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Marianne and the Magic Drawing Pencil #1
Marianne Dreams
Ill and bored with having to stay in bed, Marianne picks up a pencil and starts doodling - a house, a garden, a boy at the window. That night she has an extraordinary dream. She is transported into her own picture, and as she explores further she soon realises she is not alone. The boy at the window is called Mark, and his every movement is guarded by the menacing stone watchers that surround the solitary house. Together, in their dreams, Marianne and Mark must save themselves...
196 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 1958
About the author
Catherine Storr
167 books32 followersAuthor Catherine Storr was educated at St. Paul's Girls' School and went on to study English at Newnham College, Cambridge. She then went to medical school and worked part-time as a Senior Medical Officer in the Department of Psychological Medicine of the Middlesex Hospital from 1950 to 1963.
Her first book was published in 1940, but was not successful. It was not until the 1950s that her books became popular. She wrote mostly children's books as well as books for adults, plays, short stories, and adapted one of her novels into an opera libretto. She published more than 30 children's books, but is best known for Clever Polly and the Stupid Wolf and Marianne Dreams, which was made into a television series and a film.
Her first book was published in 1940, but was not successful. It was not until the 1950s that her books became popular. She wrote mostly children's books as well as books for adults, plays, short stories, and adapted one of her novels into an opera libretto. She published more than 30 children's books, but is best known for Clever Polly and the Stupid Wolf and Marianne Dreams, which was made into a television series and a film.
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September 2, 2025
“As she stood, considering what to do, she heard the distant sound of wind. Across the prairie it blew towards her, and in its path the grass whistled and rustled, dry stalk on dry stalk, and bent, so that she could see the path of the wind as it approached her. Then it was all around her, and everything that had been so still before became alive with movement. The grass writhed and tore at its roots, the pale flowers beat against their stems, the thin thread of smoke was blown out like a candle flame, and disappeared into the dark sky. The wind whistled round the house and was gone, leaving Marianne deaf for a moment, and suddenly chilled.”
Marianne Dreams by Catherine Storr is a haunting, claustrophobic and disturbing fantasy story for children of about nine years old and upwards. It was first published in 1958, and the first paperback was in 1964. I’m not sure when I first read it, although there was a radio dramatisation of it when I was a child, and on the cusp of my twenties, my boyfriend, who rated it highly, bought it for me and read it to me. This time, many decades later, we both listened to it as an audio book. It works well like this, although the original illustrations by Marjorie-Ann Watts, do add a lot. Her pencil drawings are in a naive style, because they are often supposedly drawn by the viewpoint character, Marianne.
Drawing, dreams and questioning reality is central to the story. There is a continuing nightmarish ambiguity, and over the years, Marianne Dreams has developed quite a cult following. It has a menacing undertone, which is unusual for books from this period for youngsters. Perhaps that is what keeps drawing people back to this book. At any rate it has been awarded the Booker Prize, the Edgar Award and many others; has never been out of print and is available in an e-book format. There was a six part TV adaptation of it in 1972, called “Escape into Night”, a 1988 film called “Paperhouse”, (an extremely free interpretation, which apparently the author hated), an opera, and a play. In 2014 a national newspaper published a list of the ten most shocking children’s books, or what might be called “dark” tales for children. Marianne Dreams was there at number nine, described as having “a claustrophobic, horror laden setting, following two children trapped in a house, watched by an unknowable enemy”.
Yet at times, this book is cringeworthily cosy, and all too clearly written as long ago as 1958. If you have ever winced at parts of the carefully vetted English children’s stories from the first half of the 20th century - those upper middle class children in their nuclear family, complete with maid and family pet - you will observe similarities here. Marianne is a privileged child with her own room and toys, looking forward to her pony lessons. She even has a private tutor when she is unable to go to school. It is no surprise that she sometimes behaves like a spoiled brat. Her mother, on the other hand, is patient and kind, just as a perfect upper middle class mother should be. The father seems to be nonexistent. Although he could be one of the millions who were killed in the Second World War, it seems unlikely, since Marianne’s mother is a lady of leisure, and money is not a problem.
Many women stayed at home in the 1950s to look after their families, but such social mores in Marianne Dreams are heavily influenced by much earlier fiction; for instance, having what amounts to a governess in a story from this time feels a little anachronistic. Occasionally if a child was ill at home for a long time, work from the school might be sent home, although often at Marianne’s age, there would be nothing. Also, fathers tended to take more part in family activities by now, and were not always absent or busy with their own affairs. Marianne’s father however, does not come to see her; not even once, although she is bedridden. In a way, the setting feels as if it is far earlier, from a pre-war era.
However, this is countered by the dream sequences which are endemic to the plot. They are very linear and realistic so what might be “real” becomes blurred. We have a duality, which feels more modern. And there is none of the cosy condescension of children’s writers from an earlier time. Catherine Storr knows the minds of children and unerringly writes what will speak to them and grip them.
We begin on Marianne’s tenth birthday. Reaching the age of ten - double figures - is a very special day, as any ten year old will tell you. But Marianne is not well, and sent to bed for what turns out to be at least six weeks. We are not told what illness she has. Perhaps it might be glandular fever; at any rate it is very debilitating, and the doctor is strict, saying that she should not get out of bed.
Marianne sleeps a lot, but when she is awake, she is restless and bored. Feeling frustrated, she gets irritated and is full of peevish complaints to her mother. Marianne’s mother tries everything she can think of to amuse her daughter, and fetches a lovely old mahogany keepsake box, which has been handed down from her own great grandmother.
Once alone and less grumpy, Marianne searches through the shiny trinkets and finds a pencil. Marianne cannot remember ever seeing it before. The pencil is stubby, and in need of sharpening, but something about it attracts her:
“It was one of those pencils that are simply asking to be written or drawn with.”
so she takes it out and begins to doodle. She is not very good at drawing, but what does every small child draw, at some time? Yes she draws a squarish house, with a door, four windows and a little curl of smoke rising from the chimney. The house is surrounded by a fence, enclosing just a few big flowers. Outside the fence’s perimeter, she draws some long grass and blobby misshapen rocks. So far, so good.
But that night, when Marianne goes to sleep, she has an extraordinary, lucid dream:
“She didn’t just go to sleep – she dropped thousands of feet into sleep, with the rapidity and soundless perfection of a gannet’s dive.”
Marianne’s days consist of lying in bed, and having three occasional visitors: her mother, the doctor and a private tutor. Miss Chesterfield teaches several invalid children, so that they do not fall too far behind at school.
This part of the story is terrifying to read. There is a dark presence, and we are full of dread at what might happen; our imaginations running wild with ominous thoughts. The connection between the real and dream world is growing dangerously close, and spills over into Marianne’s waking hours. She is consumed with guilt,
Marianne Dreams has perhaps endured because it is a very insightful book, which deals with the complicated psyche of a sick child, through telling a gripping story. The story has an eerie mesmeric quality, which perfectly reflects the anguish we feel when trying to solve problems we only partially understand. It is a feeling common to all children, as they grow into adults. As such this is a powerful story about learning how to cope with terrible adversity. We see it symbolically through which represent an unknowable threat, and we experience the powerlessness we feel when trapped within a recurring dream. Marianne Dreams is in fantasy territory, but the accuracy about feelings and resulting behaviour of being ill and stuck in bed are very realistic. The book is based on firm emotional ground, and is important precisely because it raises the issues for children of facing their fears.
The oppressive atmosphere of danger and threat is pervasive, and the tension builds remorselessly. Marianne feel as trapped in their real life as in their dream life. Illness has caused both a loss of self confidence, a feeling of frustration and lack of power. It feels as though life will never be normal again. Any person feels depressed and angry at the world in this situation, and behaves in a peevish way. What Marianne must do, though, is to learn how to face such negative feelings: to learn how to use them in a positive way. A dream world gives an opportunity to do this Just as recovery happens in the dream world, so can progress in recuperating be made in the real world.
For a children’s book, this is extremely scary. Without mention of a vampire, werewolf or zombie, this story will frighten any child with a vivid imagination (so perhaps should be avoided by youngsters who are particularly sensitive or nervous, especially of the dark). It is remarkably effective even for older readers and adults, including myself. Marianne Dreams is a story filled with questions, whose menace lingers in the mind; the unseen dangers lurking somewhere in the corners of our sight. Some parts are unforgettably chilling, sending a shiver down the spine of anyone who has read this book:
“Not the light, not the light!”
It plays on our primal fears of being trapped, of being pursued, of being helpless with the terrifying :
“Get them, get them!”
There is sadly, a downbeat ending in real life. This was to be Catherine Storr’s one classic work. Born Catherine Cole in 1913, the daughter of a London barrister, she had wanted to be a writer from about Marianne’s age. But she had a series of rejections from publishers, and decided at 27 to train as a doctor. Eventually she became a psychiatrist, secretly hoping that studying medicine and psychoanalysis would ensure the emotional depth and realism in her writing, which book publishers might be looking for:
“I started writing when I was 10 years old, and it became an addiction. I think in story form … I don’t write with a child readership in mind. I write for the childish side of myself, and I find it often acts as psychotherapy.”
Ironically, her first children’s book was accepted for publication just when she began medical school. (It was not a success, and reportedly disappeared without trace.) She married the psychiatrist Anthony Storr and had three children with him before they divorced in 1970. She never lost her wish to write, and among her other books are a sequel to Marianne Dreams, and a chirpy little series about “Clever Polly and the Stupid Wolf”, in which a kind and resourceful little girl regularly outwits a foolish and pathetic wolf who wants to catch and eat her.
Catherine Storr wrote about writing for children:
“We should show them that evil is something they already know about or half know. It is not something right outside themselves and this immediately puts it, not only into their comprehension but it also gives them a degree of power.”
She knew how important it is for children to read scary stories. Other children’s authors too, such as Alan Garner, or Susan Cooper, Maurice Sendak or more recently Patrick Ness, have all shown that they understand this. Children dealing with - and fighting - evil are at the heart of their works. In particular, there are strong similarities between Marianne Dreams and Patrick Ness’s “A Monster Calls”. His story begins with a disembodied voice drifting on the wind through a bedroom window, and into a troubled young boy’s dreams. The two children may have had different life challenges to deal with, but each lives in the same type of dream world, heavily laden with fear, dread and menace.
Marianne is, of course, Catherine Storr herself.
Sadly, Catherine Storr believed her story-telling style had gone irrevocably out of fashion. She had been depressed for some time, because she could not get any of her recent works published. She told friends it was “not clinical”.
But in January 2001, at the age of 87, Catherine Storr, the author who had given the world this wonderful, extraordinary, terrifying book, killed herself.
She had kept on writing stories until the end of her life.
Marianne Dreams by Catherine Storr is a haunting, claustrophobic and disturbing fantasy story for children of about nine years old and upwards. It was first published in 1958, and the first paperback was in 1964. I’m not sure when I first read it, although there was a radio dramatisation of it when I was a child, and on the cusp of my twenties, my boyfriend, who rated it highly, bought it for me and read it to me. This time, many decades later, we both listened to it as an audio book. It works well like this, although the original illustrations by Marjorie-Ann Watts, do add a lot. Her pencil drawings are in a naive style, because they are often supposedly drawn by the viewpoint character, Marianne.
Drawing, dreams and questioning reality is central to the story. There is a continuing nightmarish ambiguity, and over the years, Marianne Dreams has developed quite a cult following. It has a menacing undertone, which is unusual for books from this period for youngsters. Perhaps that is what keeps drawing people back to this book. At any rate it has been awarded the Booker Prize, the Edgar Award and many others; has never been out of print and is available in an e-book format. There was a six part TV adaptation of it in 1972, called “Escape into Night”, a 1988 film called “Paperhouse”, (an extremely free interpretation, which apparently the author hated), an opera, and a play. In 2014 a national newspaper published a list of the ten most shocking children’s books, or what might be called “dark” tales for children. Marianne Dreams was there at number nine, described as having “a claustrophobic, horror laden setting, following two children trapped in a house, watched by an unknowable enemy”.
Yet at times, this book is cringeworthily cosy, and all too clearly written as long ago as 1958. If you have ever winced at parts of the carefully vetted English children’s stories from the first half of the 20th century - those upper middle class children in their nuclear family, complete with maid and family pet - you will observe similarities here. Marianne is a privileged child with her own room and toys, looking forward to her pony lessons. She even has a private tutor when she is unable to go to school. It is no surprise that she sometimes behaves like a spoiled brat. Her mother, on the other hand, is patient and kind, just as a perfect upper middle class mother should be. The father seems to be nonexistent. Although he could be one of the millions who were killed in the Second World War, it seems unlikely, since Marianne’s mother is a lady of leisure, and money is not a problem.
Many women stayed at home in the 1950s to look after their families, but such social mores in Marianne Dreams are heavily influenced by much earlier fiction; for instance, having what amounts to a governess in a story from this time feels a little anachronistic. Occasionally if a child was ill at home for a long time, work from the school might be sent home, although often at Marianne’s age, there would be nothing. Also, fathers tended to take more part in family activities by now, and were not always absent or busy with their own affairs. Marianne’s father however, does not come to see her; not even once, although she is bedridden. In a way, the setting feels as if it is far earlier, from a pre-war era.
However, this is countered by the dream sequences which are endemic to the plot. They are very linear and realistic so what might be “real” becomes blurred. We have a duality, which feels more modern. And there is none of the cosy condescension of children’s writers from an earlier time. Catherine Storr knows the minds of children and unerringly writes what will speak to them and grip them.
We begin on Marianne’s tenth birthday. Reaching the age of ten - double figures - is a very special day, as any ten year old will tell you. But Marianne is not well, and sent to bed for what turns out to be at least six weeks. We are not told what illness she has. Perhaps it might be glandular fever; at any rate it is very debilitating, and the doctor is strict, saying that she should not get out of bed.
Marianne sleeps a lot, but when she is awake, she is restless and bored. Feeling frustrated, she gets irritated and is full of peevish complaints to her mother. Marianne’s mother tries everything she can think of to amuse her daughter, and fetches a lovely old mahogany keepsake box, which has been handed down from her own great grandmother.
Once alone and less grumpy, Marianne searches through the shiny trinkets and finds a pencil. Marianne cannot remember ever seeing it before. The pencil is stubby, and in need of sharpening, but something about it attracts her:
“It was one of those pencils that are simply asking to be written or drawn with.”
so she takes it out and begins to doodle. She is not very good at drawing, but what does every small child draw, at some time? Yes she draws a squarish house, with a door, four windows and a little curl of smoke rising from the chimney. The house is surrounded by a fence, enclosing just a few big flowers. Outside the fence’s perimeter, she draws some long grass and blobby misshapen rocks. So far, so good.
But that night, when Marianne goes to sleep, she has an extraordinary, lucid dream:
“She didn’t just go to sleep – she dropped thousands of feet into sleep, with the rapidity and soundless perfection of a gannet’s dive.”
Marianne’s days consist of lying in bed, and having three occasional visitors: her mother, the doctor and a private tutor. Miss Chesterfield teaches several invalid children, so that they do not fall too far behind at school.
This part of the story is terrifying to read. There is a dark presence, and we are full of dread at what might happen; our imaginations running wild with ominous thoughts. The connection between the real and dream world is growing dangerously close, and spills over into Marianne’s waking hours. She is consumed with guilt,
Marianne Dreams has perhaps endured because it is a very insightful book, which deals with the complicated psyche of a sick child, through telling a gripping story. The story has an eerie mesmeric quality, which perfectly reflects the anguish we feel when trying to solve problems we only partially understand. It is a feeling common to all children, as they grow into adults. As such this is a powerful story about learning how to cope with terrible adversity. We see it symbolically through which represent an unknowable threat, and we experience the powerlessness we feel when trapped within a recurring dream. Marianne Dreams is in fantasy territory, but the accuracy about feelings and resulting behaviour of being ill and stuck in bed are very realistic. The book is based on firm emotional ground, and is important precisely because it raises the issues for children of facing their fears.
The oppressive atmosphere of danger and threat is pervasive, and the tension builds remorselessly. Marianne feel as trapped in their real life as in their dream life. Illness has caused both a loss of self confidence, a feeling of frustration and lack of power. It feels as though life will never be normal again. Any person feels depressed and angry at the world in this situation, and behaves in a peevish way. What Marianne must do, though, is to learn how to face such negative feelings: to learn how to use them in a positive way. A dream world gives an opportunity to do this Just as recovery happens in the dream world, so can progress in recuperating be made in the real world.
For a children’s book, this is extremely scary. Without mention of a vampire, werewolf or zombie, this story will frighten any child with a vivid imagination (so perhaps should be avoided by youngsters who are particularly sensitive or nervous, especially of the dark). It is remarkably effective even for older readers and adults, including myself. Marianne Dreams is a story filled with questions, whose menace lingers in the mind; the unseen dangers lurking somewhere in the corners of our sight. Some parts are unforgettably chilling, sending a shiver down the spine of anyone who has read this book:
“Not the light, not the light!”
It plays on our primal fears of being trapped, of being pursued, of being helpless with the terrifying :
“Get them, get them!”
There is sadly, a downbeat ending in real life. This was to be Catherine Storr’s one classic work. Born Catherine Cole in 1913, the daughter of a London barrister, she had wanted to be a writer from about Marianne’s age. But she had a series of rejections from publishers, and decided at 27 to train as a doctor. Eventually she became a psychiatrist, secretly hoping that studying medicine and psychoanalysis would ensure the emotional depth and realism in her writing, which book publishers might be looking for:
“I started writing when I was 10 years old, and it became an addiction. I think in story form … I don’t write with a child readership in mind. I write for the childish side of myself, and I find it often acts as psychotherapy.”
Ironically, her first children’s book was accepted for publication just when she began medical school. (It was not a success, and reportedly disappeared without trace.) She married the psychiatrist Anthony Storr and had three children with him before they divorced in 1970. She never lost her wish to write, and among her other books are a sequel to Marianne Dreams, and a chirpy little series about “Clever Polly and the Stupid Wolf”, in which a kind and resourceful little girl regularly outwits a foolish and pathetic wolf who wants to catch and eat her.
Catherine Storr wrote about writing for children:
“We should show them that evil is something they already know about or half know. It is not something right outside themselves and this immediately puts it, not only into their comprehension but it also gives them a degree of power.”
She knew how important it is for children to read scary stories. Other children’s authors too, such as Alan Garner, or Susan Cooper, Maurice Sendak or more recently Patrick Ness, have all shown that they understand this. Children dealing with - and fighting - evil are at the heart of their works. In particular, there are strong similarities between Marianne Dreams and Patrick Ness’s “A Monster Calls”. His story begins with a disembodied voice drifting on the wind through a bedroom window, and into a troubled young boy’s dreams. The two children may have had different life challenges to deal with, but each lives in the same type of dream world, heavily laden with fear, dread and menace.
Marianne is, of course, Catherine Storr herself.
Sadly, Catherine Storr believed her story-telling style had gone irrevocably out of fashion. She had been depressed for some time, because she could not get any of her recent works published. She told friends it was “not clinical”.
But in January 2001, at the age of 87, Catherine Storr, the author who had given the world this wonderful, extraordinary, terrifying book, killed herself.
She had kept on writing stories until the end of her life.
October 29, 2022
Marianne Dreams is a deliberately enigmatic novel, in which the central character Marianne shifts between her mundane, everyday world and a surreal, menacing dreamscape. Marianne’s indefinitely confined to bed because of a mystery illness, desperate for things to do she starts to draw. But when she sleeps, she finds herself inside her drawings. The world she’s created is a near desolate place in which she meets Mark, a boy she’s heard about in her waking life, he too is ill. But Mark has polio, and his recovery is uncertain. In Marianne’s dreams they establish a tentative friendship and share a growing fear of the other, inhuman inhabitants of this exceptionally eerie space. Catherine Storr worked as a psychotherapist before she became a writer and that seems to inform aspects of her narrative, especially the ways it invites a range of possible readings. The relationship between Marianne and Mark could, for example, mirror some kind of therapeutic encounter but equally it might not. Or it could be centred on its complex depiction of what it is to struggle with illness and isolation, Storr’s portrayal’s certainly extremely convincing. But Marianne’s also on the cusp of adolescence, and her dreams could be viewed as a manifestation both of her slow steps towards recovery and a wider rite of passage.
Storr was writing for children, but I think this works just as well as a crossover book because it’s so consistently intriguing, a marvellous blend of realism and fantasy that’s riddled with ambiguities. Storr's framing of Marianne’s experiences stir up so many unresolved issues around gender roles, creativity, vulnerability and feminine agency. There are echoes too of The Secret Garden and the obvious parallels between Marianne and Mark’s relationship and Mary Lennox’s with Colin add to the puzzle. Storr produced this in the late 1950s and I couldn’t decide if she was ultimately supporting the continuation of the caring roles promoted in earlier classic books for girls or railing against them. Her uncertain ending seemed open to a variety of interpretations, some less optimistic than others, further complicated by the possible queer subtext located in Marianne’s jealousy of her tutor Miss Chesterfield’s relationship with the real-life Mark - another of her home-schooled pupils.
Storr was writing for children, but I think this works just as well as a crossover book because it’s so consistently intriguing, a marvellous blend of realism and fantasy that’s riddled with ambiguities. Storr's framing of Marianne’s experiences stir up so many unresolved issues around gender roles, creativity, vulnerability and feminine agency. There are echoes too of The Secret Garden and the obvious parallels between Marianne and Mark’s relationship and Mary Lennox’s with Colin add to the puzzle. Storr produced this in the late 1950s and I couldn’t decide if she was ultimately supporting the continuation of the caring roles promoted in earlier classic books for girls or railing against them. Her uncertain ending seemed open to a variety of interpretations, some less optimistic than others, further complicated by the possible queer subtext located in Marianne’s jealousy of her tutor Miss Chesterfield’s relationship with the real-life Mark - another of her home-schooled pupils.
Read
July 16, 2017The latest in my season of re-readings of classic children's books. It's been a long time since I first read this one, but it still packs a punch: it's well-written, dark and in places, genuinely chilling - those whispering stones always freaked me out as a child, and they still do. The characters are marvellous; well-drawn and quite without sentimentality: I especially love the fact that illness makes them both so cranky and unpleasant - it reads as a deliberate challenge to the "saintly invalid" trope that permeates so many children's books (Little Women, Pollyanna, etc. even Jane Eyre). The Freudian undercurrents are much stronger and more apparent now than when I was a child, and all the more satisfying for that: this is the kind of book that grows with you, rather than staying in the realm of childhood.
September 12, 2020
So the basic premise of Catherine Storr's Marianne Dreams is that when the main protagonist, that when young and boisterous Marianne is confined to her bed for many weeks due to a rather serious illness (and while the exact nature of Marianne's malady is never clearly stated, I have always wondered whether it might be a case of rheumatic fever) to ward off her boredom and frustrations at having to remain not only inside but actually firmly bedridden, Marianne passes her time drawing pictures (but with a special and as it turns out magical drawing pencil she has found, and which drawings start to increasingly take over both her dreams and her reality, Marianne's life as it is).
Now the house which Marianne imagines in Marianne Dreams and then proceeds to draw with her special pencil has a boy in the window (who actually also turns out to be a real boy named Mark who has had polio and is thus housebound and cannot or perhaps will not come out, cannot or will not leave his home, which is probably why at first Marianne has imagined and the drawn her envisioned domicile without doors or stairs). And while originally, Marianne is indeed and actually very much sympathetic towards Mark, and tries to help him by providing (by drawing) luxuries and necessities (including stairs) for him, and although the two children do seem to almost immediately become something like best friends in their imagined dream world, Marianne also soon becomes nastily jealous of Mark for some pretty well ridiculous reason. And unfortunately, the eyes (the malevolent, monitoring eyes) she has drawn (in her fit of jealous rage) on the boulders near the house make these same into a genuine and dangerous horror and threat for and to both Mark and her. But while Marianne soon realises and very much understands that the eyes she has given to the stone boulders have created actual and palpable danger, all and sundry attempts of Marianne's to correct this, to correct her act of willful and unbridled, unnecessary drawn and created envy or to even render the so-called Watchers less ominous and make them more potentially benign, badly do rather majorly misfire, finally necessitating a daring and dashing rescue and escape, and with this, a liberation for both children at the end of Marianne Dreams, Mark from his generally self-imposed exile due to polio and his belief that he is somehow lesser because of his bout with said disease and Marianne from her tendency towards jealousy and easy, fast anger and nastiness (which in my opinion demonstrates that perhaps, the ominousness of the boulders and the fact that they were created, that they were drawn in envious anger notwithstanding, the Watchers and the adventurous rescue of Mark and escape from them is actually, was actually necessary and a true requirement for both children).
And yes, with Marianne Dreams author Catherine Storr plays with the concept that reality and fantasy can and do overlap and in fact often interplay, and that children are also not by nature always innocent and shiningly glowing, that they do have the desire, or at least that they can have the desire and equally the capability for destruction, anger, even evil in them, in their natures (and that by outing these desires, these thoughts, these feelings of resentful frustration, such as how Marianne proceeds to visually portray her jealousy of Mark by means of the Watchers, while there is indeed a genuine threat created and engendered by and through this, the Watchers and the dangers, the potential evil emanating from them can or at least might also be harnessed and thus used to cause liberation, escape and an emergence of more positive, more healthy and less destructive general attitudes and behaviours). For without the Watchers precipitating the action, making necessary Mark's rescue and escape from the house, Mark himself would likely and even probably never have even considered leaving (escaping) his polio induced exile and turning away from society and similarly, Marianne's jealous nature would have simply and unhealthily festered inside of her, tainting her soul, ravaging her feelings. Highly recommended (but I would indeed and definitely consider Marianne Dreams more a novel for older children above the age of eleven or twelve, as while there is no real violence depicted and presented, there definitely is a constant vein of potential creepiness featured, and the implied threat from the Watchers is very much ever-present, which might indeed be rather frightening to and for younger or very sensitive children, especially if they should also have the tendency towards and for lurid, colourful dreams).
And yes, there also appears to be a sequel, Marianne and Mark (which I unfortunately have not yet managed to read, as it is not nearly as well known as Marianne Dreams and sadly also not in current print and all that readily and easily available at reasonable purchasing prices).
Now the house which Marianne imagines in Marianne Dreams and then proceeds to draw with her special pencil has a boy in the window (who actually also turns out to be a real boy named Mark who has had polio and is thus housebound and cannot or perhaps will not come out, cannot or will not leave his home, which is probably why at first Marianne has imagined and the drawn her envisioned domicile without doors or stairs). And while originally, Marianne is indeed and actually very much sympathetic towards Mark, and tries to help him by providing (by drawing) luxuries and necessities (including stairs) for him, and although the two children do seem to almost immediately become something like best friends in their imagined dream world, Marianne also soon becomes nastily jealous of Mark for some pretty well ridiculous reason. And unfortunately, the eyes (the malevolent, monitoring eyes) she has drawn (in her fit of jealous rage) on the boulders near the house make these same into a genuine and dangerous horror and threat for and to both Mark and her. But while Marianne soon realises and very much understands that the eyes she has given to the stone boulders have created actual and palpable danger, all and sundry attempts of Marianne's to correct this, to correct her act of willful and unbridled, unnecessary drawn and created envy or to even render the so-called Watchers less ominous and make them more potentially benign, badly do rather majorly misfire, finally necessitating a daring and dashing rescue and escape, and with this, a liberation for both children at the end of Marianne Dreams, Mark from his generally self-imposed exile due to polio and his belief that he is somehow lesser because of his bout with said disease and Marianne from her tendency towards jealousy and easy, fast anger and nastiness (which in my opinion demonstrates that perhaps, the ominousness of the boulders and the fact that they were created, that they were drawn in envious anger notwithstanding, the Watchers and the adventurous rescue of Mark and escape from them is actually, was actually necessary and a true requirement for both children).
And yes, with Marianne Dreams author Catherine Storr plays with the concept that reality and fantasy can and do overlap and in fact often interplay, and that children are also not by nature always innocent and shiningly glowing, that they do have the desire, or at least that they can have the desire and equally the capability for destruction, anger, even evil in them, in their natures (and that by outing these desires, these thoughts, these feelings of resentful frustration, such as how Marianne proceeds to visually portray her jealousy of Mark by means of the Watchers, while there is indeed a genuine threat created and engendered by and through this, the Watchers and the dangers, the potential evil emanating from them can or at least might also be harnessed and thus used to cause liberation, escape and an emergence of more positive, more healthy and less destructive general attitudes and behaviours). For without the Watchers precipitating the action, making necessary Mark's rescue and escape from the house, Mark himself would likely and even probably never have even considered leaving (escaping) his polio induced exile and turning away from society and similarly, Marianne's jealous nature would have simply and unhealthily festered inside of her, tainting her soul, ravaging her feelings. Highly recommended (but I would indeed and definitely consider Marianne Dreams more a novel for older children above the age of eleven or twelve, as while there is no real violence depicted and presented, there definitely is a constant vein of potential creepiness featured, and the implied threat from the Watchers is very much ever-present, which might indeed be rather frightening to and for younger or very sensitive children, especially if they should also have the tendency towards and for lurid, colourful dreams).
And yes, there also appears to be a sequel, Marianne and Mark (which I unfortunately have not yet managed to read, as it is not nearly as well known as Marianne Dreams and sadly also not in current print and all that readily and easily available at reasonable purchasing prices).
May 6, 2015
Catherine Storr's 1958 novel Marianne Dreams is one of those classic children's stories that passed me by, but luckily I spotted a Puffin copy from the 1970s, I picked it up, I thought it looked lovely, and so I brought it home.
It was lovely, it was spooky, and it was the kind of book that brought out the child who loved books inside me.
Marianne is confined to bed with an illness that will keep her their for several months. Bored, she starts to draw to pass the time, using an old pencil she found in her grandmother's workbox. She draws a house, with a garden, set in rough moorland.
When she falls asleep she dreams that she is standing outside the house she drew. She goes to the door but she finds that she can't get in, because she didn't draw a door knob. She adds that the next day, and after the next night's dream she adds a staircase, so that she can go upstairs to meet the boy she drew looking out of a window.
The next day she goes back to her drawing, and she adds a door handle, and a boy looking out of an upstairs window. That night's dream makes her realise that she needs to add stairs, and when she has added those she meets Mark. he tells her that he has trapped, because he has been ill and he can't use his legs properly.
Marianne had been having lessons with Miss Chesterfield, a tutor who gave lessons to sick children in their own homes; and she realised that Mark was another pupil Miss Chesterfield had told her about, who had polio. That intrigued Marianne, but it also upset her when her tutor was a little late on her birthday, explaining that it was because Mark had arranged for his mother to buy her flowers; many more flowers than Marianne had own mother buy.
Later that day, still upset, Marianne drew bars across Mark's window, and sinister eyes on the boulders that she had drawn to fill the spacce on the page outside the house and garden. Later she regretted what she had done, but the marks that the pencil made couldn't be arased, and all Marianne could do was add more to her drawing.
I saw that the pencil captured Marianne's intent as she drew as well as the marks she made on paper. She didn't notice that, because she was too caught up in the adventure and the practicalities that presented themselves. I would have been the same if I read the book as her age; and I would have been as disturbed as she and Mark were by the watchers.
The eyes that Marianne drew onto the boulders when she was angry with Mark had turned them into sinister, sentient beings that she knew would harm the two children if they tried to leave the house. But she knew that they had to leave the house, because their health and happiness in the waking world reflected their health and happiness in Marianne's dreams.
What could she draw to give Mark the strength to escape, and to allow them to escape the watchers ..... ?
The idea behind this book was inspired, and the execution was perfect. The internal logic held, and Catherine Storr had the wisdom to not explain so much. She focused her story on her characters; I liked Marianne and Mark, I felt for them and I believed in them; they behaved exactly as children their age would. I do wish I'd met them when I was their age, but I'm glad that at least I've met them now.
What I wouldn't have noticed when I was that young is that the writing is elegant, the story-telling is lovely, and that the book has hardly dated at all.
Marianne's story was adapted for television in the 1970s, it was modernised for the cinema in the 1980s (Bernard Rose's 'Paperhouse'); and a few years ago it was adapted for the stage.
It would sit very nicely among the children's classics on anyone's bookshelves; and I understand that it is still in print .....
It was lovely, it was spooky, and it was the kind of book that brought out the child who loved books inside me.
Marianne is confined to bed with an illness that will keep her their for several months. Bored, she starts to draw to pass the time, using an old pencil she found in her grandmother's workbox. She draws a house, with a garden, set in rough moorland.
When she falls asleep she dreams that she is standing outside the house she drew. She goes to the door but she finds that she can't get in, because she didn't draw a door knob. She adds that the next day, and after the next night's dream she adds a staircase, so that she can go upstairs to meet the boy she drew looking out of a window.
The next day she goes back to her drawing, and she adds a door handle, and a boy looking out of an upstairs window. That night's dream makes her realise that she needs to add stairs, and when she has added those she meets Mark. he tells her that he has trapped, because he has been ill and he can't use his legs properly.
Marianne had been having lessons with Miss Chesterfield, a tutor who gave lessons to sick children in their own homes; and she realised that Mark was another pupil Miss Chesterfield had told her about, who had polio. That intrigued Marianne, but it also upset her when her tutor was a little late on her birthday, explaining that it was because Mark had arranged for his mother to buy her flowers; many more flowers than Marianne had own mother buy.
Later that day, still upset, Marianne drew bars across Mark's window, and sinister eyes on the boulders that she had drawn to fill the spacce on the page outside the house and garden. Later she regretted what she had done, but the marks that the pencil made couldn't be arased, and all Marianne could do was add more to her drawing.
(The black and white illustrations in my copy are really effective.)
I saw that the pencil captured Marianne's intent as she drew as well as the marks she made on paper. She didn't notice that, because she was too caught up in the adventure and the practicalities that presented themselves. I would have been the same if I read the book as her age; and I would have been as disturbed as she and Mark were by the watchers.
The eyes that Marianne drew onto the boulders when she was angry with Mark had turned them into sinister, sentient beings that she knew would harm the two children if they tried to leave the house. But she knew that they had to leave the house, because their health and happiness in the waking world reflected their health and happiness in Marianne's dreams.
What could she draw to give Mark the strength to escape, and to allow them to escape the watchers ..... ?
The idea behind this book was inspired, and the execution was perfect. The internal logic held, and Catherine Storr had the wisdom to not explain so much. She focused her story on her characters; I liked Marianne and Mark, I felt for them and I believed in them; they behaved exactly as children their age would. I do wish I'd met them when I was their age, but I'm glad that at least I've met them now.
What I wouldn't have noticed when I was that young is that the writing is elegant, the story-telling is lovely, and that the book has hardly dated at all.
Marianne's story was adapted for television in the 1970s, it was modernised for the cinema in the 1980s (Bernard Rose's 'Paperhouse'); and a few years ago it was adapted for the stage.
It would sit very nicely among the children's classics on anyone's bookshelves; and I understand that it is still in print .....
January 27, 2010
A Children's book was exactly what the doctor ordered for this gloomy never ending winter. This book is a fabulous old-school kind of children's book with its old-fashioned vocabulary that makes it all more enojayble. It takes you back to the time when life was fresh and exciting. Now when we are old, the novelty of life has worn off, we have to go to work, buy groceries and pay the rent and we have to be reminded sometimes how exciting life really is.
Children's books do it for me.
This one really took me away and during the 40 minute tube ride I completely forgot I was actually going to work.
It tells a story of a little girl who confined to bed for weeks amuses herself with drawing. As it turns out the pencil she has been using is not just an ordinary pencil but the kind that makes her drawings come to life later on at night when she is dreaming. The story is very atmospheric and quite spooky, the borders between reality and dreams become quite blurry and I have to admit I was tiny bit frightened when I read it late at night in my bed.
All in all it was a "jolly good book" to read when it is so "beastly" outside.
Children's books do it for me.
This one really took me away and during the 40 minute tube ride I completely forgot I was actually going to work.
It tells a story of a little girl who confined to bed for weeks amuses herself with drawing. As it turns out the pencil she has been using is not just an ordinary pencil but the kind that makes her drawings come to life later on at night when she is dreaming. The story is very atmospheric and quite spooky, the borders between reality and dreams become quite blurry and I have to admit I was tiny bit frightened when I read it late at night in my bed.
All in all it was a "jolly good book" to read when it is so "beastly" outside.
September 24, 2010
I think anyone who dreams or imagines a lot about things they hear about, or just likes to make stuff up, would like Marianne Dreams a lot. Marianne is bedridden and only has her thoughts and drawing materials to keep her sane. That's a pretty thin grip on things, so dependent on moods. It only takes a creepy looking tree outside to throw a new light on impending future. (Some of us like to work ourselves up, too.)
Marianne's tutor tells her about another boy in the town, and Marianne includes him in those drawings. When Marianne's dreams come to life (dream or reality?), Mark is in danger. It is up to Marianne to imagine a way out.
I recognized that feverish dreamlike feeling that makes things look sinister or magical (or both). (I can get that feeling even from a lack of sleep, or being awake at a certain hour with no one else about.) 'Dreams' evokes those feelings to the best of their abilities. I have to say I LOVE that feeling (there is such a thing as too much of a good thing, though).
The closest book to this one I can think of is Charlotte Sometimes by Penelope Farmer. In fact, I found out about this one because I was on the looksie for another book I would like as much as that one. Another dreamy fantasy about keeping ahold of yourself and what is real amongst the darker side of fantasies. It did the trick.
Marianne's tutor tells her about another boy in the town, and Marianne includes him in those drawings. When Marianne's dreams come to life (dream or reality?), Mark is in danger. It is up to Marianne to imagine a way out.
I recognized that feverish dreamlike feeling that makes things look sinister or magical (or both). (I can get that feeling even from a lack of sleep, or being awake at a certain hour with no one else about.) 'Dreams' evokes those feelings to the best of their abilities. I have to say I LOVE that feeling (there is such a thing as too much of a good thing, though).
The closest book to this one I can think of is Charlotte Sometimes by Penelope Farmer. In fact, I found out about this one because I was on the looksie for another book I would like as much as that one. Another dreamy fantasy about keeping ahold of yourself and what is real amongst the darker side of fantasies. It did the trick.
April 10, 2016
Marianne is convalescing after an illness when she finds a pencil that she draws a house with. Later when she dreams she visits this house and discovers that what she draws with the pencil in her waking life will appear in her dreams.
The watching stones are a fun, scary addition to the story and we enjoyed the coming together of the two childrens lives and their escape. The illustrations are good too.
The watching stones are a fun, scary addition to the story and we enjoyed the coming together of the two childrens lives and their escape. The illustrations are good too.
December 6, 2011
I'd never come across this children's novel at all until a friend recently recommended it to me. I can imagine that whoever has read this as a child would have been haunted by it. Marianne is a young girl who is bedridden as a result of an unspecified illness. Discovering a pencil which had belonged to her grandmother, Marianne draws a house set within a fence. That night in her dreams, she visits the house, but can't gain entry as she hasn't drawn anyone inside who is able to let her in. Awake again, draws a figure in the upstairs window, but in her next dream he still can't let her in because she hasn't drawn any stairs in the house. And so it goes on.
The book is incredibly imaginative, cleverly structured, and tightly plotted. There is a tremendous sense of foreboding throughout the dream sequences which builds to a terrific climax.
Even though this is ostensibly a children's book, I would heartily recommend it to anyone with an interest in tales of the supernatural and unrest. Catherine Storr doesn't appear to have written many novels, which is a pity since her imagination was able to conjure up such an inventive little story.
The book is incredibly imaginative, cleverly structured, and tightly plotted. There is a tremendous sense of foreboding throughout the dream sequences which builds to a terrific climax.
Even though this is ostensibly a children's book, I would heartily recommend it to anyone with an interest in tales of the supernatural and unrest. Catherine Storr doesn't appear to have written many novels, which is a pity since her imagination was able to conjure up such an inventive little story.
April 12, 2010
Where was this book when I was 9 or 10? Man, I would have adored it and read it over and over and over. Marianne is bedridden with what sound like mononucleosis to the modern ear, and she finds herself whiling away the long hours drawing with a magic pencil and visiting her drawings in her dreams. There's a boy with polio involved, and several missteps and a nearly perfect ending. This one was delicious. Thanks, Constance!
September 2, 2012
When I read this as an 11-year old, I didn't quite fully grasp how incurable illnesses and death exist in a desperate murky no-man's-land dreamworld. Now I do. Both Marianne and myself got perspective, learnt about the floor-dropping sensation of cause-and-effect and consequences and grew up a little. It's a lovely little book about friendship, sharing and being responsible. I really like the ending because it's so positive.
October 26, 2011
I read this when I was a kid. It is a MUST read if you like dark fantasy. The book was made into a movie and surprise, surprise... the movie
was excellent!
was excellent!
January 3, 2022
Loved this book which I originally read over 60 years ago. It still felt magical and took me right back to my childhood. One of the books which helped foster a lifelong passion for reading which I still have today.
May 17, 2026
A beautiful story told with a gentle touch that makes even the scariest moments no more threatening than a fairy tale of monsters and trolls. While Freud may have had a field day with Marianne's dreams - tall stone menhirs each with a single light-sensitive eye staring in through the invalid's bedroom window would have kept him interpreting for weeks - the book remains a children's story from beginning to end. Even though the ending may be seen as a little on the pessimistic side as Marianne has to wait at the lighthouse for Mark to return in his rescue helicopter.
There are elements in the story which may have some readers doubting their place in a book for pre-teen children. Debilitating illness involving two and a half months in bed for one child and treatment in an iron lung for another may have had the editor asking questions, and those lumbering standing stones may not be considered likely monsters for a ten-year-old girl to put in her dreams. But, who knows, perhaps she was frightened by Stonehenge when she was younger. However, the story is told with such skill that it all fits in nicely so that even a timorous child should only shiver a little in mild suspense as Marianne and Mark make their escape from the house.
To add to the enjoyment, the Faber Classics paperback edition has one of the most artistically attractive cloudscape covers I have come across in a long time. The artist deserves his own mention: Oliver Hurst.
There are elements in the story which may have some readers doubting their place in a book for pre-teen children. Debilitating illness involving two and a half months in bed for one child and treatment in an iron lung for another may have had the editor asking questions, and those lumbering standing stones may not be considered likely monsters for a ten-year-old girl to put in her dreams. But, who knows, perhaps she was frightened by Stonehenge when she was younger. However, the story is told with such skill that it all fits in nicely so that even a timorous child should only shiver a little in mild suspense as Marianne and Mark make their escape from the house.
To add to the enjoyment, the Faber Classics paperback edition has one of the most artistically attractive cloudscape covers I have come across in a long time. The artist deserves his own mention: Oliver Hurst.
May 30, 2015
Long ago I came across the movie Paperhouse. It's a haunting tale of a sick little girl who draws an alternate world that she visits in dreams. There she encounters a little boy who also happens to be ill in real life. It's spooky and magical and much more enjoyable than this book.
I recently discovered that the movie was based on this book, so of course I wanted to read it. The book is described as a children's classic. It's definitely for children but the writing isn't as inventive and emotional as the summary of the tale might suggest. This might be a fine read for early readers, however I recommend that adults bypass this book in favor of the film.
I recently discovered that the movie was based on this book, so of course I wanted to read it. The book is described as a children's classic. It's definitely for children but the writing isn't as inventive and emotional as the summary of the tale might suggest. This might be a fine read for early readers, however I recommend that adults bypass this book in favor of the film.
December 19, 2018
Marianne discovers that she can manipulate her dreams by using a pencil she finds in her great-grandmother's sewing basket. Marianne is recovering from a long illness, and through her dreams she meets Mark, who has polio. As a child, I found this book frightening: the world Marianne discovers in her dreams is chilling and populated by malevolent figures. What struck me on this reread is the nuanced portrait of illness and disability, and the genuine fear that the children will not survive. It's an interesting take on recovery from illness and the way serious illness affects our way of thinking.
November 5, 2015
I'm never disappointed with Storr! I don't want to give anything away only to say that Storr's story style is wonderful as is he use of language. The story starts off all light and enjoyable but it isn't long before the tale takes a dark and sinister turn. Such a great story with both a strong male and female protagonist who combat not only their fears but their illnesses too. Some may find the language date but I thought it added real charm.
October 31, 2024
My favourite book as a child. Re-read many times.
When Marianne gets ill and confined to bed rest, she discovers a magic pencil. Whatever she draws, appears in her dreams that night. But is she creating her dreams or is there more to it than that?
I was so happy to find I still enjoyed this book after so many years, though the language was a little old fashioned. Not disappointing even after so much time.
When Marianne gets ill and confined to bed rest, she discovers a magic pencil. Whatever she draws, appears in her dreams that night. But is she creating her dreams or is there more to it than that?
I was so happy to find I still enjoyed this book after so many years, though the language was a little old fashioned. Not disappointing even after so much time.
October 12, 2009
I loved this book when i was growing up. The idea that anything you drew could take on a life of its own in your dreams had me wishing so abadly that I could do the same! The film made of this - 'Paperhouse' was really well done and really brought across the dark side to it all. That i can have such a lingering memory of it after all these years is testament to its content.
August 17, 2008
An unusual book about a girl who is bedridden and starts drawing out of boredom - and the things she draws begin to exist and draw her into their world while she is sleeping.
August 6, 2018
This is maybe the creepiest children's book I've ever read - the stone watchers are terrifying. 1958 was pretty hardcore, apparently.
May 19, 2021
a childhood favorite that holds up well to rereading. Creepy as heck!
March 20, 2022
reread.
it honestly just wasn't as good as i remembered it, it was repetitive and the characters just really annoying at times, and some stuff didn't make sense at all, BUT i gotta admit that the last 80 pages were fun and i liked how the story and the relationship progressed.
it's a pretty solid children's book, but i don't think i want to read it a third time - it was so exhausting just to get into it again.
it honestly just wasn't as good as i remembered it, it was repetitive and the characters just really annoying at times, and some stuff didn't make sense at all, BUT i gotta admit that the last 80 pages were fun and i liked how the story and the relationship progressed.
it's a pretty solid children's book, but i don't think i want to read it a third time - it was so exhausting just to get into it again.
December 23, 2013
I love the premise; Marianne has just turned ten, and sick in bed she finds a pencil, and what she draws with the pencil she then dreams, but things are not always precisely as she intends them to be, and the dreams connect with the waking world in odd ways. It is a very eerie idea, and Storr uses it sometimes to good effect, but the book is not great, and it could have been, which frustrates me. It is a realistic novel with a fantastic element, and I think the realism to some extent undercuts the fantastic -- which is not necessary to the combination, it is in how Storr wrote it. The children are a little too much children, more even than real children are; they
And this ties in to the other thing I disliked:
It did remind me of Charlotte Sometimes but I think that one is much better, both more numinous and with more meaning.
And this ties in to the other thing I disliked:
It did remind me of Charlotte Sometimes but I think that one is much better, both more numinous and with more meaning.
December 20, 2020
There are some books you know - or at the very least, think that you know - before you get anywhere near to reading them. Bridge to Terabithia is one for me, and Marianne Dreams is - was - another. I thought I knew it, I thought I understood it, I thought I recognised its place within the world and then, at last finding a copy, I read it and realised I understood nothing. (I especially did not understand how any child reading it could ever draw anything again after reading it, but that's by the by). This spooky, strange, and viciously tense book is a remarkable thing and I rather loved it.
Marianne is bedridden through illness, and she draws. She draws a world into life and enters it through her dreams - finding everything that she's drawn on the page coming to strange and peculiar life. A house. A landscape. A world. A boy at a window, looking back upon her. There are connections here to be teased out; who, what, and why, until suddenly things are almost beyond her control and a brave and bold fight against the forces of darkness must begin.
This is one of those deliciously unclassifiable books that the fifties did so well. Children's literature was entering a phase of peculiar and radical richness (for more on that, Kimberley Reynolds' Radical Children's Literature: Future Visions and Aesthetic Transformations in Juvenile Fiction is a treat) and Marianne Dreams sings of power in every inch. The children are no virtuous angels; they are unhappy and peevish and angry and true, and they learn that even in their isolation, they are not alone. They learn that actions have consequences, that events can spiral out of their control, and that - even when all seems lost- they have an agency and a power that can work against it.
And we, as the reader, learn to never look at a sketch in quite the same way again. The unnerving wildness of this book!
Marianne is bedridden through illness, and she draws. She draws a world into life and enters it through her dreams - finding everything that she's drawn on the page coming to strange and peculiar life. A house. A landscape. A world. A boy at a window, looking back upon her. There are connections here to be teased out; who, what, and why, until suddenly things are almost beyond her control and a brave and bold fight against the forces of darkness must begin.
This is one of those deliciously unclassifiable books that the fifties did so well. Children's literature was entering a phase of peculiar and radical richness (for more on that, Kimberley Reynolds' Radical Children's Literature: Future Visions and Aesthetic Transformations in Juvenile Fiction is a treat) and Marianne Dreams sings of power in every inch. The children are no virtuous angels; they are unhappy and peevish and angry and true, and they learn that even in their isolation, they are not alone. They learn that actions have consequences, that events can spiral out of their control, and that - even when all seems lost- they have an agency and a power that can work against it.
And we, as the reader, learn to never look at a sketch in quite the same way again. The unnerving wildness of this book!
September 18, 2020
A strange, uncomfortable little read. I enjoyed the "real life" sections much more than the "dream" sections, in part because--how does Marianne become responsible for getting Mark better, getting him out of bed, forcing him to work at his physiotherapy exercises? Why should the girl have to do it all, only to end up waiting to be "rescued" by the boy? She does do it all, from the drawing itself to spending enormous amounts of time planning how to provide everything for Mark from food to entertainment to therapy equipment. Does he thank her? Once or twice, in passing, shrouding his words in sarcasm and "don't make a fuss." And the best thing Marianne can say about him is, well, he never complains. Good old stiff upper lip and all that. These life lessons may have been basic equipment for girls in the 1950s but they rankled today.
Another thing I apparently missed was the reason for the hostility of the grass and stones, which Marianne drew herself. I suppose there was an allegorical point to the Lighthouse, maybe a sort of God-figure to go with the Voice on the Radio, but there were so many gaps in the telling it was hard to know.
Another thing I apparently missed was the reason for the hostility of the grass and stones, which Marianne drew herself. I suppose there was an allegorical point to the Lighthouse, maybe a sort of God-figure to go with the Voice on the Radio, but there were so many gaps in the telling it was hard to know.
April 10, 2026
This is one of those books that I read several times as a child. It takes it's inspiration from the stones at Avebury in Wiltshire (or so my mum and wikipedia both claim!) - and I suppose that's why we had it on our bookshelf, growing up. It's one of those fantastically dark children's stories, with a general air of spookiness that stays with you well into adolescence and beyond. Marianne is a frustrated, bed-ridden child with nothing to do other than to consult with her imagination. The result is a pile of pencil sketches which, as we soon discover, become the scenes and characters that populate her dreams. A brilliant idea, wonderfully realised.
April 4, 2013
Now I understand why this book produced such a lasting memory for me when I read it age about 10 .... there is no way my 9 year old will be reading it any time soon!! Scary stuff.
June 15, 2026
Ten is a transitional age, when a child moves from single to double digits, potentially not achieving triple digits for another nine decades. And – like everyone moving from one stage to another – the first step may take them over the threshold to an exciting adventure, but it also brings with it anxiety; moving from the known to the unknown is likely to be fraught with fear, and that fear can be palpable.
Marianne lives in a comfortable postwar house; although the father is absent she has a younger brother, Thomas, whom we only hear about but never meet. The only individuals she comes in contact with are her mother, a strict but sympathetic tutor called Miss Chesterfield, and the family doctor, the last two introduced because Marianne falls ill on the day of her tenth birthday with what sounds very much like glandular fever. Confined to bed for weeks with this debilitating disease, Marianne is bored and frustrated as well as being easily fatigued.
