A Glasshouse of Stars

Shirley Marr's A Glasshouse of Stars was my other Christmas present to myself, and it was absolutely enchanting, a magical urban story to accompany the outback magic of Dragon Skin. Set in Perth, it follows Meixing's arrival in a new country from a small island (Marr came to the mainland from Christmas Island in the 1980s) and her family's swift plunge into strangeness and tragedy.

Meixing's uncle's house, nicknamed Big Scary, is a character in its own right, shrinking and expanding as required, sometimes comforting, sometimes frightening. A Glasshouse of Stars made a wonderful companion read with A Spool of Blue Thread, which also explored an atmospheric house that shapes a family history, and the ghosts that whisper through its walls.

This book is unusual in that it uses the second person pronoun throughout.

You stare long and hard at the blue colouring pencil. Seizing and gripping it as if you had to hold on for dear life, you draw an endless field of blue flowers and an endless blue sky and a girl who is completely blue. You collapse all of this into the little pages you have cut from one sheet of white paper. The wall behind you creaks and moans, and you put a hand behind you and touch Big Scary. You feel a warmth against you and turn to see a pink glow that just as soon disappears when you pull away, You look at the adults, but they don't seem to notice.

Initially I thought I might find this jarring but I soon relaxed into it, and this strangeness lends a distinctive otherness to the text that cleverly mirrors Meixing's dislocation. Another sweet treasure of a book for middle grade readers.