Review

Drawn Away

  • Holly Bennett
  • Orca Book Publishers, 2017

Drawn Away by Holly Bennett is something of an urban ghost story novel, something of a literary mash-up. It draws on Hans Christian Andersen’s heart-rending tale of the Little Match Girl to tell a contemporary story about mothers’ love, romantic obsession, and cooperative problem solving.

Jack is an ordinary guy living a fairly ordinary life when he is pulled into a shadowy, misty space where he meets a thin, intense girl. Then zap, he’s back in the real world and flirting with Lucy, his soon-to-be girlfriend. When Lucy and Jack discover they’ve both encountered the thin girl, Klara (who turns out to be the ghost of the real-life inspiration for the Little Match Girl), they must work together to keep Klara from luring Jack back to the shadow world forever.

I liked this novel; it has a brisk-moving plot and raises issues of both historical and contemporary significance. The Klara subplot invites readers to consider domestic violence, the consequences of poverty, and the plight of women in a morally punitive society. The plot thread of Jack’s diabetes turns his insulin pump into a character and normalizes the process of managing the disease. The figure of Hans Christian Andersen introduces themes of authorship and responsibility, and also allows the novel to represent a very difficult, and frankly harsh era, in an intriguing manner. That said, the Andersen subplot is something of a tangent; it is resolved a bit too tidily through Lucy and her mother. I also found the relationship between Jack and Lucy unusually pitched. Although they are seventeen and eighteen years old, and do engage in some behaviours of older teens (such as drinking alcohol and smoking pot), their romantic relationship is very restrained. But perhaps this decision reflects more about the sensibilities of classrooms and public librarians than it does about modern teens.

In short, Drawn Away is an energetic, accessible novel for grades eight and up. It’s likely to appeal to readers interested in the recent revival of fairy tales through popular texts like Into the Woods, Once Upon a Time, and Beauty and the Beast (as well as the junior retellings of the Whatever After series). Drawn Away could also provide a stepping-stone to more sophisticated retellings like Beauty by Sheri S. Tepper and The Snow Queen by Joan D. Vinge.

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