The Midnighters

Wr. Hanna Took

Ill. Ayesha L. Rubio Pub. Puffin Age Range - 10+ years

Ema Vaskova has always felt different. In a family of famous scientists, there's not much room for superstition or omens - but they seem to follow Ema wherever she goes. It doesn't help that she appears to predict events before they happen, and has a peculiar fear of shadows...

When Ema is sent to stay with her eccentric uncle in Prague, she fears she'll lose the chance to ever fit in. But then she meets Silvie - a girl who finally sees Ema for the extraordinary person that she is. Soon the girls are meeting for secret midnight adventures, and facing Ema's fears together. But then disaster strikes. Silvie goes missing - and it's up to Ema to find her. Now she must gather the courage to hunt the city, find her friend, and uncover the secrets of the one clue Silvie left as to where she might be - inside the mysterious Midnight Guild...

"The difficult second album"

There is something quite exquisite about Hana Tooke's writing, and her second novel has been one of my most anticipated reads (ever). The Unadoptables was simply magnificent, and The Midnighters (the difficult second album) doesn't disappoint (rather, it delights).

The novel opens in 1877, but most of the story take place in 1899, 2 years before the events of The Unadoptables. The two novels are loosely connected inasmuch as they share a character in common (details at the end of the review). The central character is 12-year-old Ema, the youngest child in a large family of scientists. She's a fun, endearing girl, whose relationship with the mysterious Silvie is the beating heart of the story. They go on a series of midnight adventures together, each one orchestrated by Silvie, and arranged by way of hand-written invitations sealed with half-chewed toffees. That might be the most Hana Tooke thing Hana Tooke has ever written, and I love her for it. She is absolutely the maestro of characterisation.

When Silvie suddenly goes missing, everything switches gear. What I thought was a blossoming romance turns into a murder mystery, with the focus moving to the goings on within the clandestine Midnight Guild. Plot twists aside, the book is full of surprises, not least Ema's hapless Uncle Josef, who - far from being a Vernon Dursley type villain - along with his Maine Coon, Ferkel, provides welcome comic relief from the mounting tension. Translated from the German, Ferkel means piglet. That makes total sense when you read the book 😉.

Just as it was with the Amsterdam backdrop of The Unadoptables, the world-building of night-time Prague is richly imagined, and really serves the story. Looming statues and dark streets and lamplit castles all lend something to the atmosphere. You can feel the gothic. You don't need to read the thoughful Afterword or the genuinely humble Acknowledgements (but you should) to realise how much time and effort (and love) Hana puts into her research. The Midnighters melds science and superstition, and Hana credits a number of people for helping in her exploration of Czech superstitions, such as keeping a fish scale in your wallet to ensure your money will not run out.

As much as I loved the story as a whole, the beautiful way in which Hana develops the unlikely friendship between Ema and Silvie is the thing that has stayed with me most since I closed the book for the final time. Like The Unadoptables before it (or after it, if you're thinking chronologically), The Midnighters is about children trying to navigate the always peculiar, often dangerous adult world, something Hana does brilliantly. Her characters are naive but never bungling, they make mistakes but also have credible youthful insight. She shows a great deal of respect for her young audience. Hana has inspired me to resurrect my own novel, which has languished in work-in-progress hell for too long. And for that, I shall always be indebted.

Before I close, I must draw attention to the lovely crossover with The Unadoptables, with the appearance of Thibault Finkelstein (Milou's father, he of the almost-black eyes), who is still grieving for his fiancée ("permanently gloomy demeanour, and dark shadow"*), Liesel. "Beneath the stars I found you, under the moon I lost you," Thibault wrote. Little wonder he's an astronomer in the Midnight Guild.

The Midnighters is everything I hoped it would be. It is, like The Unadoptables before it (or after it, if you're thinking chronologically), magnifiek.

* The Midnighters, p.192