Tread with Caution

A few weeks ago my friend Bryce from Only The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy proposed a book reading challenge. The challenge was to grab a random book in the bookstore and to read it. You were not to know anything about the author or the title but just pick randomly, if by the picture on the cover or if something struck you about the cover or the summary. Oh, and there is no research involved. So no looking up the author or book pre or during book reading.
This was kind of hard for me. I never realized how much I research a book before or during a reading. I know if I’m really interested in a book or series or if I’ve stopped reading a series and need to get back into it I will look up information on it. I think the fact that this option was taken away made me want to look up info even more. Now, as I’m trying to write this and look up background information, I can’t really seem to find too much on the book.

The book I chose was Shulamith Levey Oppenheim’s The World Invisible. I didn’t find it in the book store; this book has been haunting my father’s house for probably two decades. I’m betting that my sister brought it home one day from the bookstore she worked at in high school. I’ve always loved the cover of this book. It had a beautiful woman on the front and the grayish colors and the seals make it seem very mysterious. I tried to read it once before either in high school or during my undergrad years but couldn’t quite get into it. Now, I’m years older and can handle a tough read (coming soon…reading China Meiville’s The City and The City) so I thought this would be as good as any time to pick it up.
The story takes place primarily on an island near Scotland (I think…kinda foggy) in maybe the late 1800’s. It is mostly about a boy who grows up on the island and a teacher who is running away to the island to escape a difficult romance. It is kind of hard to say what the story is about from there because the plot isn’t very well developed. The characters didn’t really change and only the teacher had any sort of revelation or growth during the story.
I really wanted to like the book but I just couldn’t see where it was going. There were promises that the boy would be some great person and constant hints of mysterious magic that the reader would eventually learn the secret of but I didn’t. There were so many hints with no final explanation that I just got irritated with the book. Also, the boy didn’t grow into anything. He was intelligent and sweet as a boy and continued on that way as he found his love. The boy’s father was mopey until he died, the two servants were sweet and encouraging through the whole book, the island bum was a nefarious animal killer until he died and the teacher was a romantic coward until the very end when he decided that enough was enough, it was time to be a man. Something I found very odd was that although the boy and his father grew older, no one else did, including the animals and the nefarious bum. I could have sworn at the beginning of the book the man was 70 and yet 10 or so years later he was still 70 and a serious danger on the island. I also found it odd that after 10 years the teacher’s love interest waited for him even though they weren’t together that long and she believed he was a coward for not standing up to her father.
I couldn’t really recommend this book to anyone unless they just wanted to read a bit about the life of people during this time period. Even then I would have to say tread with caution.