"Ophelia and the Marvelous Boy" by Karen Foxlee

There have been a host of books lately, "Splendors and Glooms", "The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making", "Tangle of Knots" etc., which have a kind of classic children's book charm.  Written in solid, accessible, but engaging prose, "Ophelia and the Marvelous Boy" joins those novels that seem eternal.  This was written in 2014, but could have been written in 1950, or 2120, as the appeal is fairly universal.  Using a bit of magical realism in a "different" take on the Snow Queen tale, this is both a very simple story, and a sophisticated one.  Ophelia is dealing with the loss of her mother, her disaffected father, a distant teen sister and a trip to a "foreign" city, along with a mysterious museum, where the contents change from hour to hour.  She meets the Marvelous Boy but does not believe his story.  Ophelia is a girl of Science, of groundedness, but the aching hole in her wants to reach out and believe in something greater.  The adventure begins. 

One interesting note is that I had a kind of Narnia flashback at one point with some subtle Christian symbolism, but by and large, readers are not likely to see it unless they are looking for it.  On the whole, I greatly enjoyed this book.  There is a kind of "otherworldlyness" that comes out.  Foxlee joins a glittering host of authors from Australia gracing U.S. bookshelves these days.  Like Craig Silvey, Markus Zusak, Melina Marchetta, Jaclyn Moriarty and more, there is a difference here.  The world Foxlee creates has an ethereal quality, a small sense of the unfamiliar.  Most of the short chapters begin with an amusing summary, as in "In which Ophelia Jane Worthington-Whittard discovers a boy in a locked room and is consequently asked to save the world."  The subtle, tongue-in-cheek humor runs throughout and makes an engaging book even that more delightful.  This isn't just a page-turner, it's one you will stay up to finish.  The end comes abruptly, after significant build-up, and I'm still deciding if I liked it.  On one hand, things wrapped up so quickly, I was left with a moment of tears, but on the other hand -- do you really want to wax on when everything is said and done?  Perhaps this is not a book that needs a lengthy denouement.  This is one case where the author seems to say exactly what she needed to.