Author: Louise Fitzhugh
Publisher: Random House
Rating: warty
The audio CD was read by Ann Bobby and she did an acceptable job
Harriet M Welsch is one of the most schizophrenic main characters I've ever read about. It's not that she, the character, is schizophrenic, but that she gives me schizophrenic feelings about her. On the one hand, I loved the opening chapters and admired the spunky, feisty, independent, self-possessed, determined, unstoppable character Harriet was.
On the other hand, I found her to be a bratty, spoiled, strident, juvenile, and unlikeable person. She was unarguably a trailblazer for girls in her own time (1964 when this novel was first published, and America was about to be invaded by The Beatles, and have its fifties sensibilities routed for good). So, this novel is controversial, to say the least, and a book which the religiously delusional have sought to have banned from schools. That's one reason to recommend it, I suppose, but in the end I can't.
Harriet is eleven and wants to grow up to be a professional spy, having an office downtown with office hours (11:00am - 4:00pm) posted on the door. To this end, she travels an established route through her local neighborhood, spying on people and keeping extensive notes in a series of notebooks. The truth is that she's a stalker, peering through people's windows, or worse, sneaking into their home - one one occasion to spy on them from within the dumb-waiter. She climbed onto the roof to spy through the skylight on another person, and she lurks outside windows and open doors. She even spies on her own parents.
Therein lies the root of Harriet's troubled psyche. She's effectively an abandoned child. Yes, she lives in the lap of luxury in her parents' very comfortable three-storey house, along with those parents and with her nanny, bizarrely named Ole Golly, but her interaction with her parents, and theirs with her is non-existent. They are totally unfit parents. It’s hardly surprising that Harriet turned out to be the way she is.
Harriet has only two friends, one of whom is "Sport", a boy her own age who only wants to play sports but in which Harriet selfishly never indulges him, insisting he play her games instead, a demand with which he always complies. Her other friend is Janie, whose avowed goal is to blow up the world. Harriet is rather anal, and if her strict and spoiled routine is deviated from, she tends to have tantrums (why isn't the plural of tantrum, tantra? That sounds so much more pretentious…).
No one seems to think that there's any problem with Harriet spying on people, but this comes back to haunt her via a stolen notebook, later in the novel. A crisis presents itself in Harriet's life before so very long when Golly and her fiancé, George, irresponsibly take Harriet to a movie in the evening, not returning home until midnight, and no one thought for a minute to notify her parents. Her mother reacts as any normal parent would, and fires Golly, but this is where the story left suspension of disbelief in the lurch, going right past the altar, heading down the ramp and out the door (kudos if you figure out the movie from whence those last two clauses came). Harriet's parents have been completely hands-off until this point, so her mother's concern for Harriet makes no sense here. How did they even know she wasn’t home in bed? It’s not something they've evidenced any vestige of care over.
This becomes even more weird when it's revealed that Golly would have been leaving anyway in another month because of her impending nuptials. At this point, Harriet's mother turns completely around and begs her to stay! This makes no sense. And right after losing Golly, Harriet loses one of her notebooks. This is of course, discovered by a classmate and everyone in her school is treated to Harriet's cruel and caustic observations. Suddenly Harriet is not only short of a nanny, but devoid even of the brace of friends she had, and she now becomes the target of the Spycatcher Club, which seeks to exact revenge upon her for her libelous treatment of them.
Rather than learn from her mistakes and become contrite and ask for forgiveness, Harriet takes it to the next level, visiting revenge upon members of the Spycatchers in return for the mean things they've begun doing to her. It’s a very Biblical approach, but as Gandhi remarked, an eye for an eye eventually leaves everyone blind. Of course, it is Harriet, and not the membership of Spycatchers, who is punished. Eventually, disturbed at Harriet's poor performance in school (that's all?!), her parents deprive her of her last remaining refuge; her notebooks. Old Golly steps in and writes a letter to Harriet advising her to do two things: Apologize and Lie. She appears to be unclear about whether the apology should be a lie. Golly rips-off Shakespeare here, but unlike Polonius, she seems to think you can be true to yourself and be false to others!
The Spycatcher Club breaks-up because its leaders are just as mean and as bossy as Harriet is, and the minions eventually come to resent this. After Harriet's rich parents speak to the teachers, Harriet is suspiciously and inexplicably appointed as the editor of the class newspaper! This is the girl who has maintained notebooks containing the most unkind and gratuitous comments on her peers, and she's now the editor of the newspaper? I don’t think so. Harriet quickly employs the newspaper in place of her notebooks and notwithstanding her printed apology about those selfsame books, she continues to publish a commentary on her peers and neighbors! Now, suddenly, everyone thinks the newspaper is wonderful? Where went logic here?
Like I said, I cannot recommend this novel. Some parts are intriguing, interesting and amusing, and the novel is (technically speaking) well-written, but overall it's a horrible story for children in that it depicts a remorseless child who is rewarded for seriously deviant behavior, instead of being set on the straight and narrow. The real tragedy here, however is Louise Fitzhugh's death at 46, and I say this for shamelessly selfish reasons because it's robbed us of other, much better stories she might have told. Indeed, there is one which she did write but which has become lost: Amelia, which was about two girls falling in love. Given that Fitzhugh was a lesbian, I would have rather had that story published and Harriet get lost!
