The Apothecary by Maile Meloy

The Apothecary, by Maile Meloy.  Putnam/Penguin, 2011, 353 pages.

Reading Level: Young Adults, ages 12-15

Maturity Level: 5 (ages 12-14)

Bottom Line: The Apothecary is a Cold-War-era thriller for the upper-middle grade/YA age, with a supernatural angle that stretches credulity.

Janie Scott, age 14, has just moved to London with her parents, TV writers who are under suspicion in California.  Joe McCarthy is name nobody mentions (this the mid-1950s), but reasons don’t matter to Janie, who’s disoriented and discontented.  On her first day of school she meets Benjamin Burrows, whose father (the apothecary) owns the little drug store around the corner.  Benjamin wants to be a spy and already has a worthy object to spy on: Leonid Shiskin, father of one of their classmates, whom Benjamin suspects is a Soviet agent.  But when the kids see Shiskin hand off a message to Mr. Burroughs in the park, the hypothetical gets personal and dangerous.  In short order, the apothecary disappears, there’s a surprising and brutal murder, and a supposedly sympathetic teacher is unmasked as an enemy.  Soon Janie and Benjamin are racing for their lives, in the pursuit of which they pick up a scrappy ally and open the door to an apparently supernatural dimension.  Mr. Burroughs is one member of a small bend of alchemists dedicated to dismantling the nuclear threat, using what looks like magic but is actually the rearrangement of matter—just what Einstein proposed and Andrei Sakarov, the brilliant Russian physicist, is working on.

It’s an interesting premise: does it work?  Not quite, for me.  Historical fantasy is a legitimate genre but it has to make sense within its own parameters.  Three kids are able to escape some really tough customers, attend a nuclear test, and help disarm a Soviet bomb with the help of alchemical formulas that produce wings and invisibility–the deus ex machina factor is working overtime.  Other credibility-stretchers include the fantastic (Benjamin falls out of the sky into the frigid Arctic sea—and survives) and the puzzling (his father, a closely-watched operative, leaves a top-secret message in a public wastebasket).

There’s a lot of talk about dark forces and guardian spirits but also some beautiful writing: “The British Empire may be gone, but the Physic Garden is its green ghost, growing a little bit of India, china, Africa, Australia, New Zealand, and the Pacific Islands, right in the middle of London.”  The two leads fall in love, which leads to some kissing, which they seem a little young for.  But, even though war is heck and nobody’s hands are squeaky clean, America emerges as the good guy in this conflict, and the story ends with a clever twist that begs for a sequel.

Cautions: Language (small amount of mild profanity)

Overall Rating: 3.5 (out of 5)

• Worldview/moral value: 3
• Artistic value: 3.5

Categories: Middle Grades, Young Adult, Historical Fiction, War, Science Fiction