Black Maria [Englisch] [Taschenbuch]

Note: "Black Maria" is the original title for the book later published as "Aunt Maria."

After her father is killed in a car accident, Nan and what's left of her family are invited to spend the school holiday with their paternal Aunt Maria. Nan thinks it's a bad idea to stay with her father's relatives, particularly the one who raised him, but her mother feels sorry for the helpless old woman and accepts. Far from being helpless, the aunt is ludicrously particular and demanding of the mom, adores Nan, and shows an instant (and mutually reciprocated) loathing for Nan's brother. But other than that everything is pretty dull (the vacation, not the story). And then Nan and her brother discover their father's car in a parking lot when it's supposed to have crashed into the ocean, an anonymous green ghost appears in a bedroom, and a lot of people seem obsessed with finding and/or hiding a small box. The children realize something very strange is afoot.

Nan's brother gets an idea as to what that could be, but he won't let Nan help him. And then he disappears, and their mother doesn't notice even when he's been gone for several days, and Aunt Maria takes a sudden keen interest in Nan's activities.

Nan wants to find out what's going on and get her family back to normal. To do that, she first must solve a mystery dating back to events twenty years before--a mystery for which she has precious few clues to go on. The townspeople won't help--they're either against her, or too afraid to fight what they know she's up against. And all the while she has to dodge around Aunt Maria's prying, meddling, seriously menacing curiosity.

It's all really quite fun. I particularly like the way Jones throws out clues that seem so slender they don't seem to be clues at all, puts Nan into truly dangerous situations (all the scarier for the fact that in a village full of people our heroine cannot appeal to *anybody* for help), makes the story seem like there is no way on earth it can ever work out--and then executes such a series of brilliant twists and startling turns that suddenly when you find everything has come out more or less right after all it's a real unexpected pleasure. The book by turns tragic, dark, exciting, dramatic, and funny (sometimes all at the same time). And yet everything is totally plausible and entertaining.

Nan is a quiet, intelligent heroine--she understands people, and is not impressed or fooled by appearances. As she works to save her brother and mother and maybe even a whole town (all the while tossing out funny, spot-on observations about the people she meets), there is always the unspoken acceptance in her mind that whatever happens, there can be no completely happy ending--only the right one. She's right, too, and I like her all the more for it.

Everyone has one -- an older relative who disapproves of you unless you do what she wishes, and isn't nearly as nice as she pretends to be.

But "Black Maria" turns out to be even worse than your average annoying relative, in this engaging, humourous and chilling fantasy novel. Diana Wynne-Jones spins a fantastical story of witchcraft and revenge, all centering on the elderly lady who sweetly lords it over Cranbury-on-Sea.

After her father is apparently killed in a car accident, Mig and her family go to stay with Aunt Maria, mainly because her mother feels guilty. Aunt Maria is very prim and very sweet, and makes a point of guilting people into doing what she wants. Life revolves around Aunt Maria's tea parties, and the men and children act like automatons.

Mig and her brother Chris hate it there, despite the sad ghost who appears in Chris's room. But they start to suspect that magic may be at work, and that Aunt Maria may be at the center of it. When Chris annoys her, she transforms him into a wolf. Now Mig must uncover a magical plot that stretches back over the decades -- and is the key to dethroning Aunt Maria.

It's hard enough to deal with such elderly, sickly-sweet relatives if they are normal. Imagine if they are cold-hearted witches, who turn their own daughters into wolves. And if Diana Wynne-Jones was trying to make people feel lucky for not having an Aunt Maria, then she succeeds beautifully.

Jones paints a chilling picture of Cranbury -- sort of a "Stepford Wives" situation, except it's Stepford Husbands and Kids, all slaves to the stifling sweetness of Aunt Maria. The one weak spot is the ending -- it's not a terribly bad ending, but it is kind of weak, especially compared to the quiet menace of the past several chapters.

Mig is a likable character, although her rebellious brother Chris comes across as the more engaging of the main characters, and readers might want to kick her meek, submissive mother. Aunt Maria is the most frighteningly real, from her outdated opinions to her pushy sweetness; she's horrified at girls wearing pants, eating fish'n'chips for dinner, and favors boys over girls. Even worse, she genuinely believes that she is a wonderful person.

Take the most irritating old lady imaginable... and give her evil magic powers. That's the chilling picture painted in "Black Maria," which will make readers intensely grateful that they aren't Chris and Mig.