17 year old Jack’s summer job, as a “nanny” for an 8 and 12 year old brother and sister, seems like it would be a cake walk. He’ll be making really good money and all he has to do is hang out with a couple of kids for a couple months. The major downside is that the kids live on an isolated island off the mainland that’s devoid of any modern connectivity; sure, they have generator-powered electricity, but there’s no phone, no wi-fi or internet, and the only connection to the outside world is the twice weekly ferry that passes by the island. Willing to make the best of it for the major payoff at the end of the summer, Jack boards the ferry on a foggy morning with his laptop and a few secreted away video games.
But from the first minutes he’s on the ferry, strange things start to happen: a seagull seems to be flying directly alongside Jack as he stands on deck, and he swears he can hear it give him a warning to turn back; an elderly couple, inquiring about where he’s headed hint at numerous tragedies and “incidents” on the island; and there’s a strange couple playing an unsettling card game in the ferry cafe that for reasons Jack can’t name, give him the creeps. Jack’s sense of dread is increased exponentially when he gets to the island and sees the looming, sprawling, unwelcoming black mansion he’s to live in, and meets the kids: Miles and Flora, who seem to have come from another place and time and who share a kind of subtle communication with each other that alludes their caregivers. Jack’s certain there are secrets hidden in that gloomy old house and maybe even something more sinister is being kept secret by these two unsettlingly unusual kids.
Feeling at times reminiscent of Stephen King’s The Shining, Francine Prose‘s latest for young adults, The Turning, chronicles Jack’s summer at the Dark House on Crackstone’s Landing in a series of increasingly troubling letters from Jack to his girlfriend Sophie on the mainland. Jack writes lengthy, rambling letters to Sophie, slowly revealing the oddities and unsettling experiences and things he’s seeing on the island. As time passes, a dark and sinister change comes over Jack as he descends deeper into the twisting maze of a dark house filled with secrets on an isolated island inhabited by things that can’t be easily explained.
- Posted by Cori