Wonderland by Zoje Stage

For those of you who love reading thematically as much as I do, this is the book to read for Christmas while being snowed in. Or at least make sure some snow is involved for optimum enjoyment of this winter wonderland adventure.
Quotable me…If you can’t invent the wheel, make sure to build a really good one. Which is to say…when you chose to use a very, very familiar/old/beaten to death genre premise of city folks relocating to a remote wooded area only to find out something’s seriously off about their new abode, you really gotta do something new and different with it. The author, to her credit, does. It begins with the tree, a giant ancient looking tree in the backyard and quite literally avalanches into a snowy nightmare from there.
The Bennetts are as typical of a Manhattan family as you can imagine, they are artistic, free spirited and bestow upon their precocious young children names like Eleanor Queen and Tycho. Which frankly…ok, there’s just no excuse for that, no matter how great of a queen Eleanor of Aquitaine was in your opinion, both times. I mean, it’s an absolutely ridiculous name for a kid to have, Eleanor, sure, that’s lovely, Eleanor Queen…no, just no. Don’t name your kids Sir or Queen or Prince, wait for them to distinguish themselves or marry into it. Seriously.
Anyway, that kid of gives you an idea about Bennetts, though, doesn’t it. The family matriarch is a recently retired 41 year old ballerina, mother of two, but really three, for all the uses her artistic bum of a spouse artistically named Shaw) has. For years she’s been the breadwinner, while he dabbled in various arts from music to mixology and helped with the kids. Now they’ve inexplicably decided it’s his turn to shine, despite the notable scarcity of previous successes, so the decision is mad, mainly for his sake, but also for the novelty of getting out of the 600 sq. ft. apartment, to old rambling place in upstate New York is acquired and, without any means of support outside of rapidly decreasing savings and almost no collective experience living outside of a major metropolis, The Bennetts are off to try the country life and let Shaw realize his latent artistic potential. Guess how well that’s going to work out for them?
Despite the sarcasm contents of this review, the book is actually neither terrible nor stupid. It is a credible entry into the realm of literary scares, it’s atmospheric, claustrophobic and disturbing in all the right ways. And only ever so slightly overwritten. The main/significant characters are female, the message is potently feminist, girlpower shines all the way through the snow. The kids, however oddly named, are really well realized as characters, almost more so than adults at times, and all too clever beyond their years.
All in all, pretty good. Smarter adult characters or more original of a premise might have pushed it right into the great territory. Nicely creepy story well told. For fans of literary slow burning scares. Warning…might induce chionophobia. That’s fear of snow, had to look it up, yes, a real thing. Learn something new every day.