A portal to rival mirrors & wardrobes
THE mind is a tricky beast. Bad memories can be swallowed whole or twisted into lies. This is the underlying message of Devilskein & Dearlove , the new novel from Cape Townbased author Alex Smith.
Thirteen-year-old Erin Dearlove enjoys telling people that her parents were eaten by a crocodile. The truth is even more horrifying.
After the “incident”, Erin goes to stay with her Aunt Kate in her Long Street apartment. It is a smal, rundown flat, but in Erin’s world it is a portal to a wonderful hall of doors leading to ancient walled gardens, an ocean cabinet full of undersea creatures and a room filled with elaborate keys.
Erin’s aunt encourages these wild imaginations, believing them to be part of the healing process. So when Erin recounts having tea with the mysterious Mr Devilskein in apartment 6616, she doesn’t bat an eyelid, nor does she question the long hours her niece spends with her new best friend, a talking cricket named Zhou.
Smith believes fantasy allows people to mask their most painful memories. “But fantasy can also be a platform for our brilliant potential. We dream it before we can do it.
“I think the human mind is an extraordinary universe of possibilities along the continuum, the one extreme end being creativity, light, and the other absolute destruction, dark.”
Keys are an important symbol in her novel, which is written in lyrical, Dahl- esque prose. Some keys are there to unlock secrets and mysteries, others to seal them in. It is through one of the doors unlocked by a key that Erin discovers a beautiful walled garden from an ancient Chinese dynasty.
“As a child,” says Smith, I was enchanted by Jules Verne’s work, loved C.S. Lewis’s The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe — and who could forget Lewis
Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland and Michael Ende’s adventure The Neverending Story?”
Like these classic works, Devilskein &
Dearlove is sure to become a much-loved book for young adults. It’s a magical tale not soon forgotten.