Book Review | The Seventh Miss Hatfield by Anna Caltabiano

Rebecca, a 15-year-old American, isn't entirely happy with her life, comfortable though it is. Still, even she knows that she shouldn't talk to strangers. So when her mysterious neighbour Miss Hatfield asked her in for a chat and a drink, Rebecca wasn't entirely sure why she said yes. It was a decision that was to change everything.

For Miss Hatfield is immortal. And now, thanks to a drop of water from the Fountain of Youth, Rebecca is as well. But this gift might be more of a curse, and it comes with a price. Rebecca is beginning to lose her personality, to take on the aspects of her neighbour. She is becoming the next Miss Hatfield.

But before the process goes too far, Rebecca must travel back in time to turn-of-the-century New York and steal a painting, a picture which might provide a clue to the whereabouts of the source of immortality. A clue which must remain hidden from the world. In order to retrieve the painting, Rebecca must infiltrate a wealthy household, learn more about the head of the family, and find an opportunity to escape. Before her journey is through, she will also have—rather reluctantly—fallen in love. But how can she stay with the boy she cares for, when she must return to her own time before her time-travelling has a fatal effect on her body? And would she rather stay and die in love, or leave and live alone?

And who is the mysterious stranger who shadows her from place to place? A hunter for the secret of immortality... or someone who has already found it?

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The Seventh Miss Hatfield is seventeen year old Anna Caltabiano's second novel: a scientific romance, after a fashion, and indeed, an extraordinary feat for someone so young. I can't in good conscience recommend it, however—much as I might like to champion the work of such a promising new author.

It's 1954, and Cynthia, a lonely little girl on the edge of adolescence, has become fascinated by her new neighbour: a strange lady who has spoken to no one in the weeks since she moved into the street. The better to get a glimpse of this antisocial character, Cynthia puts away her doll one day to take Miss Hatfield a package the postman abandoned when she refused to open her door. To her surprise and delight, she's invited in for a glass of freshly made lemonade. Her host, however, slips some mysterious liquid into her drink: a drop of water from a lake discovered in the distant past by Ponce de Leon which immediately makes her immortal.

"I'm rescuing you from your life," Rebecca Hatfield reasons. "I know you're miserable. I've watched you playing with your doll. You don't fit in with your friends or your family. You can't fit in because you aren't meant to—you're meant for something greater than a normal existence." (p.22) Something more like the lot of a time-travelling identity thief, if you can believe it, as that's exactly what Miss Hatfield asks Cynthia to do: to pop into the past, pretending to be someone else, so as to steal a prized painting.

Guest Post | "Why Read Sci-Fi and Fantasy?" by Anna Caltabiano

“I just don’t do fantasy.”

That is a sentence I’ve heard more than once in various libraries and bookstores. I understand that people have their preferences, but I never understood why some people are so quick to shun fantasy and sci-fi past the age of twelve. In my opinion, that’s when it really gets good, because we develop a better understanding of what we read.

For the same reason many adults (and a few very serious teenagers) don’t read fiction, many people find fantasy and sci-fi to be simply a distraction, and therefore not worth reading. As a writer, but also as a reader of all sorts of fiction—sci-fi and fantasy included—I find this to be heartbreaking. I find that these novels often aren’t given the credit they deserve. 

“Why read fantasy or sci-fi?” That’s a fair question. Some people read it because they’re looking for an escape from their everyday lives, but others, like me, read sci-fi fantasy to better examine the world they live in.

I find that some of the best sci-fi and fantasy books I’ve ever read take place in worlds that look almost exactly like ours, except with one major difference—a single change that effects and alters the fictional world and the way people interact with their world and each other. Parallel universes, time travel, immortality... these are all small changes that effect everything. These seemingly minute changes magnify certain elements in our world: parallel universes speak to our desire to make different choices and explore their consequences, time travel connects us to our past and future, and addresses the eternal question of “What if I could do it over again?”, while immortality speaks to our collective fear of death and the meaning that it gives to our lives.

Fantasy and sci-fi genres are vehicles for us to look at our own world in a different light. Nonfiction can be helpful, but it can’t allow us to live new experiences. Realistic fiction does many things, but rarely triggers our minds to question the daily assumptions through which we live our lives. Good sci-fi and fantasy frees us to float to other worlds and other times, and while seemingly being disconnected from our daily lives, bring us back inside ourselves, permitting a new found understanding of who we are and what we believe.

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Having been born in British colonial Hong Kong and educated in Mandarin Chinese schools before moving to Palo Alto, California—the mecca of futurism—Anna Caltabiano is a child of the transnational cyber punk era. She's seventeen years old and already the author of two novels: All That is Red and The Seventh Miss Hatfield. You can find out more about her and her work on her website, or follow the author on Twitter @caltabiano_anna.