[LISTENED TO: December 2016] The League of Beastly Dreadfuls
I was looking for an audio book to listen to with the kids and I found this one. I didn’t know anything about it, but the title was interesting.
I never suspected just what a peculiar story this turned out to be.
It is the tale of Anastasia McCrumpet, an otherwise normal 11-year-old girl who suffers from flatulence and a mum who does little more than yell from her bed all day. Her father is a loving man, but as of a few years ago he has been quite obsessed with vacuum cleaners. She also has a guinea pig who is quite ill-tempered; when it feels crossed by someone, it takes revenge by pooping in their slippers.
On this particular morning, they were having a funeral. A funeral for her father’s plant (they wound up tossing it out the window). And then her father made them his famous waffles (which her mother screamed for upstairs).
But Anastasia was running late for school that morning because of the funeral and she ran out of the house wearing a most unusual outfit (part of a Halloween costume, which was top on the laundry pile).
When she arrived in school, she passed the lovely librarian who had a book saved for her–the latest Francie Dewdrop mystery. And Anastasia planned to be like Francie herself when she grew up–a detective-veterinarian-artist. Anastasia loved the librarian who was kind and sweet. She actually liked quit a lot about her school until recently–Miss Sneed, the new secretary, had suddenly come to the school. She had a monobrow and was very unpleasant.
Miss Sneed called down to Anastasia’s teacher to tell her that her Aunt’s Prude and Prim were there to pick her up. She had never head of these aunts before but she assumed that they were there for a good reason. But it was actually a bad reason: both of her parents were seriously injured in a tragic vacuuming accident and they were going to take her to the hospital to see her parents.
Anastasia gets in their car, and they seem very nice. They even give her a peppermint (although it was clumped at the bottom of one of the aunt’s purse and is kind of gross and sticky). The ride is long and Anastasia falls asleep. Only to awaken very very far from home and from the hospital. The aunts tell her that her parents are really much worse and that she must stay with them. And they drive her to St Agony’s Insane Asylum–the place the aunts currently live. They were delighted to buy such a huge place for such a small amount of money.
When they get to the asylum the first person Anastasia sees is their gardener. He is wearing a birdcage locked on his head because he is “a biter.” He attacked the car and they shooed him off. Anastasia can’t figure out why they would keep such a gardener, but they tell her that he was very cheap (and they are very cheap themselves).
They feed her mystery lumps, lock her in her room and more or less make her their slave. When she asks about her parents, they tell her matter of factly that they are dead and she is to live with them from then on. She is now sleeping in a room in an insane asylum, and the only companion she can find is an old stuffed rabbit which she calls Mr Bunster.
There’s also a creepy ghostly noise. I’m not sure how it is portrayed in the book, but in the audio book it’s the eerie sound of a musical saw. She hears this sound over and over and can’t decide what it is–the wind in the house, the ghosts of old, what? Finally she discovers a dumbwaiter and is able to take it to a few different places around the asylum. And she finds evidence of peculiar goings on–photos of children who look rather uncomfortable. And paintings of a lot of women with monobrows.
Eventually she winds up in the basement. She feels like someone is down there. And then something in the shadows talks to her. She freaks out and runs away as the voice says wait, don’t go. A friendly ghost?
Eventually she winds up talking to the gardener, whose name is Quentin. It turns out that he is not a crazy person. He is not even a gardener. He’s just a boy who came to the asylum looking for his little brother, Ollie, whom Prude and Prim kidnapped a few months ago. It turns out that Ollie is the boy in the basement. They tell her that Prim and Prude are planning to kill her.
And that’s when things start to get really weird.
Suddenly we find that Quentin and Ollie have special abilities (I’m not sure if you’ve been vetted for finding out what they are). They decide that they are going to do their best to escape and she can help.
It will involve sleeping solution, candy keys, farting, and a whole lot of luck. But before they can do anything they need to think of a name for their little group. And that’s where the title comes from. The three are now the League of Beastly Dreadfuls.
There’s still a ton left in the book at this point. And while I won’t give anymore away, I’ll just stay that was very surprised by the direction things went. There are more characters with special abilities, there are poodles with metal teeth, a wolf in the forest and, suddenly , an exterminator whom Anastasia might be able to trust–possibly.
There were a couple of things that I didn’t like about his book. I felt that Anastasia took too long to realize that her aunts were lying about nearly everything. And her belief that Ollie was a scary ghost went on a little too long as well. The other things was the mice invasion. It came on all of sudden but didn’t really surprise anyone. If suddenly there were dozens of mice in the house, you’d be surprised–but people were just mad. It sounds trivial, but the mice invasion was a pretty huge thing and it felt like it came from out of nowhere.
But aside from those two things, the story was a lot of fun. The tone of the book was outstanding, with the narrator talking to the reader and asking us if we knew or did certain things and if we could imagine what Anastasia was feeling. The metaphors and similes were delightfully funny and/or wicked. The jokes about Anastasia’s flatulence were always funny and always well used.
And I can’t say enough about Rosalyn Landor the reader of the audiobook. She had a wonderful voice for the main narrator–funny and inquisitive and wonderfully British. And she did a ton of great voices. She is one of those readers when you occasionally forget that it’s only one person reading the story. Her voices of Prim and Prude were great and I loved the way she did Ollie and Quentin, too.
The book itself ends properly. There is a satisfying end to this caper. However, there are a ton of threads left open for future books (and Book 2 is already out).
I really have to wonder: if Quentin and Ollie have gone home to their parents, how will they ever find Anastasia again? How will the League function if they are not together. What is the deal with all of these people with special powers? What were Prim and Prude planning to do with her for real? Are they out of the picture for good? We are told that their organization (The Watchers) will be looking for Anastasia, but will Prim and Prude be dismissed for their failure? Just what was in those mystery lumps? And, of course, what happened to her father? (And to a lesser extent, her mother).
Golly, I guess there are a lot of open threads. I’m looking forward to following some of them in Book 2.
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