Okok, I said the next DWJ book would be Book 2 of the Chrestomanci series, but I got way too curious about Black Maria and couldn’t wait so here we are.

Black Maria is a standalone novel about Mig, her brother Chris, and their mother Betty as they visit Great Aunt Maria at Cranbury-on-Sea. Despite the fact that this is supposed to be a holiday, Great Aunt Maria uses passive-aggressive guilt-tripping to get all of them serving her. And the strangest thing is how everyone treats Great Aunt Maria like a Queen Bee… it’s almost as if something supernatural is happening.

I gotta say, Black Maria opened with the darkest DWJ I’ve read so far: Mig quite calmly describes how her dad decided to run off with another woman, her mother’s request for a divorce when her father changed her mind, and then her father’s death on the way to visit Great Aunt Maria. In all these events, it almost feels as though Mig’s concern is with the story that she hid in her father’s car, though subsequent events show that these did have an impact on her and she’s probably in denial. But the rather cold opening is shocking and it hooked my attention immediately.

The story unfolds rather slowly – Mig and her mother put up with far more than I ever could! Her brother, Chris’s, inability to behave was an emotion I understood; he basically says everything that Mig and Betty want to say.

And I have to say, I really love Mig’s mother. At first, I wondered why she’s so nice to Aunt Maria, but as the story unfolds, I see that she is a strong and compassionate woman in her own way. Perhaps a bit too compassionate, but she boldly breaks the expectation of a wife needing to be submissive and stays true to herself regardless of its effect on her marriage (and also, why would you want to be submissive to a man who doesn’t respect you enough to stay loyal?! Perhaps the fact that she asked for a divorce should have been my first hint that Betty has iron in her).

And speaking of wifely expectations, at its core, this is a book that explores gender relations and the struggle for power. I can’t say too much without giving the ending away, but I enjoyed the way DWJ explores the gendered expectations that each sex places on itself and each other and how that might turn out to be toxic for the whole community. Toxic gender roles are sadly still all too relevant in our modern day and so I appreciated this book for tackling this issue – I can see this being used to get kids thinking!

Overall, I really enjoyed Black Maria. Perhaps my view of the book has been biased by the way that DWJ talked about the book in Reflections, but this was a great book for me. Finishing this also means that I’ve finished two of the three DWJ books that I really wanted read and I hope it means that I’ll get to Fire and Hemlock (as well as the rest of the Chrestomanci books) soon!