I think that is why a show like Stranger Things works so well because it is before instantaneous communication and a state of constant connectedness. Even as an adult, some of what happened seemed ludicrous, not because it was supernatural, but because having an iPhone would have solved an issue. Twenty five to thirty years is a much more relatable distance of time and experience than seventy, especially when the last forty of those seventy years have seen such a drastic change in technology as well as the lives of children in general. I think that as a child in the 1980s, I may have still been able to relate more to the world Johnny Dixon and Lewis Barnavelt inhabit. My major issue, though, while reading ends up being more about when the novels take place – the early 1950s. So, how did these books from my childhood stand up, having revisited both The House with the Clock In Its Walls (the first in the Lewis Barnavelt series) and The Curse of the Blue Figurine (the first in the Johnny Dixon series) so many years later? Was I let down by the expectations created by the impressions of my youth?īellairs’ writing probably can’t actually compare to what thirty years in my memory have built it up to be.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |