Ghost Abbey

Maggi is loveable, alive, curious, and endearing. I love this story to pieces and have read it dozens of times! The abbey is wonderfully painted in your mind. Characters abound. Going to the abbey is an adventure and learning it's history makes good fun. I agree, as I read a review by a young reader, "I too" wish the story didn't end, I want to know more of their future to come... :)

I just finished reading a couple of Young Adult gothics by John Bellairs, who liked to claim that his imagination got stuck at ten. His books really read like they're written from a child's perspective. Robert Westall writes in the same genre (YA ghost story) and "Ghost Abbey" is told from the perspective of a twelve-year-old girl, but without the whimsy that is Bellairs's hallmark. It's a book written by an adult for children. On the positive side, the story is more complex than, say, Bellairs's "The Vengeance of the Witch-finder." In fact, "Ghost Abbey" reminds me of Shirley Jackson's "The Haunting of Hill House" more than anything by Bellairs. Westall ends his work on a more positive note, but it's still eerily similar to Jackson's ending. A young teen-ager, Maggi takes care of her widowed father and her two cub-scout-aged twin brothers. There is also a slovenly housekeeper with the notion of marrying Maggi's father, who has 'kind, lost, blue eyes.' When a letter arrives asking Maggi's father, who is a master builder, to come fix up an old abbey, Maggi at least jumps at the opportunity to get away from the slovenly housekeeper and give her twin brothers a bit of a vacation in Chesire. She talks her father into going, and they all pile into the old Ford Transit van. Due to several mechanical breakdowns, the van doesn't arrive at the abbey until after dark.Let the spookiness begin! Westall really knows how to build an atmosphere, and although Maggi knows she shouldn't be wandering around in the dark, she absolutely has to find the loo before she can go to sleep.The author does a great job of combining the details of everyday life in an old abbey---how Maggi's father sets them up so that they can take hot baths; how Maggi manages her household allowance (the family eats lots of chips); how the lady of the Abbey gradually becomes part of the family---but Westall never lets his readers forget where they are or who else might be sharing the abbey with them.Although "Ghost Abbey" is a very family-oriented story, Westall has also written collections of ghost stories for the adult market (he's especially fond of feline ghost stories).