The Green Man
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- $10.99
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- $10.99
Publisher Description
Teenaged O – never call her Ophelia – is about to spend the summer with her aunt Emily. Emily is a poet and the owner of an antiquarian book store, The Green Man. A proud, independent woman, Emily’s been made frail by a heart attack. O will be a help to her. Just how crucial that help will be unfolds as O first tackles Emily’s badly neglected home, then the chaotic shop. But soon she discovers that there are mysteries and long-buried dark forces that she cannot sweep away, though they threaten to awaken once more. At once an exploration of poetry, a story of family relationships, and an intriguing mystery, The Green Man is Michael Bedard at his finest.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Bedard's lyrical ghost story with a literary leitmotif features an adult character first introduced as a child in A Darker Magic (1987). A mildly famous poet, oddball Emily owns a languishing bookstore, the Green Man. When Emily's niece, 15-year-old O (don't call her Ophelia), comes to spend the summer with Aunt Emily, O, herself a fledgling poet, realizes that her aunt is haunted by the memory of a monstrous, Svengali-like stage magician whose magic seems dangerously real and who has left a trail of death behind him. Most of the apparitions in the bookstore, however, are innocuous, poetic types like "Mallarm sat hunched on the stairs, his plaid shawl draped over his shoulders, his pen poised over a scrap of closely written manuscript on his knees," or the elusive Emily Dickinson. Complicating matters for O is a mysterious and seductive young man who calls himself Rimbaud, but who may not be human. Though Bedard's somewhat old-fashioned story has a loosely knit plot, it is propelled by two well-realized viewpoint characters and offers an atmospheric tribute to the power of poetry. Ages 10 14.
