Author: Robert Westall
The basics: Anne's parents are at odds again. This time, they are headed for divorce. Anne's mother forces her to leave London and travel to Garmouth, a seaside village. She's plonked down in the cottage of her former nanny, Prudie, and her husband, Arthur. A whole summer in a village where she knows nobody -- it's a bit of a nightmare for any teenager. Anne decides to take it in stride. She explores the village and begins asking Arthur questions about the nearby watch house. Inside is a treasure trove of history...pieces of boats that sank on the rocks, things that washed up on the shore after wrecks, bits of sail, ropes....even a skull and several jaw bones. It's a bit creepy.....and it only gets worse when strange writing starts showing up on all the glass display cases in the watch house. AnHelpAnHelpAnHelp. Anne is a bit terrified when she figures out what the writing means: Anne Help. Does the spirit that reportedly haunts the old watch house need her help?
The front cover art for this particular edition is just awesome!! The picture on the front is what made me want to read this book in the first place! The skull superimposed over the watch house is just awesome!
This is such an interesting and suspenseful story! It definitely kept my attention from start to finish. I did have to look up a few things so I could visualize the story. I'd never heard of a watch house before....lots of interesting facts and photographs on the internet about watch brigades who worked to save people after shipwrecks. I looked at a lot of photos of old watch houses to get a feel for what Anne saw. Only after looking at all those photos did I learn that back in the 80s, the BBC made a movie version of this story! Now that I've read the book, I'm going to watch the movie and get an even better feel for the watch house, the seaside cliffs and the suspense of this great ghost story! I hope the movie sticks close to the source material. For anyone else that would like to watch it, the movie is on youtube:
This story is a very enjoyable teenage adventure tale with some supernatural spookiness. It's totally age appropriate for ages 13 and up. There are a couple minor curse words, but nothing too graphic or scary. As an adult, I enjoyed this story immensely. It made for a great afternoon of enjoyable reading.
This is the first book by Robert Westall that I've read. I'm definitely going to read more by this author. This was a great story! And he has many more books that look like stories I would really enjoy! Check out his website here: www.robertwestall.com
Now I get to watch the movie version! Yay!!
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