A week after Mother found her sleeping on the ceiling, Amy Thomsett is delivered to her new school: Drearcliff Grange in Somerset.
Although it looks like a regular boarding school, Amy learns that Drearcliff girls are special: the daughters of criminal masterminds, outlaw scientists and master magicians. Several of the pupils also have special gifts like Amy’s, and when one of the girls in her dormitory is abducted by a mysterious group in black hoods, Amy forms a secret, superpowered society called the Moth Club to rescue their friend. They soon discover that the Hooded Conspiracy runs through the School, and it's up to the Moth Club to get to the heart of it.
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It's a credit to Kim Newman that he only rarely writes the novels you think he will. Just look at his last book: An English Ghost Story indubitably did what its title described, but it was—weirdly, wonderfully—as comical as it was creepy, and as interested in depicting the dysfunctional family it followed as it was the spectral presence that pushed them to the inevitable precipice.
Newman's newest—which purports to be the start of a series by Louise Magellan Teazle, the previous occupant of the haunted house at the heart of the aforementioned narrative—is not dissimilar in its evisceration of expectations. The Secrets of Drearcliff Grange School appears to be one thing, namely a classical magical academy narrative along the lines of Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children. And it is! And it isn't.
"A week after Mother found her sleeping on the ceiling, Amy Thomsett was delivered to her new school. Like a parcel," (p.13) with exactly as much love and care as that imagery entails. Mother, you see, is not best pleased that her daughter has developed such particular Abilities:
Needless to say, not all of the students studying at Drearcliff are as welcoming as Dr. Swan...
Newman's newest—which purports to be the start of a series by Louise Magellan Teazle, the previous occupant of the haunted house at the heart of the aforementioned narrative—is not dissimilar in its evisceration of expectations. The Secrets of Drearcliff Grange School appears to be one thing, namely a classical magical academy narrative along the lines of Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children. And it is! And it isn't.
"A week after Mother found her sleeping on the ceiling, Amy Thomsett was delivered to her new school. Like a parcel," (p.13) with exactly as much love and care as that imagery entails. Mother, you see, is not best pleased that her daughter has developed such particular Abilities:
In the months since she first came unstuck from the ground, Amy had been subjected to cold baths, weighted pinafores, long walks, hobbling boots and a buzzing, tickling electric belt. Leeches and exorcism were on the cards. Mother's whole idea in sending Amy to Drearcliff was to clamp down on floating. (p.22)As it happens, however, Amy's new school—"a rambling, gloomy, ill-repaired estate on top of a cliff" (p.13)—is not at all what Mother had imagined. Instead, it's a place where unseemly tendencies are accepted. Encouraged, even, since Headmistress considers it Drearcliff's responsibility to help Amy and the other Unusuals she'll meet in the year Newman's novel narrates to find Applications for their array of Abilities.
Needless to say, not all of the students studying at Drearcliff are as welcoming as Dr. Swan...
