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Thicker Than Water
Both Will and his cousin Becky have some adjusting to do when he comes to live with her family after his mother's death, especially when the ghost of a child coal miner begins his insistent haunting of Will.
208 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1993
About the author
Penelope Farmer
46 books70 followersPenelope Jane Farmer is an English fiction writer well known for children's fantasy novels. Her best-known novel is Charlotte Sometimes (1969), a boarding-school story that features a multiple time slip.
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
May 19, 2013
BURY THE DEAD--APPRECIATE THE LIVING
Plump and plain Becky deeply resents her cousin, Will, when he suddenly enters both her life and home in Derbyshire, Englander. How is she supposed to feel sorry about the death of her mother's never-before-mentioned twin sister? Or feel sympathy for this distinctly foreign-looking cousin who dropped into her smugly anti-social world? Both kids carry around considerable emotional baggage as it is--each too deeply mired in their own problems to reach out to the other. This grim, stark YA novel presents a suffering ghost who uses the living to put closure on the past.
Why is Will the only one to hear the wailing of a ghost boy--buried alive in an abandoned mine shaft a century ago? Who is likely to be blamed for a poltergeist's rampage? Neither kid appeals to the reader at first, as they outdo each other in being sullen, selfish, uncommunicative, ungrateful and deliberately perverse. The adults around them struggle with anger and frustration. Can a boy from the London slums lay to rest the tormented spirit of another boy, whose mother seemed to desert him as well? Family relationships are questioned, as Becky tries to mature. Readers must be flexible, as the chapters alternate between the cousins as egocentric narrators. A chilling tale for middle school kids.
(Nov. 3, 2011. I welcome dialogue with teachers.)
Plump and plain Becky deeply resents her cousin, Will, when he suddenly enters both her life and home in Derbyshire, Englander. How is she supposed to feel sorry about the death of her mother's never-before-mentioned twin sister? Or feel sympathy for this distinctly foreign-looking cousin who dropped into her smugly anti-social world? Both kids carry around considerable emotional baggage as it is--each too deeply mired in their own problems to reach out to the other. This grim, stark YA novel presents a suffering ghost who uses the living to put closure on the past.
Why is Will the only one to hear the wailing of a ghost boy--buried alive in an abandoned mine shaft a century ago? Who is likely to be blamed for a poltergeist's rampage? Neither kid appeals to the reader at first, as they outdo each other in being sullen, selfish, uncommunicative, ungrateful and deliberately perverse. The adults around them struggle with anger and frustration. Can a boy from the London slums lay to rest the tormented spirit of another boy, whose mother seemed to desert him as well? Family relationships are questioned, as Becky tries to mature. Readers must be flexible, as the chapters alternate between the cousins as egocentric narrators. A chilling tale for middle school kids.
(Nov. 3, 2011. I welcome dialogue with teachers.)
January 11, 2020
I found the sentence structure and some of the language a bit strange at times. This is a YA ghost story and a twin story, so a lot of what I normally enjoy, but it left me as cold as Will's bones. It was quite boring in parts, and I had an issue with Becky being constantly described as fat when turns out she's only a stone overweight (which of course she loses in the end and becomes truly, truly happy). An odd little tale.
October 8, 2012
I'm a big fan of Penelope Farmer. One of my favourite childhood books is Charlotte Sometimes. So I knew I'd want to read this one as soon as I saw it on the library shelf.
It's a ghost story, but a fairly gentle one. Farmer has a delicacy. This one is so late, compared to her other three books - 1989! I was a bit shocked by its modernness.
I'm not sure if the girls would read this one with any enthusiasm, but I did. Getting a "new" book by an author I first read 35 years ago - that's a bit of a gift.
It's a ghost story, but a fairly gentle one. Farmer has a delicacy. This one is so late, compared to her other three books - 1989! I was a bit shocked by its modernness.
I'm not sure if the girls would read this one with any enthusiasm, but I did. Getting a "new" book by an author I first read 35 years ago - that's a bit of a gift.
January 22, 2018
This book scared the shit out of me as a child, so much so that I didn't dare to read the end of it.That only caused the horror to grow in my mind, as the story never got any resolution. I read the whole book later and it was not a s scary as I remembered.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews