Wildwood and Gazebo

I read two disappointing books this weekend. The first was Wildwood by Colin Meloy, and I'd heard really good things about it. Briefly, it's set in contemporary Portland and a girl has adventures in the woods just over the river while saving her kidnapped baby brother. Meanwhile, her friend Curtis has overlapping adventures and comes of age. Kind of. Actually he just runs away and joins the bandit king.

Anyway, Wildwood has the Rumplestiltskin story at its heart. Prue's parents desperately want children, so they go to the witch and promise her their second child. Prue was first, and ten years later comes Mac. Fully two thirds of the book could have been saved if Prue had told her parents that young Mac had been abducted by crows and then they would have given her that back history. Instead, Prue hides the fact he's missing for a whole night (!) and the next morning sneaks out early and searches in the forbidden woods, and the witch makes trouble. Not to go into excessive detail, by the end Prue has an army of utopian farmers and mystics, and Curtis has an army of bandits, and then the eagles swoop in Hobbit-like at the last minute. The witch and her coyote army are killed and the baby is saved from the carnivorous ivy. Prue and her brother go home, but Curtis decides to stay with the bandits forever.

My take:
When you make a deal with a devil or witch, you cannot simply change your mind. It rings false. Prue could have offered herself in her brother's place, or done something else clever, but these promises must be kept somehow or another. Anything less is cheating the story.

Your parents still know better than you, even if they made really lousy decisions in the past. No good ever, ever comes from hiding the fact you lost your little brother and then twice running away to the forbidden woods to search. If you must disobey flagrantly, you need to know that will come back and bite you somehow. Anything less is also cheating the story.

Also, you can't just ditch your parents at age eleven and decide to live as a bandit in the wildwood. It's especially impolite not to send them a note what happened to you.

The second disappointing book was Patricia Wentworth's The Gazebo. Miss Silver moved evidence, and when the terrified woman came in reasonable fear of being killed by her husband Miss Silver sent her home again! Worse yet, nobody noticed there was a problem with that. With either of those. Miss Silver is the paragon of propriety and keen investigating, and for her to be guilty of such lapses is truly disappointing. I may never be the same.