The Vespertine

Gr 9 Up—This is a lush, dark Southern Gothic novel written with a richness of language that nearly smothers the tale of magic and romance at its heart. In spring 1889, 17-year-old Amelia is sent from her small Maine town to spend the year in big-city Baltimore with the intention that she will behave as a proper young lady and meet an appropriate beau. Enter the mysterious, brooding artist Nathaniel (who is not "of their set"), a boy-crazy cousin, sumptuous fabrics and bodice-baring fashions, and top it all off with Amelia's newfound ability to see portents of the future in the setting sun. The protagonist is a bit of a wet dishrag, the dramatic tragedy that Mitchell's prose so direly portends is disappointingly tame, and the titillation doesn't go beyond searing smooches. But the pervasively descriptive and evocative language combines with period vocabulary and detail to create a mood piece one would never want to deny romance-pining schoolgirls, to wit: "Though I peered yet at the sky, a warm, ornate pattern traced my skin, the traverse of his glance." The book is similar in many ways—though more fantasy than horror, and of a different era—to Mary Hooper's Newes from the Dead (Roaring Brook, 2008).—Rhona Campbell, formerly at Washington, DC Public Library