Wonderstruck

Book Title: Wonderstruck

Author: Brian Selznick

Date Started: August 26th 2014

Date Completed: September 1st 2014

Genres: Adventure, Mystery

Rating: Four stars

Review:

Wonderstruck is another brilliant story from the mind of Mr Selznick, and though it wasn't as engaging as I'd expected, it was still a lovely story accompanied with stunning illustrations.

Ben dreams of the wolves coming to get him, every night. But when he finds a book in his old house, with a mysterious inscription to a father he has never known, and a bookmark with an address all the way in New York, his desire to piece together his past grows. And when he's struck by lightning and loses his hearing, it's the final push he needs to run away and solve the mysteries around his childhood, and why the wolves are always waiting for him when he closes his eyes.

I adore Selznick's writing style, for nothing more than the pure passion for what's writing about. It's so clear when you read any of his work that he has a deep interest in film, history and museums, and an even bigger love for books. This comes through in their involvement in the story, as well as how they're described. It's not often I read a book and I find such a similar person to myself telling me the story.

Another thing that must be mentioned are the illustrations. Whilst being completely and utterly stunning, and portraying an extremely vivid story all by themselves, the pictures are used very cleverly in this book. The character being followed is deaf, and therefore through the drawings we see what life is like for her: you can't hear pictures, and so this allows the reader to relate very closely with the character when they previously wouldn't have had a similar perspective on the story.

I thought the plot line in Wonderstruck was very nice, but not amazing. Essentially, two different stories are being told: Ben's story through the narrative, and then Rose's through the illustrations. The combination of these two stories prevented either one from becoming slow and boring, and the time jumps were particularly interesting to me. Finally, I loved how the two stories drew together at the end and ended up impacting one another quite a bit.

Another element that really impressed me was the inclusion of deafness. It's not something I see a lot of these days, and the way it was included was extremely clever and thorough: little obstacles weren't ignored but the whole story wasn't centered around the fact the characters were deaf. It was just another part of them that was readily accepted by the writer and therefore reader.

Pretty much every character in this story is wonderfully endearing and they each contribute their own little things to the story. However, I felt quite distant and detached from all of them: they didn't show a huge variety of sides and emotions that I picked up on. I think this is probably one of the reasons I didn't enjoy Wonderstruck quite as much as I expected.

Wonderstruck was quick and easy to get through (though I did end up putting it on hold for a few days due to a new release). Since half of it is illustrations, you can choose to fly through it or slow down and appreciate the drawings more. Either way, the story wasn't rushed and actually seemed quite short to me.

I would recommend Wonderstruck to anyone who has a passion for museums, art and writing. While the story is lovely, it's the words and illustrations that makes Selznick's books so wonderful. However, I would recommend reading The Invention of Hugo Cabret to get into his novels first, as his portrayals can be richer than this.

Image Source: https://www.goodreads.com/book/

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