So, Mary Downing Hahn was my favorite author when I was young. While working in the children's library I noticed she's actually still writing books and took her newest out, All the Lovely Bad Ones. At first I didn't want to risk ruining the memory of how much I liked her before by thinking her awful as an older person.
To an extent this did happen - but not completely. I found it difficult to believe that the child protagonist would be capable of as much as Mary thought made sense. But maybe some children would have been capable of those things at such a young age. The child protagonist reminded me of how I used to crave books in order to read about children who were recognized as important. The child protagonist is free to affect their world and change it. The real world didn't seem as open to a child doing that. This reminded me of how painful it can be to be a young kid. I hadn't thought about that in a bit.
The subject matter was dark - which if I recall Downing Hahn that's not unusual for her. The premise is that a woman ran a labor camp of sorts. Poor people who had nowhere else to go would get room and board at her home. In exchange she worked both the adults and children to death for no pay. She was violent towards her "guests" especially the children. As a result of all this evil in life she became a poltergeist in death. I used to love premises like that. Reading this reminded me of how hungry I used to be for such stuff. For better or for worse...
Anyway, if you have children 8 years or over I do recommend this author. And she has a rather large backlog of titles by now so if your child likes one of them they would be able to keep reading more of the same.
Glad I read this one.
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