Thornhill by Pam Smy

Book of the Week: 21 January 2018

It’s March 2017 and Ella has moved to a new house. Her bedroom overlooks a large Victorian building surrounded by a garden that has turned into a jungle. She glimpses a girl through the barbed wire that keeps out trespassers and decides to investigate. Back in the 1980s, Mary is being bullied in the children’s home by an un-named girl and is despondent that most of  the adults who work at Thornhill don’t seem to notice what is going on. Mary takes refuge in refusing to talk and spends a lot of time making puppets in her room. She tells her story in the form of a diary which is interspersed with Ella’s story told completely in black and white illustrations.

This wonderfully designed book, with its black-edged pages and alternating text and illustrations interleaved with solid black pages, is creepy and unsettling and casts an unflinching eye on loneliness and bullying. It has echoes of Jane Eyre and The Secret Garden and would be enjoyed by fans of Neil Gaiman’s Coraline and The Ocean at the End of the Lane.

Thornhill – written and illustrated by Pam Smy

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