I think Will was probably devastated when she died but we had started to keep to our own bedrooms and I had no way of telling. Mum and Dad had told us that we had to keep apart. I could have shown Mum my scarlet nose or my scratches but I didn’t dare. She never suspected a thing.

p 144) The Rabbi is thinking about kosher foods and how he had to change to survive. “If he hadn’t changed, he couldn’t sit here and sup with these two men and this young woman. He’d have to be elsewhere, eating special classes of ritually prepared foods off separate sets of dishes. But really, hadn’t division been the main thrust of holding to the dietary laws in modern times? They served a purpose beyond mere observance of tradition. They placed another wall between observant Jews and outsiders, keeping them separate even from fellow Jews who didn’t observe. ... Time to break down all the walls between people... while there was still enough time and people left alive to make it matter.” The protagonist of Midnight is Violet a naive 13 year old. The book was published in 2003 and that’s got something to do with it, I think. It was the time when cellphones weren’t ubiquitous yet and people still wrote letters to authors instead of stalking them or talking about/to them online. Violet adores reclusive author Casper Dream, the author of the beautifully illustrated fairy books. She loves the fictitious universe created by him. She draws inspiration from it and sews fairy dolls. As you can see she isn’t your boisterous teen but quiet and artistic. Midnight offers interesting insights into the mind of a writer and on creating imaginary worlds which appealed to me greatly. This is very much a classic Cold War spy novel of the Le Carre mould, framing real life events - Cuban missiles crisis in this case - with twisty plotting and a delightful cast of outwardly civilised but ruthless tragedians who manage to retain their own grubby, skewered dignity while playing their dirty little games. You detect the spirit of Grahame Greene and Martin Cruz Smith as well as Le Carre; themes of dogged principles, unspoken sacrifices and stoic redemptions, but this is still an author with his own voice. I hate how pathetic Violet is. But I don't want to hate her because it'd feel like I was blaming the victim, and I admire her creative streak and love of fantasy and fairy tales. She deserves better. She deserves a happy and healthy Sapphic relationship when she's older.

Retailers:

Mabs was just so jarring at points, with her strange grasp of... I don't even know how to word it. Maybe that was the point of her character, I don't know, but as an adult, it's easier to see through her supposed maturity at a poor attempt at being politically correct. Mabs criticises someone for "fat-shaming" when they refer to her as a "lump" (referring to her size, as the person in question was about seven centimetres tall) and goes on to call another boy sexist, which comes across as quite out of character for a nine or ten-year-old. A Rabbi who is prepared to wear a crucifix if it keeps vampires away. He was the only good guy I believed in. The reveal later down the line that Mab's parents were never married is an offhanded, whatever remark. Cool.

The ending is kind of rushed, too, but perhaps an open ending, where we don't know most of the characters' fates, is realistic? In a story about fairies?The character doesn’t lend itself to the plot. Instead, the conclusion of the story has nothing to do with Violet’s issues with her brother but with her obsession with fairies and a book.