Gantos, Jack (2006). The Love Curse of the Rumbaughs. NY: Farrar, Strauss and Giroux. ISBN: 0374336903. 185 pages.
Jack Gantos turns toward the gothic in his newest novel, the story of Ivy Spirco, who, throughout her life, has remained achingly devoted to her mother and with whom she has shared an uneasy relationship with their small town’s aging, mysterious, identical twin pharmacists, the Rumbaughs. As a six-year-old girl, Ivy makes a startling discovery in the twins’ basement: the Rumbaughs have stuffed and preserved their beloved dead mother’s body. Ivy is intrigued and repelled by this discovery and, when her mother later reveals that Ivy’s absent and “unknown” father is one of the twins (even her mother is unsure which), Ivy is convinced that the loyalty and love she feels for her own mother is the product of a genetic curse. Gantos’ prose represents a departure from his earlier “Jack Henry” novels and, while reflective, remains slightly distant in tone; more closely resembling the work of M.E. Kerr than Lemony Snicket. While the novel’s central conflict appears to be a stylized nature-versus-nurture debate, the point isn’t really driven home in an effectively chilling manner. As Ivy attempts to rid herself of the Rumbaugh family’s curse of “mother love”, she begins a unique hobby under the twins’ tutelage: taxidermy. From the time young Ivy discovers the taxidermied Mrs. Rumbaugh, through her amateur attempts to stuff her first squirrel, to her entry in various local taxidermy competitions, the novel’s end can be predicted. The “stuffed” human and the automaton are established tropes of the gothic; here, however, the figures’ presences are almost predictable. Gantos’ novel is topically creepy; however, a better stylistic treatment of the gothic can be found in Phillip Pullman’s Clockwork. |
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