise she makes has consequences, and they can easily be contradictory. This is a lovely installment of the series, with pitch-perfect fairy-tale logic?the series as a whole has wonderful, internally consistent world building?and characters, no matter how far in the background, with complexity and depth.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2018, American Library Association.)

Starred review from December 1, 2018

When quiet and studious Katherine Lundy realizes the world expects her to conform, grow up, and have children of her own, she searches for something more. Finding a door that leads her to the Goblin Market--a place established in rules of logic and riddles, where everything is valued fairly--feels like a dream come true. As Lundy gets older, forming friendships and family ties, she tries to keep everything in balance. But justice has become a lost concept for much of the world, and at the Goblin Market, everything has a cost. So when Lundy tries to make a bargain, she discovers that while she may get what she asks for, it will never be what she truly desires. VERDICT McGuire's fourth in the "Wayward Children" series takes the concepts of fairness and common sense and twists them through the doorways of a portal fantasy with an amazing landscape and characters. Lyrical prose cuts with an honesty of losing childhood innocence that eases the heartache that sometimes accompanies coming of age.--Kristi Chadwick, Massachusetts Lib. Syst., Northampton

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