When the playroom is ultimately destroyed, Harry’s choice alters his life and his relationship with Barry in ways he could never conceive.Ĭutesy twin names like Harry and Barry aside, this book is off the charts AMAZING! As Ellen would call it, it’s AMAZEBALLS! Stop reading this review right now (even though the review hasn’t technically started) and go get it. When their pretty neighbor Lucy enters their lives, the brothers’ competitive nature is unleashed and Harry makes the rash choice to enter the playroom and age more quickly thereby freeing himself from his twin forever. Through some harmless experimentation they quickly realize that time passes much more quickly inside this playroom than it does outside and it helps explain the eccentric nature of their uncle and his collections. When they begin to explore their new home, Harry and Barry discover a reinforced steel outhouse dubbed, “The Playroom”.
They chock up his fascination with these things to the fact that he was a virtual shut-in at the end of his life. Inside the big, rambling house, the twins discover that Uncle Ambrose is beyond eccentric: he has a collection of skeletons that showcase creatures that don’t exist (think lizards with 8 legs and enormous rats) and other bizarre artifacts that the twins can’t fathom. At 16, they are dragged off to Sushan, IL when their reclusive great-uncle dies and all of his worldly possessions (including one creeptastic old house) fall to their mother. And given that they are twins with completely different personalities, they are highly competitive. Identical twins Harry and Barry Krasner are as different as night and day. And the story is so simple that I want to smack my own forehead for not coming up with it first (in much the same way I read the Sandman comics and kick myself for not having the great forethought to write them before Neil Gaiman).
It is mind-blowing and fantastically written. I remember it being mind-blowing and fantastically written even then so when I decided to reread it last week, I was pleasantly surprised to see that 15 year old me did not lead 29 year old me astray. So today’s review is of a book that I read first when I was 15. In the meantime, you know what all this free time of mine means right? Another review! Let’s just call it a make up for yesterday and leave it at that.
I’m sitting on the couch sniffling all over everything, hacking up a lung, and praying that this cold medicine kicks in soon.
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