That you wish you’d written, but you’re so grateful someone else did… You’re also so scared the ending won’t live up to it, to the homage? The call back?
I just did.
I make no bones of being inspired by Willie Wonka and his Chocolate Factory. Specifically, Gene Wilder’s version of the candy man. It caught my imagination, burrowed in and still can be found there to this day.
I had no idea what was in store for me when I picked up “The Wishing Game” by Meg Shaffer. Should have maybe inferred it, but there’s nothing blatant about the homage on the OUTSIDE of the book. On that fateful bookstore birthday shopping spree I didn’t check the inside. I never do, unless I’m checking out the writing style. If I had read the praise, or even the dedication, well…
I would have squealed, loudly and proudly.
This book has taken me a few days to read, not because it was slow, or dense or anything else. But because I was scared. Even though I had already flipped to the back of the book. And yes, I’m also the person who cringes hard and looks away (or pauses) when watching TV or a movie when the characters were being cringey, or being embarrassed by others.
I had a lot emotionally invested in this book, even with never having read a lick of it. I hoped for the characters. I wished upon stars with them. And I celebrated with them too.
It does not contain a candy garden, or a chocolate factory. Sorry. No Oompa Loompas, either. But there is a family found and bound with love, and forgiveness and understanding and hope.
It was unexpectedly the book I really needed right at that moment.
Oh! And it contains the poem– the one Gene Wilder says in the boat. Or at least the first stanza. But Shaffer also gives credit (cites the sources as Jack would say): ODE, BY ARTHUR O’SHAUGHNESSY.
How wondrous to buy a book and have it echo so many of your own imagination’s quirkiness.
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