Metaphorosis Reviews
Written on Jan 1, 1990
Summary
Time in the castle has frozen while the cold-hearted Duke sets impossible task for his daughter's suitors - or just kills them. But the mysterious and invisible Golux has other plans for the latest clever prince.
Review
From an early age, my favorite humorist was and is James Thurber. Something about his wry wit captures what I think is amusing. I can’t be sure, but I imagine that my first encounter with him was his illustrated book, The Last Flower – an A5-ish, orange covered paperback with crude but effective drawings. It’s not, by a long shot, the funniest of his books – it’s a fairly damning indictment of man’s inability to learn, but also a demonstration of the persistence of hope. It’s Thurber’s more fantastic, childish tales that are the most hopeful – The White Deer, The Wonderful O, The Great Quillow, and, of course, this book, The 13 Clocks.
Thurber enjoyed defeating readers’ expectations and twisting familiar fairy tales into new shapes, and that’s the approach he takes here. There’s a princess, an evil duke, a prophecy, a brave prince, but none of them act quite as you’d expect. It may not have you laughing out loud, but there’s a weirdly gentle sardonicism to the whole thing that will have you smiling quite a lot.