TWIN SPELL

by Janet Lunn ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 1, 1969

Twin Spell has the double attraction of place--Toronto--and setting--one of those towered, capacious old oddities that all children would inhabit--plus the problem of twelve-year-old think-alikes Jane and Elizabeth Hubbard: does the antique doll affect them in the same way just because they're twins or is there something mysterious and meaningful about her power? Practical Jane and suggestible Elizabeth were drawn to her simultaneously in the store; both knew her name--Amelia--and the look of the house she had lived in, and neither liked the girl, Hester, she seemed to belong to. Then they move into Aunt Alice's house where ""she seems' to belong"" and strange disruptions start them on a sort of scavenger hunt to piece together Amelia's past. While they're having trouble about being twins--""about being so different but locked together by shared thoughts, feelings and now dreams""--in the present, What emerges finally--within the original structure of Aunt Alice's house--not only dis-posesses Hester's ghost but also divests Jane and Elizabeth of the fear of being two halves of the same person: each has been haunted by an ancestral twin. The speculating and searching sometimes gets tiresome (to the girls too) but there's always theft freewheeling family--including sheepdog Horse--to fall back on. And the girls themselves, more convincing than the story.

Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1969

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Harper & Row

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1969

Categories: FICTION