Treasure hunts, Skeleton Key & Masquerade

 

The Skeleton Key by Erin Kelly 2022

Masquerade by Kit Williams 1979

Mr Toppit by Charles Elton 2009

The Skeleton Key was one of the best books I read last year, and I’m not sure if it got the super-bestseller status it should have. I have just reread it, and it convinced me of its absolute brilliance. But I wonder if you have to have been part of the Masquerade generation to truly appreciate it?

Masquerade was a picturebook, supposedly for children, published in 1979, which contained within its exquisite pages clues to find treasure. It was a huge worldwide bestseller, with everyone trying to solve the riddles. The solution would tell them where to dig in order to find the key object: a bejewelled golden hare. This Guardian article is a good summing-up, and is of particular interest to anyone reading the new book, as is another very good webpage about it here. The story of Masquerade is fascinating and rather sad at times – this book is the same although in a completely different way.

Erin Kelly creates an amazing and totally believable world. Two men, arty Bohemian mates in 60s/70s London (that's my idea of them at the top), meet women and have a money-making idea. That turns into two families living next door to each other, locked together, their worlds underpinned by a hugely successful picture book, which started out as a simple treasure hunt. There is now a Bonehunter army dedicated to reading the clues and finding a missing bone. The whole scenario has been taken over by the rise of the internet, with an online community getting increasingly mad and out of control.

The story comes through the eyes of Elinore, now choosing to be known as Nell, who is part of the next generation and is called after the key character in the picture book. She lives more of an alternative lifestyle (clothes above). Her life has been very much impacted by the wilder reaches of fandom and she is still angry, and also very judgmental of her parents who seem to take little responsibility for what has happened. They have no empathy with the awful, frightening things that came her way on the back of the book’s success. The rewards have been huge, but so have the costs, for everyone. Frank wants to be seen as a more serious artist, Cora is fed up pretending she doesn’t care about Frank’s infidelities, Bridget and Lal next door have had struggles with alcohol and violence.

The book has a multiple timeline: the book-within-a-book first emerges in the 70s, there was a lot more going on in the 80s, and then there was a life-changing art exhibition in the 90s – the private view party will turn out to be even more of a big deal than it seemed at the time.

And then there is a now timeline – in 2021, the 50^th anniversary of the book’s publication is being celebrated, with more treasure to find, a computer game, and many key players descending on the houses in Hampstead. This is a lot to handle, and Kelly does an amazing job. The characters are very well-drawn, the whole situation (however strange) is 3-dimensional and convincing, you think it really would be like this.

I liked JK Rowling’s most recent book (written as Robert Galbraith), The Ink Black Heart, and there are similar areas of interest, but Kelly I think handles the online component more convincingly, and keeps the thrust of the story going better. It is clear and creepily convincing, and the combination of the hilariously  1970s hippy types and the very modern technology is very well done.  

‘Sometimes there’s seven people in the chatroom and six of them are me. I’ll set an alert for all three of these handles. Might do a bit of catfishing, see if I can catch any of them out... When I made contact he’d forgotten all about The Golden Bones. Very keen to discuss the Illuminati with me, though. I think we can rule him out.’

Skeleton Key is a most involving story, with genuine jeopardy, and you have to remind yourself that none of this exists. The level of dysfunction and toxic secrets in the two linked families is quite extraordinary, but it never feels salacious or melodramatic. A superb book, can't wait to see what Kelly does next.

Children affected by a book written by a parent: it’s a very niche area, but it is a very compelling idea. There is Alice Liddell who inspired Alice in Wonderland: see here and here for a book based on her life, and I used a photo of real-Alice for this post. The original Christopher Robin is said to have been made very unhappy by his link with the Winnie the Pooh books.

There is a 2009 book called Mr Toppit by Charles Elton which has a similar premise to Skeleton Key (completely different books and plots – I just mean the basic idea of a child featuring in a wildly successful parent’s book) It was launched as the next big thing, and was very good, but we don’t hear much about it now. It was an early example of the publisher/writer creating a whole online presence and website to accompany the book, featuring the imaginary books from within. I re-read it after reading Skeleton Key, and it stood up well, I thought it was an excellent book, and I wonder why it disappeared so completely. There were sections of it that I thought were absolute tours de force, and as with Skeleton Key, the characters were very real and convincing.

I bought, read and loved Mr Toppit when it first came out, in hardback. It was only when I was researching this blogpost that I found out that if I removed the dustjacket of the h/b, the inner cover of the book was that of the imaginary book, The Hayseed Chronicles. I am amazed that that passed me by all these years…

 

 ****ADDED LATER: Vintage Reader mentions in the comments that the story of Masquerade turns up in another recent book - it is mentioned in Janice Hallett's The Twyford Code. A book that again has a theme of taking secrets from books - and has a blogpost here. The Twyford Code by Janice Hallett (clothesinbooks.blogspot.com)

The blog has form with imaginary books, by the way: In the past we did a few April Fool’s day entries about books that don’t exist, but are mentioned in other books…

The picture of a gallery opening (in downtown Seattle)  was taken by Joe Mabel, who uploaded it to Wikimedia Commons. The woman is the Russian ballet dancer Diana Vishneva at a book/photography launch party: it was taken by Nynaevealmeera and is available on Wikimedia Commons.

I’ve tried to provide clothes pics from the different eras of the book.