The Children by Melissa Albert
There is a particular spell certain children’s books cast on a reader. You return to them as an adult and the spine cracks like a coffin lid; what felt like wonder at eight rereads at thirty as something colder. Melissa Albert understands this magic, and the rot at its edges, better than almost any writer working today. The Children by Melissa Albert, her first novel for adults, takes that quiet creeping recognition and builds an entire house around it. A literary, slow-burning hybrid of family mystery and modern gothic, this novel asks what happens when the children who lived inside a beloved fantasy series grow up to be the only ones who remember what really happened. The setup, briefly: Guinevere and Ennis Sharpe were written, lightly fictionalized, into their mother Edith’s wildly popular Ninth City series before her early death in a fire. Two decades later, Guin is mid-promotion for a ghostwritten memoir, and Ennis, an installation artist she has not seen since they were children, announces a new show titled simply Mother. The Story …
