Review of The Girls with No Names by Serena Burdick

Burdick, Serena.  The Girls with No Names.  Park Row, 2020.

It is 1910 in New York City, and women have strict upbringings and very few rights.  Suffragettes are marching in the streets, and working conditions in factories are terrible.

Effie Tildon comes from a wealthy and socially affluent Manhattan family.  After discovering a shocking secret about their father, Effie's older sister, Luella, acts out and is gone the next day.  Effie is determined to find her older sister.  She believes that Luella has been sent to the House of Mercy, a type of women's reform institution, by their father to punish her for breaking the rules.  When Effie comes up with a plan to have herself committed to the "House of Mercy, she is shocked to find out that Luella is not a resident there.  And much to her despair, getting out of Mercy House is much harder than getting in.  No one will believe that she really shouldn't be there!

At the House of Mercy life is hard; the residents are forced into grueling labor, and are often punished,  Another girl, Mable Winter, befriends Effie and they try to come up with a plan to escape.

The House of Mercy reformatory is based on the Magdalene Laundries in Ireland, which were run by the Catholic Church.  In these institutions, wayward and unmarried, pregnant women were forced to work and were horribly mistreated.  Ms. Burdick has done an extraordinary job of portraying the horrors that went on in these institutions.  She has deftly woven both the historical events happening during the early 1900s into the plot and the plight of women during this time period.  I particularly enjoyed the descriptions of the Romani people, their camp, and their everyday activities

Effie and Mabel are portrayed as strong, persevering characters.  This is a novel of friendship, love, courage, and hope.  I highly recommend it for older high school students and public libraries and give it five out of five fleur de lis!

Review of The Curse of the Wendigo by Rick Yancey

The Curse of the Wendigo by Rick Yancey; Simon & Schuster, 2010.

In this sequel to Rick Yancey’s The Monstrumologist, Dr. Pellinore Worthrop and his young apprentice, Will Henry, travel to snowy Canada to search for fellow scientist and former best friend, John Chanler. Chanler had gone off to hunt for the Wendigo, known by the Indians as outiko, aka Lepto lurconis, a type of cannibalistic monster which is perpetually starving, even after gorging, and can travel on the wind! While in Canada, Dr. Worthrop and Will Henry are “deserted” by their guide, who has gone insane, and must travel back to civilization, carrying the ill John Chanler through freezing temperatures and many feet of snow. Once back in New York, Chanler seems to be getting worse, and Dr. Worthrop, who is in town for the annual congress of the Society for the Advancement of the Science of Monstrumology, orders him to be taken to the hospital. Much to Worthrop’s dismay, his teacher, Abram von Helrung, has decided to present a proposal to the society about the Wendigo, which Worthrop believes to be a myth! Will Henry is introduced to von Helrung’s thirteen-year-old niece, Lilly, who tries to lead Will astray, while Chanler escapes from the hospital and begins leaving a trail of blood and gore in his wake! He leads a band of monstrumologists on a chase to capture and kill him before he can kill, eat, and mutilate the poor immigrant residents of the New York City tenement neighborhoods.

Rick Yancey has produced another fantastic gory thriller! Many of the new characters in this book are extremely funny and likable! Muriel Chanler, John Chanler’s wife and Pellinore Worthrop’s former fiancé’, is elegant, and presumptuous. Chanler, on the other hand, is portrayed as cynical and mean-spirited, and then, of course, as a monster! I find it interesting that Chanler’s monster speech patterns are reminiscent of Gollum’s in Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings trilogy. Lilly, the teenage niece of von Helrung is a talkative “know-it-all”, and the scenes with Will and her are quite amusing! There are a number of cameo appearances by well-known historical figures, the most famous being Thomas Edison. The inclusion of Abram von Helrung is a veiled reference to Bram Stoker’s Van Helsing vampire hunter. The descriptions of 1888 New York City and, especially, its manure blocks, “crossing sweepers” and slums are dark and depressing, contrasting with those of the more prominent and wealthy parts of the city.

Readers will again have to get out their dictionaries, for there are many unusual words in the novel. There is plenty of blood and guts to keep the pages turning until the end! Even though this book is a sequel, readers will not necessarily need to read the previous volume. However, I do prefer The Monstrumologist over Rick Yancey’s most recent work. I highly recommend it for high school and public libraries!