The Wolves in the Walls is a children’s book to treasure – not for its sweetness, its pretty pictures, or its warm message – there is little of that, but purely for power of its narrative and imagery, and for its recognition of the unconscious – an important source of all of our creative life.

Reviewed by Magdalena Ball

The Wolves in the Walls
By Neil Gaiman
Bloomsbury
October 2003, $A29.95 hc, ISBN 0747569533

Neil Gaiman has an uncanny sense of what scares us. All of his books – those written primarily for adults and those written primarily for children, tap deep into the nightmare place – something very familiar and yet distinct from our normal day to day operations. Things are close, but not the same – the laws of physics have broken down – people are not who they seem, and walls house other creatures. His latest book, The Wolves in the Walls, is simultaneously funny, frivolous, and deeply frightening – and readers remain divided. We laugh at the humour, and there is really nothing overtly scary in the story, which is free of nastiness – the wolves who live in the walls are pretty benign and do no more damage than the cat in the hat does when he pays a visit (though they don’t clean up after themselves). And yet, there is something about this book which is frightening at the deepest level. Perhaps this is a scariness which will affect adults more than children, who are probably used to the seriously unpleasant cartoons you get on television and may miss the familiarity. Adults however will recognise their own nightmares (dreams/myths) in this work, as in Coraline, American Gods, and The Sandman series – this is, at base, what makes Gaiman’s work so original and powerful.

The Wolves in the Walls follows young Lucy, who hears some strange noises at night coming from the walls of her old house. She tells her family, and her mom dismisses it as mice, her dad as rats, and her irreverent brother, as bats. But Lucy knows that the “clawing, gnawing, nibbling, and squealing” are wolves, and is worried when her family keeps telling her that when the wolves come out of the walls, it’s all over. Then the wolves come out, and it is all over – the family flees the house, and the wolves take over, making a huge mess as they eat up the homemade jam, spill popcorn all over, watch television, wreck the walls, and party hard. Meanwhile the displaced family sit at the bottom of the garden and talk about where they will go, until Lucy bravely goes back for her pig puppet, and realises that there are other options. The switch between the family and the wolves is handled supremely. The book's structure and illustrations confirm the nightmarish quality – with the kind of varying font and sized text you find in ransom notes, along with collagey images, slightly out of focus characters, and a strong sense of the bizarre. There is also a great deal of humour throughout the book, which parents can play on, making this a very pleasurable read outloud experience. Lucy’s brother in particular gets good lines as he threatens to sleep with his neck exposed so that the “bats” can turn him into a coffin sleeping vampire, or move to outerspace with the foozle’s and squossucks. There is also visit at the bottom of the garden from the Queen of Melanesia, who drops by the help with the gardening and is surprised – “what?” along with the rest of the family by Lucy’s suggestion to reinhabit the house, albeit in the walls. The wolves themselves are also a hoot, literally as they ruin the second best tuba with jam damage, and the mother and father seem very hip and fashionable, even in abstract.

The book’s ending is inspired, and if you read it properly, your children will laugh outloud, and completely forget how similar the book’s dark mirroring of “real life” is to their dreams. This is a very different kind of children’s book – full of subtle textual and visual puns, from the mountain of jam to the wisdom of the pig puppet. This is one to reread often – noting the many details you may have missed in earlier readings. The Wolves in the Walls is a children’s book to treasure – not for its sweetness, its pretty pictures, or its warm message – there is little of that, but purely for power of its narrative and imagery, and for its recognition of the unconscious – an important source of all of our creative life.

b>About the reviewer: Magdalena Ball is the author of Sleep Before Evening, The Art of Assessment, and Quark Soup.