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Reviewed by:
  • Black Spring by Alison Croggon
  • Karen Coats
Croggon, Alison . Black Spring. Candlewick, 2013. [288p]. Trade ed. ISBN 978-0-7636-6009-3 $16.99 E-book ed. ISBN 978-0-7636-6708-5 $16.99 Reviewed from galleys R Gr. 7-10.

Exhausted by the dissipation of his urban life, Hammel seeks out the lonely environs of the Northern Plateau for a summer retreat. After spending a terrifying night in the home of his menacing landlord and seeing the ghost of a woman in the mirror of his quarters, he learns the story of Lina and Damek, victims of circumstance and passion but purveyors of heartache and destruction. Readers familiar with Wuthering Heights will recognize the plot arc, character constellations, and even storytelling form and language, but Croggon adds her own sinister touches in the form of the dark magic of wizards and witches and a horrific custom called vendetta, which aims to keep the citizenry living in fear while it fills the royal treasury. Lina's violet eyes mark as her a witch, but she denies her power and ultimately appeals to a wizard to hold it in check so she can live a normal life; however, her childhood passion for her father's ward, Damek, proves too strong even after she has settled into a marriage with the gentle and kind Tibor. Damek is undone by his desire for Lina, but Lina's circumstance is more complicated; Anna, her companion from childhood and the person who relates the bulk of the tale to Hammel, has her own views about why the suspicious folk of the North reject Lina, who has powers and passions only thought fitting for a man, and the courage to live by them even when the men around her do not. The insistent power of the Gothic is on full display here, with the added dimension of the kinds of magic that appeal to contemporary teen readers. The language is challenging in the best sense, echoing the prose of its source text. Once readers get the hang of it, the world is compellingly made and fully immersive, and readers will be as attracted and repulsed by Lina and Damek as they have been for nearly two centuries by Catherine and Heathcliff.

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