Tuesday, September 3, 2019

The 13 Clocks

The 13 Clocks by James Thurber  124 pp.

Neil Gaiman mentioned this book as a favorite from childhood in his book The View from the Cheap Seats.  I remembered reading it as a child (I went through a "Thurber phase") but could not recall anything about the story. It's the story of an wicked duke and his niece, the Princess Saralinda. The duke is so cold that the thirteen clocks in his castle have stopped. Any potential suitors for the princess are given impossible tasks to complete before they can marry the princess. A new suitor appears disguised as a minstrel and, with the help of a mysterious person/creature called the Golux, finally outsmarts the duke and the clocks ran again. What sets this book apart from similar fairy tales is Thurber's writing style.

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