The People in the Castle: Selected Strange Stories

The People in the Castle: Selected Strange Stories by Joan Aiken

This book caught my eye on one of my last trips to Vromans Bookstore (located in Pasadena, CA and one of my favorite independent bookstores) before I moved across the country, so I grabbed it, packed it for the move, finally got around to reading it, and really enjoyed it. I picked it up over Christmastime while we had family in town because the nature of short stories are perfect for when you only have a few minutes at a time to sit down and read.

These stories are great. Quirky, at times magical, at times very realistic, and always relatable. Some of them begin, end, and wrap up quite nicely, while others meander and are very open ended. The varied nature of each tale had me turning from one to the next with a lot of curiosity as to where we were going next. Aiken's voice is spot on and livens the stories but is always sure to give the characters the spotlight. My personal favorites in the collection were ??? about a young boy who is heir to a great estate with apparent untapped mysteries, but has some truly awful relatives that he avoids by exploring the uncounted corridoors & rooms at the back of the castle. Or the ??? which is mostly about civil servants attempting to retire, but this world's civil servants are of a very different sort from ours - for example, one of them regularly pulls cups of tea out of his pocket in a perfect example of Aiken's matter-of-fact magical realism.

This is the perfect book to have handy for when you want a quick dive into a magical world, to resurface with some renewed humor & awareness for the possibilities of magic in your everyday.