Sylvia Cassedy (1930–1989)

Looks like most Library Thing reviewers liked this book, as did most critics. It won several notable awards and citations. But it all fell flat for me.
Behind the Attic Wall introduces an unlikable orphaned girl who is sent to live with two equally unlikable aunts. She has a highly entertaining and eccentric uncle who shows up occasionally, like a breath of fresh air, as he is the only character in the book who is actually likable.
Once in the monstrous home of the aunts, which is a former boarding school, Maggie begins to hear voices, eventually finding her way to an attic room where she engages in conversations with two antique dolls who have been forgotten up there. For most of the book, is somewhat ambiguous whether the dolls are actually alive, or if we are merely witnessing the active imagination of a lonely child. (This is clarified on the last few pages.) But I found the repetitive scenes with Maggie's imaginary friends "the Blackwood girls" boring and irritating. This obnoxious child is even rude to her imaginary friends! Maggie doesn't seem to learn anything through the course of the book. She's as loathsome at the end as she was at the beginning. Some will argue with me that going through the childhood Maggie went through, no wonder she behaves as she does. And that is a fair argument. But it doesn't make spending time with a child like that a pleasant experience.… (més)

Read as a kid and recall only confused feelings about it. Decades later: Yeah. It's the kind of claustrophobic slooow plot with anticlimactic pseudo-resolution that I didn't feel comfortable with then and don't enjoy much more now. Much of it feels, like the uncle's humour, like it's trying too hard.

(It was really hard to figure out his deal. At first I figured totally unfamiliar with kids and trying too hard to be quirky. Then somewhat browbeaten by, somewhat rebellious of, the great-aunts. Charitably I could see him not realising how desperately she needed kindness. Then... idk, under some kind of geas to never mention the dolls? Maybe talking about them is as dangerous as letting the wrong people in to see them? It's the only possible explanation!)

What's most creepy to me now is how badly Maggie's clearly been treated, to be acting out as she does, and turning all the scolding she receives onto the Backwoods Girls, and how desperate she is for the uncle to say something simply nice to her. That she can have a healthy relationship with her two adoptive sisters in the book's future can only be attributed to her having experienced those morsels of friendship from the dolls.

So much is ambiguous that it's really hard to tell if there's a lot below the surface, or just a lot that the author didn't care about while contriving the situation/outcome she wanted.… (més)

This was not at all what I expected. 'Behind the Attic Wall' is about a troubled girl named Maggie who has, since her parents died when she was very young, been shuffled from boarding school to boarding school. She doesn't last long anywhere, because Maggie is angry and at this point in her life deliberately sabotages any goodwill towards her. Her new home is with a pair of dotty great aunts in a former girls boarding school. They're severe and humorless and there is a lot of talk of deportment and nutrition. Her Uncle Morris is the only one who speaks up for her, teasing her and telling her nonsense that nonetheless gets past her defenses.

Beneath Maggie's drab and unhealthy appearance she has a rich imagination that provides her with all the affection she can imagine in the form of the "Backwoods Girls" who are awestricken at every mundane thing and silently take her abuse. The magic of the story is very unusual. Maggie begins hearing voices and, ultimately, is called up to the attic where, in a hidden corner she discovers two porcelain dolls that are alive and in need of her assistance. After a rocky start the dolls, who are at once her children and her parents, awaken in Maggie a need to belong in the real world in time to be given a part in it.

The writing, though kept to the simple diction required of early reading, introduces a lot of vocabulary in a way that isn't condescending. The structure of the book is also a lot more complex then I'd expect in a novel for middle readers. I'd be interested in reading something else by this author for sure.… (més)