Eventually she makes an attempt to draw a simple house using what appears to be an ordinary pencil she finds in her grandmother’s box of oddments. But that childish house she draws – four square with a central door, smoke emerging from a chimney, the building separated from the surrounding grassy plain by palings and a garden gate – proves to be an archetypal Gothic residence, one inhabited by a mysterious boy and menaced by megaliths that seem to be besieging the property. And it exists in a world that, every time she draws with the pencil, Marianne is able to access by way of dreams that, too often, verge on nightmare.
The 1950s were a time of childish diseases; my own experience from that period is of having lots of time off school in bed with measles, mumps, German measles and scarlet fever. Marianne, believing herself on the cusp of adolescence with her first lesson riding a pony, is appalled to be immediately laid low by the end of her birthday, physically exhausted and with complete bedrest ordered by the doctor. It could have been worse: denied school, she later learns from her tutor that another child invalid, Mark, is suffering from what is clearly polio, and when he develops an infection he will have to spend time in a so-called iron lung.
The dreams that she has involves trying to find a way to enter the house, then discovering the boy confined to a bare upstairs room and having to draw objects and food to make his life less tedious. When they bicker and quarrel, her petulant reactions cause this dream world to become more hostile: large stones and boulders develop eyes which start spying on the pair in a sinister fashion. These megaliths, whom the pair call THEM, are like the trolls in Nordic folklore which are turned to stone when day dawns, except that THEY fear only a certain sweeping light, the source of which it takes Marianne and Mark a while to work out. And then when the standing stones start massing outside the fence the youngsters realise that escape, which seems near impossible, is the only way to survive.
Storr qualified as a doctor in 1944 before training as a psychiatrist, working as a Senior Medical Officer specialising in child mental health. She declared that, as an author, “I write for the childish side of myself, and I find it often acts as psychotherapy.” This approach to writing, gained through professional experience and as a mother of three children, seems to give her fiction its distinctive tone; she doesn’t write down to her audience but somehow relays the quintessence of a child’s viewpoint. In particular, Marianne Dreams (like Rufus, the only other Storr novel I’ve so far read) appears to me to be about children finding themselves in traumatic situations but, through discovering and developing inner resources, then achieving agency, allowing them to negotiate the dangers they inevitably face as youngsters.
Anybody reading this might be reminded of motifs in other children’s books – Mary and crippled Colin in Frances Hodgson Burnett’s The Secret Garden (1911) for example, the surreal midsummer’s dream Alice had in Lewis Carroll’s 1865 classic, or the Ugly-Wuglies in Edith Nesbit’s The Enchanted Castle (1907) – but these are only faint echoes: the language, the situation, the atmosphere and the characters in Marianne Dreams have a very different feel to them. They may arise out of very real, personal experiences but are here expressed in Gothic fashion; the psychological horrors may have an authentic quality about them but the darkness they evoke is eventually banished by light.
In conclusion, this may be a children’s fantasy but that doesn’t mean it can’t be good literature:
Marianne lives in a comfortable postwar house; although the father is absent she has a younger brother, Thomas, whom we only hear about but never meet. The only individuals she comes in contact with are her mother, a strict but sympathetic tutor called Miss Chesterfield, and the family doctor, the last two introduced because Marianne falls ill on the day of her tenth birthday with what sounds very much like glandular fever. Confined to bed for weeks with this debilitating disease, Marianne is bored and frustrated as well as being easily fatigued.
Eventually she makes an attempt to draw a simple house using what appears to be an ordinary pencil she finds in her grandmother’s box of oddments. But that childish house she draws – four square with a central door, smoke emerging from a chimney, the building separated from the surrounding grassy plain by palings and a garden gate – proves to be an archetypal Gothic residence, one inhabited by a mysterious boy and menaced by megaliths that seem to be besieging the property. And it exists in a world that, every time she draws with the pencil, Marianne is able to access by way of dreams that, too often, verge on nightmare.
The 1950s were a time of childish diseases; my own experience from that period is of having lots of time off school in bed with measles, mumps, German measles and scarlet fever. Marianne, believing herself on the cusp of adolescence with her first lesson riding a pony, is appalled to be immediately laid low by the end of her birthday, physically exhausted and with complete bedrest ordered by the doctor. It could have been worse: denied school, she later learns from her tutor that another child invalid, Mark, is suffering from what is clearly polio, and when he develops an infection he will have to spend time in a so-called iron lung.
The dreams that she has involves trying to find a way to enter the house, then discovering the boy confined to a bare upstairs room and having to draw objects and food to make his life less tedious. When they bicker and quarrel, her petulant reactions cause this dream world to become more hostile: large stones and boulders develop eyes which start spying on the pair in a sinister fashion. These megaliths, whom the pair call THEM, are like the trolls in Nordic folklore which are turned to stone when day dawns, except that THEY fear only a certain sweeping light, the source of which it takes Marianne and Mark a while to work out. And then when the standing stones start massing outside the fence the youngsters realise that escape, which seems near impossible, is the only way to survive.
Storr qualified as a doctor in 1944 before training as a psychiatrist, working as a Senior Medical Officer specialising in child mental health. She declared that, as an author, “I write for the childish side of myself, and I find it often acts as psychotherapy.” This approach to writing, gained through professional experience and as a mother of three children, seems to give her fiction its distinctive tone; she doesn’t write down to her audience but somehow relays the quintessence of a child’s viewpoint. In particular, Marianne Dreams (like Rufus, the only other Storr novel I’ve so far read) appears to me to be about children finding themselves in traumatic situations but, through discovering and developing inner resources, then achieving agency, allowing them to negotiate the dangers they inevitably face as youngsters.
Anybody reading this might be reminded of motifs in other children’s books – Mary and crippled Colin in Frances Hodgson Burnett’s The Secret Garden (1911) for example, the surreal midsummer’s dream Alice had in Lewis Carroll’s 1865 classic, or the Ugly-Wuglies in Edith Nesbit’s The Enchanted Castle (1907) – but these are only faint echoes: the language, the situation, the atmosphere and the characters in Marianne Dreams have a very different feel to them. They may arise out of very real, personal experiences but are here expressed in Gothic fashion; the psychological horrors may have an authentic quality about them but the darkness they evoke is eventually banished by light.
In conclusion, this may be a children’s fantasy but that doesn’t mean it can’t be good literature:
She went out again into the sunshine. She could hear the hum of drowsy bees, searching for honey, the wailing cry of the seagulls, and, at the cliff’s foot, the lapping of small lacy waves. Here, in the dream, it was a golden afternoon; even the dark country behind the hills was wrapped in a soft grey haze which was gentle, not frightening, at one with the beauty of the day.I read this at the urging of several other readers; in return I urge you, if you’ve not already read it, to find a copy, immerse yourself in Marianne’s dreams, discover its little pleasures, and wonder at its insights.
Everything seemed to be resting; content; waiting.
August 16, 2024
Marianne is confined to bed, and she soon becomes bored and begins drawing a house using a pencil that once belonged to her grandmother. To her surprise, when she goes to sleep at night, she discovers she is inside the drawing. She is dismayed to find that she cannot enter the house because she's forgotten to draw a doorknob, and the next day she remedies that. Inside she meets Mark, a fellow convalescent, and the two begin a friendship that only takes place in Marianne's dreams.
A lovely story, with genuinely three-dimensional characters, and some gently frightening elements, and the magic and serendipity of a wonderful pencil.
One of the 1001 Children's Books You Must Read Before You Grow Up.
A lovely story, with genuinely three-dimensional characters, and some gently frightening elements, and the magic and serendipity of a wonderful pencil.
One of the 1001 Children's Books You Must Read Before You Grow Up.
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