TWO GIRLS, A CLOCK, AND A CROOKED HOUSE

Creating their own time machine, two girls visit the past in adult novelist Poore’s (Reincarnation Blues, 2017) debut for children.

After fifth grader Amy is struck by lightning, she sees odd symbols floating above peoples’ heads and discovers she can communicate telepathically with the mute friend whose abusive father left her unable to move volitionally or to speak, except to say Moo, so that’s what Amy calls her. When Moo and Amy take shelter from a thunderstorm in a dilapidated cottage in the woods (maybe it’s home to a witch), the musty furnishings, especially a clock, inspire Amy to experiment with time travel. Moo, now strengthening, joins in. Testing their theories, the girls travel back to 1989, where the intriguing time-travel premise devolves into white noise, and frenetic adventures ensue. Tone and pacing are inconsistent, with noisy, picture-book cadences, Vonnegut-esque musings, and metafictional asides from the omniscient narrator. The broad humor plays fast and loose with ethics. Amy shoplifts a hoodie as an “experiment”; a planned return is mentioned, then dropped. She’s had two years to learn Moo’s real name but has never asked. Graphically conveyed incidents of child neglect and abuse interrupt the breezy fantasy, yet little is at stake for these characters. Time travel might change events, but the people involved remain static; their identities, not their choices, determine their fates. Characters are default white.

An exhausting misfire.