Step by Wicked Step

By Anne Fine
Little Brown, $15.95

Ages 10 and up

ISBN 03162834522

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The drama of modern life

Review by Alice Cary

British author Anne Fine (Flour Babies, Alias Madame Doubtfire) has written yet another excellent novel, this one about the problems of stepfamilies. Like Bunting, Fine has skillfully woven her plot, contrasting the mysterious with the mundane.

In Step by Wicked Step, five boys and girls find themselves in an abandoned old house on a stormy night. In a hidden tower room they discover an old diary, that of Richard Clayton Harwick, who left behind a rather Dickensian account of his wicked stepfather. Harwick's story prompts each of the youngsters to tell their own tales of stepfathers, stepmothers, and stepsiblings, who are in turn eccentric, beloved, unwelcome, and almost always misunderstood. Each vignette is a wonderful study of human nature.

Alice Cary is at work on biographies of Jean Craighead George and Katherine Paterson.