Aunt Maria book review

 Aunt Maria is a very interesting and profound novel. When I read this book, some delicate description and emotional processing reminded me of my favorite animated film: Howl’s moving castle. Before I knew this author, Diana Wynne Jones. I always thought it was Hayao Miyazaki’s story. Diana adds enough twists and turn in every chapter and exquisite description. Which attracted me to read without have any rest. I think this book is not only a magic story about witches, but also contains a lot of knowledge about how the world works, for example: psychology, philosophy and sociology. In this novel, we can have a chance to think about the impact of a broken family on family members, including adults and children. The difference between the rights of men and women, and the exploitation problems of society. 

 

Although this novel is called Aunt Maria, she is not the protagonist of this novel. It can be said that there are many main characters in this novel. Include aunt Maria, Chris and Mig. Mig is the narrator and aunt Maria is the promoter of the story ploy and the antagonist. The exploitation in society is represented in the novel by aunt Maria. Aunt Maria controls all the men, women and children in her town by insinuation, intimidation and even occasionally turning uncooperative people into animals. That's a way to show female empowerment through the character of witch. She tried to make “mom” feel guilty by pretend pitiful and got what she wanted. Many psychological elements are also reflected in the novel, aunt Maria is a very powerful person, so although she maybe about the same height with Mig, Mig thought she was super tall.

 

What’s more, there is a segment in the book that impressed me deeply. During the interrogation after main character father's accident, when Mig’s mother didn't know whether to call herself a widow or a divorced or married woman, Chris directly said she was a widow, while Mig came up with a happy ending very imaginatively, which was ridiculed by his brother. But Mig asked why should unhappy things be more real? That is very thought-provoking and shows the human beings are always pessimistic and any optimistic things are considered to be dramatic rather than real. Not to mention, I think this is a good connection to the end of the story.


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