I've been wanting to read When Marnie Was There for over a year now, but I had a ridiculous amount of trouble getting my hands on the book. Until the last year or so, it hadn't had many printings, so there aren't all too many copies out there. When Studio Ghibli announced their adaptation, prices for the book rose astronomically. When I was looking to buy the book a year ago, I couldn't find any copy for less than a few hundred dollars (seriously). No library even close to me had it either! Amazon promised that a new reprint would be available in 2015 (including an ebook version!) So this week I went to look and saw that Amazon had changed the release date to 2018 and I learned that Americans aren't able to order ebooks from Amazon UK. Despite this trouble, I finally was able to get my hands on a used hard copy, mostly due to the recent UK reprinting bringing prices down. A note to my fellow Americans: it will take a while for an American version to be released, so do try and get your hands on a UK version - it is worth it!
Like I said, I did finally manage to get my hands on a copy, and luckily I loved When Marnie Was There as much as I thought I would - more, possibly. I've been wanting to read this for two reasons - one is the Studio Ghibli adaptation I mentioned and the second is that I've been really interested in mid-century children's timeslip stories. I've seen When Marnie Was There compared mainly to Penelope Farmer's Charlotte Sometimes, which is an absolutely gorgeous book (note to anyone who loved When Marnie Was There: go read Charlotte Sometimes! It is very similar and just as wonderful!). Finishing Charlotte Sometimes last year just strengthened my resolve to get my hands on When Marnie Was There. And now that I've finished that, I'm eagerly looking forward to the Studio Ghibli movie.
When Marnie Was There is about a lonely young foster child named Anna who is sent to a little seaside village for the summer. While she is playing outside, Anna meets a mysterious girl named Marnie...
I liked the character of Anna quite a lot and I think a lot of readers will be able to identify with her loneliness and feelings of being on the outside looking in. And I absolutely loved the character of Marnie. She's lively, impulsive, mysterious - really one of the most engaging characters I've read about in a children's book. The parts of the book with her are the best, and once she is gone, the end parts of the book seem fairly conventional. That being said, as I read through the book I came to care about Anna, so I didn't really mind her happy, if conventional, ending.
I highly recommend this book to anyone who loves children's books like Charlotte Sometimes, Tom's Midnight Garden, or Playing Beatie Bow. For anyone used to only very modern children's fiction, it might seem a tad old-fashioned, but I think anyone with a love of older children's books will appreciate When Marnie Was There. 5/5 stars.
Review originally from my Goodreads page
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