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Book Reviews of The Tricksters

The Tricksters
The Tricksters
Author: Margaret Mahy
ISBN-13: 9780689829109
ISBN-10: 0689829108
Publication Date: 9/1/1999
Pages: 272
Reading Level: Young Adult
Rating:
  • Currently 4.7/5 Stars.
 3

4.7 stars, based on 3 ratings
Publisher: Simon Pulse
Book Type: Paperback
Reviews: Amazon | Write a Review

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From Amazon:

Grade 9 Up A Christmas story that takes place on the beach in a sunny New Zealand December. Mahy's fans will not be surprised to learn that it is also a love story in which one of the lovers is a ghost. To most of the Hamilton family, the three young men who drop in on their holiday seem to be ordinary, although eccentric, visitors. To 17-year-old Ariadne (always called Harry), they are much more than that, perhaps ghosts, or even characters come alive from a story she is writing. Mahy has caught the essence of the adolescent's painful separateness; cut off from her childhood, Harry stands alone in her family. Whatever they are, the Tricksters act as a catalyst, drawing Harry out of childhood and causing her to raise the family's tensions and reveal their secrets. A theme touched on in The Changeover: a Supernatural Romance (Atheneum, 1984) reappears here, that of a young girl coming to terms not only with her own sexuality, but with her parents' sexuality as well. The intricate threads of personalities and plot weave together into a fine web of vivid language. Few writers have Mahy's skill at integrating the supernatural with daily life. She manages to enrich each in the process, just as the revelation precipitated by the visitors, painful as it is, ends by enriching the Hamiltons' lives and changing the three spirits as well.