BookChunks™ Part Deux: Fictional Real Estate
The children yearn for the boxcars
I’m sleepy again (and getting really over my skis on my commitment to read every Discworld novel this year) which means it’s time for another installment of everyone’s favorite, chunkiest newsletter within a newsletter, BookChunks™!!!!
Here are some properties from books that I think about all the time:
Hawthorne House (Inheritance Games): The house is really what took this book from yer basic wish fulfillment YA to true National Treasure sicko territory, which Barnes fully did not have to do (“I’m pretty but don’t know it and overnight I’ve become the heir to a fortune and like five billionaire boys have crushes on me now” would probably have sealed the deal for the majority of her audience) but she DID and it made me, personally, lock the fuck in.
There are artifacts and secret passages and features that glow under UV light and keys you can hit on the piano to open compartments and moveable stained glass windows that shine light on particular floorboards at particular times of day.
It really endeared me to the protagonist that this house was not wasted on her, and that she spent a lot of pages basically tunneling into the walls and pushing on everything, which is exactly what I would have done.
The Boxcar All The Boxcar Children Live In Briefly In the First Boxcar Children Book: I really think it’s false advertising to have called this series this when they are out of the boxcar by halfway through the first book. When I read this as a child I remember thinking the boxcar was a pretty sweet setup for these… urchins? Orphans? I really can’t remember what their deal was.
The boxcar was right next to a perfect waterfall they used to refrigerate their milk and wash the full tea set they scavenged from somewhere and eventually they dammed it up to make a pool. I remember they had jury-rigged a bunch of Devices for the inside of the boxcar and had a pantry and a bed for their little urchiny dog. It is really a triumph of either the source text (doubtful) or my nostalgia that I’m still kind of charmed by the idea of five children hunkering in an abandoned train car at the height of the Great Depression but them’s the berries sometimes I guess.
Abraxa’s Basement (A/S/L)
A/S/L is about three teens who meet in an online forum and start developing an RPG in the 90s. By 2016, all of them are out as trans women, struggling in different ways, and unknowingly living within miles of each other. All of them still think about the game they failed to finish as kids, Saga of the Sorceress, and one of them, the nomadic Abraxa, starts living in the basement of an abandoned church (another Ally™ character is trying to get her kicked out to turn it into a Safe Space for Queer People), recreating the game all around her. Different levels of the dungeon, far beyond what the team had ever managed to code, are mapped out over the walls and floor of the cool stone space. In my mind there’s a small tree growing in a spot of sunlight leaking through the floorboards above and maybe a pool of fresh water, potentially because my mind always defaults to the Boxcar Kids Ideal. Anyway I think about this space a lot.
The Fishbowl Castle (Dragon’s Breath)
Dragon’s Breath is the second installment in a really kickass YA series from E.D. Baker. In the first book, the protagonist kisses a frog and turns into also a frog (SEVEN YEARS BEFORE THE DISNEY MOVIE CAME OUT, BY THE WAY). In this one she is not a frog anymore and is training to be a witch under her royal witch aunt Grassina (everyone in the kingdom has, like, green-themed names okay, shut up). I don’t remember most of the plot of this book because I really zeroed in on the fishbowl castle. I’m crazy mad at the fanart community for leaving me in the lurch by not ever drawing this so I’ll do my best to describe it.
There’s a big glass fishbowl in the aunt’s castle tower full of bright, clear saltwater. In the middle of it is a miniature castle with two turrets, perfect in every tiny detail, and sometimes tiny schools of fish can be seen darting through the water in the bowl. The protagonist remembers passing by late at night and seeing lights on in the windows. Eventually she realizes that a whole mermaid monarchy thrives in the castle and she just has to dip a silver comb into the water and comb her hair with it to appear, tiny, in the water below and visit The Sea Witch (her name is Coral ok god shut up). I read this book in like 2006 and I think about this on a weekly basis. You know what they always are saying: Salty comb, take me home, to the place, where Sea Witch roam…
Yin Manor (Manor of Dreams): All they had to say was Altadena Mansion and I was onboard, even if there are several angry ghosts around and something wrong with the garden. Even if the Altadena designation didn’t instantly fill my mind with Gamble House vibes, it would still have given me Nancy Drew (2009) Haunted Hollywood Starlet Estate tingles, which is just as good.
Wow you know what I looked it up and the Nancy Drew Haunted Mansion is in La Canada-Flintridge, which basically touches Altadena, so chalk up another point for the tingles. The Altadena Detector has once again triumphed.
The Art Thief’s Attic (The Art Thief): This is exactly what I would do with my hoarde of stolen art. What’s that you say? This attic is from real life and not fictional at all? What are you, a Book Cop???
