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The Fetch of Mardy Watt
Something is haunting Mardy Watt. It's been in her room, it's fooling her friends and it's upsetting her home life. And the trouble is, nobody realises what is happening except Mardy herself. Exactly what it is and why it is picking on her, Mardy doesn't know - but she does know that she has to find out, before it takes over and replaces her completely.
224 pages, Paperback
First published February 1, 2004
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About the author
Catherine Butler
21 books4 followersI'm an academic and writer, currently working as Professor of English Literature at Cardiff University, though living in Bristol, where I've been based since 1990.
I have published numerous books, including children's and young-adult fiction and literary criticism, some under the name Charles Butler.
I have published numerous books, including children's and young-adult fiction and literary criticism, some under the name Charles Butler.
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
June 4, 2009
The quests here, besides the magical, are about friendship, being, family. Mardy is a plain plump Irish schoolgirl who used to be popular at her elementary school, but now that she's in a new school with the big kids, she's just there. Neither popular nor unpopular. She walks to school with Hal, another leftover from her old school; the school is more dreary than not, especially with spycams being set up all over. And then there's this weird girl named Rachel who glares at Mardy from the back room in French, and with a clever pun launches group teasing against Mardy that lasts a day or so, until Mardy can return fire. Mardy is emotionally spiky not just because of these everyday schoolkid issues but also because her older brother, the clever, elegant Alan, has been lying in a coma for months, for no reason the doctors can figure. Then, after a strange encounter with music and an engraved stone, Mardy finds herself thinning—not in the diet sense, but her substance is gradually fading away.
This novel is not predictable even for an older reader. The surprises are not just random twists and turns, but are like trapdoors that cause you to fall deeper into the story—and deeper into the strangeness of the world. But what really shines is Butler's exquisite prose. Frequently I'd have to stop and go back just to reread lines and grafs.
Here's from Mardy's first moment of magic:
She dawdled, going home. As she reached the park she heard again the strange plucked instrument she had noticed on the way to school that morning. It was this, as much as a wish to drag out the time, that led her through the wrought-iron gates and up one of three forking paths, to a circle of flowerbeds and asphalt…Steps led up all around the cross, and on the side visible to Mardy a bunch of winter roses had been laid. Lest we forget. She began to read a dizzying list of names, each belonging to a dead soldier. [names] Once she had begun, in fact, she found she had to carry on. The music, which was very close now—just on the far side of the cross—seemed to insist upon it. Lest we forget. She could not move further until she had dutifully read and remembered the name of each Burgess, Butterell, Chandler and Crisp; and so to the next side of the cross, and the next, until John Zipes had at last been laid to rest. And still there was no sign of where the music was coming from, or who was playing it.
Even now she could not move away. Mardy had heard that just before death a person's life flashed past—all in a moment. What happened to her now was like that, but much slower. She was unwillingly engaged in a laborious act of memory, unwinding each moment of her past like thread from a bobbin. She felt as if she had to or be turned to stone herself.
Finally—finally—the many-stringed instrument (a harp, was it, or a mandolin?) began drawing its threads of sound together. The tangle of arpeggios became more dense and knotted. Harmonies and discords vied dangerously, and at last a vast, enmeshed chord threw a net of closely-wovem sound over her head. It billowed out and settled, dissolved at its edges and tightened at its center, and bound her hand and foot.
This novel is not predictable even for an older reader. The surprises are not just random twists and turns, but are like trapdoors that cause you to fall deeper into the story—and deeper into the strangeness of the world. But what really shines is Butler's exquisite prose. Frequently I'd have to stop and go back just to reread lines and grafs.
Here's from Mardy's first moment of magic:
She dawdled, going home. As she reached the park she heard again the strange plucked instrument she had noticed on the way to school that morning. It was this, as much as a wish to drag out the time, that led her through the wrought-iron gates and up one of three forking paths, to a circle of flowerbeds and asphalt…Steps led up all around the cross, and on the side visible to Mardy a bunch of winter roses had been laid. Lest we forget. She began to read a dizzying list of names, each belonging to a dead soldier. [names] Once she had begun, in fact, she found she had to carry on. The music, which was very close now—just on the far side of the cross—seemed to insist upon it. Lest we forget. She could not move further until she had dutifully read and remembered the name of each Burgess, Butterell, Chandler and Crisp; and so to the next side of the cross, and the next, until John Zipes had at last been laid to rest. And still there was no sign of where the music was coming from, or who was playing it.
