Aunt Maria

by Diana Wynne Jones

Book Overview

In Cranbury-on-Sea Aunt Maria rules with a rod of sweetness far tougher than iron and deadlier than poison. Strange and awful things keep happening in Cranbury. Why are all the men apparently... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0064473589
• ISBN13: 9780064473583
• Release Date: September 2003
• Publisher: Greenwillow Books
• Length: 288 Pages
• Weight: 0.60 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 4.5" x 8.3"
• Age Range: 10 years and up
• Grade Range: Grade 5 and higher

Customer Reviews

Maria by another name.

Note: "Black Maria" is the original title for the book later published as "Aunt Maria." After her father is killed in a car accident, Nan and what's left of her family are invited to spend the school holiday with their paternal Aunt Maria. Nan thinks it's a bad idea to stay with her father's relatives, particularly the one who raised him, but her mother feels sorry for the helpless old woman and accepts. Far from being helpless, the aunt is ludicrously particular and demanding of the mom, adores Nan, and shows an instant (and mutually reciprocated) loathing for Nan's brother. But other than that everything is pretty dull (the vacation, not the story). And then Nan and her brother discover their father's car in a parking lot when it's supposed to have crashed into the ocean, an anonymous green ghost appears in a bedroom, and a lot of people seem obsessed with finding and/or hiding a small box. The children realize something very strange is afoot. Nan's brother gets an idea as to what that could be, but he won't let Nan help him. And then he disappears, and their mother doesn't notice even when he's been gone for several days, and Aunt Maria takes a sudden keen interest in Nan's activities. Nan wants to find out what's going on and get her family back to normal. To do that, she first must solve a mystery dating back to events twenty years before--a mystery for which she has precious few clues to go on. The townspeople won't help--they're either against her, or too afraid to fight what they know she's up against. And all the while she has to dodge around Aunt Maria's prying, meddling, seriously menacing curiosity. It's all really quite fun. I particularly like the way Jones throws out clues that seem so slender they don't seem to be clues at all, puts Nan into truly dangerous situations (all the scarier for the fact that in a village full of people our heroine cannot appeal to *anybody* for help), makes the story seem like there is no way on earth it can ever work out--and then executes such a series of brilliant twists and startling turns that suddenly when you find everything has come out more or less right after all it's a real unexpected pleasure. The book by turns tragic, dark, exciting, dramatic, and funny (sometimes all at the same time). And yet everything is totally plausible and entertaining. Nan is a quiet, intelligent heroine--she understands people, and is not impressed or fooled by appearances. As she works to save her brother and mother and maybe even a whole town (all the while tossing out funny, spot-on observations about the people she meets), there is always the unspoken acceptance in her mind that whatever happens, there can be no completely happy ending--only the right one. She's right, too, and I like her all the more for it.

"I Do Apologise! This is *Brought Cake*!"

Diana Wynne Jones once again combines eccentric characters, moral ambiguity, magic, time travelling, shapeshifting and an uncanny ability to portray human behaviour in one of her best books: "Aunt Maria". With all the twists and turns that we expect from Wynne Jones, "Aunt Maria" is one of the most re-readable and enjoyable books in her vast collection. After the accidental death of their father, Naomi "Mig" and Chris Laker are reluctantly taken to Cranbury-on-Sea by their mother to visit Aunt Maria. Maria appears to be a cuddly old lady (though is constantly ringing up and meddling in their lives), but once they get to their house the siblings find that she is much worse. Behind her compliments and manners is an old lady determined to get her own way - for instance, when she says "I won't bother with breakfast, now Lavinia's not here to bring it to me in bed," she means: "I demand breakfast in bed." Cranbury itself is just as bad: the women flock around Maria in daily tea-parties like she's their Queen-bee, whilst the men work like zombies and the clone-like children spend their days in an orphanage. Enigmas pile up on all sides: who is the ghost haunting Chris's room? What happened to the previous maid Lavinia? Why does Maria despise the elderly Phelp neighbours? What is contained within the beautiful green box Mig finds? And could it be possible that the children's father actually reached Cranbury on the day he supposedly died? All the answers to these mysteries are brought together beautifully as the book progresses - but not before Mig must deal with the battle of the sexes in the town, the fact that her brother has been turned into a wolf, the mind-manipulation being dealt upon her mother, and Maria's own sinister designs for her! For such a slim volume it is jam-packed full of interesting ideas, plot revelations and clever ideas. Diana Wynne Jones usually prefers males as her protagonists, but after reading Mig I hope that in the future she creates more female ones, as she's one of the funniest, sympathetic, self-aware and utterly helpless heroines I've ever read - and despite her complete lack of doing hardly anything proactive or helpful throughout the book, she's an utter delight. Also on hand is her brother Chris who is far more outspoken than she, and doesn't hesitate to insult anyone he pleases. Throughout the story the bond between the siblings is strong, realistic and immensely touching - as when the transformed Chris seeks out comfort from his sister. Mrs Laker is also nicely created, as is the sinister Elaine, but of course the centrepiece of the story is Maria herself. Self-righteous, self-pitying, hypocritical, intensely annoying, and yet a pleasure to read about, this is one character that's impossible to describe: you'll have to read in order to really appreciate what Wynne Jones has created. The family's way of handling Maria is the author at her hilarious best, and the closest another author has come to capturing th

Fun and Creepy

Set more in the "real world" than many of this author's books, this was a very fun book that follows the narrator to the creepy neighborhood of her Great-Aunt (pronounced Mar-eye-ah). Filled with passive-agressive old ladies, it seems like your normal vacation-from-hell... until the narrator realizes that there's more going on in this sleepy town than it seems. You have no idea how weird this book will get until you get there.(...)

Engrossing and creepy, but fine for the younger set.

I made the mistake of starting this book the night before I was to start a new job in the morning. It was only through dint of mighty effort that I was able to put it down without finishing it. This is EXACTLY the sort of thing I was looking for when I scoured the library shelves as a child. (Fine for the older set, too!) I loved Charmed Life also. I'm looking for more of her books.

Teens shake up town engaged in unseen but deadly civil war.

In an interview with Diana Wynne Jones she describes how it felt to be a child during the war: "One didn't know that all those bizarre, and horrible, and mad things were going on, except there was a feeling all the time that something WAS bizarre, and horrible, and mad." That is the feeling I get when reading Black Maria. The two teenage protagonists, Mig and Chris, arrive in Cranbury-On-Sea after their father's disappearance, to spend Easter with their frail and manipulative Aunt Maria. (The British title implies that it should be pronounced in the old-fashioned way, "Ma-righ-a", and NOT as in West Side Story!) The town seems to have no children except the residents of the local orphanage, who all behave so much alike that they could be clones, and the men of the area are like zombies in boring grey suits. Mig and Chris joke about these things at first but they soon seem more serious. They also wonder who the ghost in Chris's room is and what he is looking for, whether the cat that Aunt Maria hates could really be human, and above all, what really happened to their father and his car. It seems that Aunt Maria and the respectable, devoted women who come to her daily tea parties know the answers, but neither they nor anyone else in Cranbury are willing to tell.Forced to conform to the community's rigidly conservative ideas about male and female roles, Mig is somewhat overwhelmed at first, while her brother Chris rebels by becoming involved in the schemes of unfriendly Mr Phelps across the street. When Chris foolishly goes too far and Aunt Maria turns him into a wolf, Mig is left alone to find a way to get him turned back, and to release her family from her aunt's suffocating grip.This is a complex book in the best tradition of Diana Wynne Jones, and is worth reading more than once to get the full impact out of it. What struck me most about this book is something that should never be mentioned in reviews, as it comes too near the end. But I would like to say ! that the subject is treated more effectively here than in any other book I know. In fact this section is in danger of overpowering the rest of the story, making the book much darker than the blurb would have you believe. But, if anything, that makes the book better. If you want an unconventional, thought-provoking read and are willing to involve yourself completely in the story, then I thoroughly reccommend this book.