JULIA AND THE HAND OF GOD

by Eleanor Cameron ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 18, 1977

It's a pleasure to meet a younger Julia Redfern, who moves at the end of this volume to the room made of windows where we first met her--back in 1971 but a little later in her own 1920s adolescence. Here, on her eleventh birthday, Julia receives from her beloved Uncle Hugh the beautiful leatherbound volume of blank paper which starts her off as a writer, intimidated at first, Julia finally begins her journal in a ledger and as this ends she is ready to start the big one. She will call it the Book of Strangeness--for the way they had all heard Uncle Hugh's dead dog dancing in the kitchen (though Hugh's wife Aunt Alex pretended not to); for Julia's close brush with the big Berkeley fire though she'd been almost waiting for an earthquake; and for her conviction that the thrush she'd once saved from death had in turn saved her from the fire. Between these remarkable events Julia suffers from living with Gramma who slights her for brother Greg, and from Aunt Alex's nasty mockery of Julia and meanness to Hugh--for all her sympathy with Julia's visions of wonderful ""strangeness,"" Cameron has a wickedly cool eye for Aunt Alex's supercilious knife-twisting and Gramma,s cruel partiality. A rare mix at this level--real toads, imaginary garden, and, in Julia, a charming, natural link between the two.

Pub Date: Nov. 18, 1977

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Dutton

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 1977

Categories: FICTION