Even now she could not move away. Mardy had heard that just before death a person's life flashed past—all in a moment. What happened to her now was like that, but much slower. She was unwillingly engaged in a laborious act of memory, unwinding each moment of her past like thread from a bobbin. She felt as if she had to or be turned to stone herself.
Finally—finally—the many-stringed instrument (a harp, was it, or a mandolin?) began drawing its threads of sound together. The tangle of arpeggios became more dense and knotted. Harmonies and discords vied dangerously, and at last a vast, enmeshed chord threw a net of closely-wovem sound over her head. It billowed out and settled, dissolved at its edges and tightened at its center, and bound her hand and foot.
January 24, 2012
The Fetch of Mardy Watt is one of those almost-perfect books (there was just one tiny thread either loose or else to subtly tied I overlooked the knot) that manages simultaneously to remind me of my favourite books by several other writers. From the moment Mrs Watt's instruction to her daughter to be content with the body God gave her is followed up by her request to find Mrs Watt's own hair dye, it's obvious Charles Butler has a wicked eye for detail and for that oh-so-human talent for believing two or more mutually exclusive philosophies at the same time.
The plot? Cranky and opinionated Mardy Watt is being replaced by a fetch; a replica; and there seems little she can do about it. She seeks help from her nerdish friend Hal (once court jester to her Queen Bee but now promoted to Loyal-and-possibly-only-real Friend) and endures a push/pull, fascination/dislike relationship with new girl Rachel Fludd. (And don't we always feel like that about someone who looks just the way we do, but better?) Rachel's French pun involving Mardy's name and the last Tuesday before Lent is an uncomfortable (for Mardy) echo of her Queen Bee days but though Mardy would like to lose weight she never expected to lose tangibility at the same time.
So; what books come to mind when reading The Fetch of Mardy Watt? There's a soupcon of character redemption, so here be a pinch of The Voyage of the Dawn Treader. There's a strong hint of evil hiding in plain sight, comatose people still attached to the real world (just) a shadowy society, a place that cannot easily be reached and realities behind a thin skin of illusion. That might suggest a blend of The Changeover (Margaret Mahy) and various books by the late, great, Diana Wynne Jones. There's a faint touch of Maggie Pearson's Owl Light, perhaps, and even a smidge of Dean's Tam Lin? The more I think of it, the more touches come to mind but there's no sense these similarities have come FROM the other books, just that Charles Butler, like Lewis, Dean, Pearson, Jones and Mahy, has a rich hoard of folklore, a sharp eye for character and the kind of mental delicatessen whose tucked-away street address a renowned cook might keep jealously close...
And that's probably enough adverbs and adjectives for any review.
The plot? Cranky and opinionated Mardy Watt is being replaced by a fetch; a replica; and there seems little she can do about it. She seeks help from her nerdish friend Hal (once court jester to her Queen Bee but now promoted to Loyal-and-possibly-only-real Friend) and endures a push/pull, fascination/dislike relationship with new girl Rachel Fludd. (And don't we always feel like that about someone who looks just the way we do, but better?) Rachel's French pun involving Mardy's name and the last Tuesday before Lent is an uncomfortable (for Mardy) echo of her Queen Bee days but though Mardy would like to lose weight she never expected to lose tangibility at the same time.
So; what books come to mind when reading The Fetch of Mardy Watt? There's a soupcon of character redemption, so here be a pinch of The Voyage of the Dawn Treader. There's a strong hint of evil hiding in plain sight, comatose people still attached to the real world (just) a shadowy society, a place that cannot easily be reached and realities behind a thin skin of illusion. That might suggest a blend of The Changeover (Margaret Mahy) and various books by the late, great, Diana Wynne Jones. There's a faint touch of Maggie Pearson's Owl Light, perhaps, and even a smidge of Dean's Tam Lin? The more I think of it, the more touches come to mind but there's no sense these similarities have come FROM the other books, just that Charles Butler, like Lewis, Dean, Pearson, Jones and Mahy, has a rich hoard of folklore, a sharp eye for character and the kind of mental delicatessen whose tucked-away street address a renowned cook might keep jealously close...
And that's probably enough adverbs and adjectives for any review.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews