Looking at the covers of other editions, I realize how lucky I am to have gotten this one. All the other covers are incredibly creepy--and not in the way that the book is creepy, in an 'oh my god why is that child's head malformed?' way. This one is pretty much creepy in precisely the way the book is creepy.

Anywho, Karen Aich sent me this when she discovered I hadn't read Margaret Mahy, and then I didn't read it for a month because I am an awesome friend like that. It's YA, a genre I regard with deep suspicion, since even the best of it still carries memories of adolescence, a period I have been attempting to avoid since I was nine. Also, it's (as many of the editions state on the cover,) a supernatural romance, which is the sort of thing that frequently fails to have any laser-pistols or zeppelins in it at all. What I am saying is, it's very much not my thing.

That said, I put it in my bag as my emergency back-up book, and finished it within the week, in a succession of fifteen minute bus-rides.

Laura is young girl who lives with her young brother and underemployed mother who has a certain sensitivity to the preternatural. When the creepy guy junk shop owner ensorcels her brother, she goes to get help from Sorenson Carlisle, who she's always sensed was a witch. This is much more straight-forward than in the book, where everything is freighted with uncertainty. Rather like one's adolescence, sigh.

Laura is fourteen, and Sorenson (Sorry) is seventeen, if I'm translating their grades right, (Forms are magical!) and Laura is confused and somewhat dismayed by her adolescent sexuality, whereas Sorry is confused and thrilled by both hers and his. The changeover of the title refers to a transformation which might allow Laura to harness her power to defend her brother, but one doesn't have to look very deep for a metaphorical reading.

One of the reasons I got pulled into the book is the writing, both for its own sake, and because their are bits of it where it seemed like I could detect its influence in Karen's writing. The style is sort of quietly clever, as in this bit:

The show was between a window full of handbags and suitcases for people who wanted to travel elegantly and a shop full of dresses 'for the fuller figure' which showed large, tactful dresses all in wine-red and grey this week.