Funke, Cornelia. Inkheart

Why no posts in the last couple days? Inkheart is a very long book--534 whole pages.

I'm currently reading a Spanish book called Shadow of the Wind (out in English translation, though I'm reading it in Spanish for language practice). In it, the young narrator happens upon an extremely obscure and mysterious book--whose title is also the title of the real book--and people are out to get it from him. So it was a little odd for me to happen upon this book, in which the main character, 12-year-old Meggie, finds herself in danger after a mysterious man, the scarred Dustfinger, comes after her father for an extremely obscure and mysterious book of his--whose title also happens to be the title of the real book.

Meggie's father is a very skilled bookbinder; he also has a more specialized skill, namely, that he can read things out of books and into real life. He doesn't do this on purpose, and why he did it at all after he realized he could is kind of a mystery to me, because the predictable thing happened: nine years ago, when Meggie was much younger, her father read some very nasty villains out of a book called Inkheart. And now they're out to get the book, and her father, back.

In concept it's a fantastic book, and made better by the adoration for the written word that shows through on every page. Each chapter starts out with a paragraph from a book; for books to come to life they must be good books, and the reader must love them. But by doing this, the book ends up setting up some very high expectations for itself; a book about how wonderful books are must itself be wonderful. It isn't, quite. The prose doesn't have the boldness that it needs to have, and this may be an artifact of the translation. Of more concern, the story largely plays by the numbers. It has the same sorts of set pieces that pop up in a dozen books and movies; and the same sorts of characters too, who don't really have all that much depth to them. It's disappointing that a book this long spends so much of its length running from one place to another, when it could have developed rich characters capable of thinking more than two thoughts apiece.

And yet it's a good book. There are small touches, moments of magic and beauty; there is Dustfinger, perhaps the most complex and interesting character in the cast, whose story is truly a tragic and compelling one.

A good book, but it wanted to be great, and should have been. And, honestly, if you're going to make a middle-grade book this long, you'd better have a pretty good reason. Or be J.K. Rowling.
Funke, Cornelia. Inkheart
New York: Chicken House, 2003.