Shadowland

Background

Straub recalls that the book had its origins in fairy tales he told his son: "Nightly, stories poured out of me, as from an inexhaustible source. I had no idea where they were going when I started them, but along the way they always turned into real stories, with beginnings, middles, and ends, complete with hesitations, digressions, puzzles, and climaxes. This was thrilling. My little boy was entranced, and I felt as though I had tapped into the pure, ancient well, the source of narrative, the spring water that nourished me and everyone like me... Traditional fairy tales, which I began to investigate soon after I started making up my own, pervade this novel. The beautiful story called 'The King of the Cats' is the novel in miniature." Another influence was John Fowles's The Magus, "which suggested a way to unite the powerful strangeness resulting from the oral tradition with more conventional narrative satisfactions."

The first part of the novel takes place at Carson, an Arizona prep school which is a thinly disguised version of Milwaukee Country Day School, which Straub attended. The main action takes place at the eponymous Shadowland, in Vermont.

Plot summary

The story is presented in the first person, with the narrator recounting events told to him years later by his old friend Tom Flanagan, whom he unexpectedly meets in a nightclub.

Years earlier, Tom and another boy, Del Nightingale, attend the prestigious all-boys private school Carson. As freshmen, they run afoul of a senior, Steve “Skeleton” Ridpath, an antisocial and unstable student. Both Tom and Skeleton experience vivid nightmares involving a mysterious figure watching them and a vulture hovering overhead—images that appear to be strangely connected to Del’s childhood. Del, who has a deep fascination with magic, shares his knowledge with Tom, quickly drawing him into the craft and demonstrating remarkable skill.

During an away football game, Skeleton steals an expensive artifact from the opposing school, leading to intense interrogations of the Carson students by the principal. It is eventually discovered that Skeleton has hidden the item, along with several papers, inside a piano bench—explaining his hostility toward anyone who approached it. Del later finds the artifact and destroys it but does not reveal Skeleton’s guilt, and the incident gradually fades from attention.

Tom and Del go on to perform a magic show for the school. At the climax of their act, a fire breaks out in the auditorium, resulting in the death of a student, fellow freshman Dave Brick. The younger students question Skeleton’s whereabouts during the fire while mourning their loss. That summer, Tom learns that his father has died of cancer. He is invited to spend the summer at Del’s uncle’s estate, Shadowland, and, feeling a need to look after Del, he accepts.

During their train journey to Vermont, Del explains that his uncle is a renowned magician who has taught him real magic and intends to teach Tom as well. He also confesses that he had used his abilities to influence Skeleton into stealing the artifact, hoping it would lead to his suspension—though the plan ultimately failed. At one point, Tom encounters a train compartment that had not been there before and briefly sees Skeleton inside, before he vanishes. Although the train is delayed by a crash, Tom and Del eventually arrive safely at their destination, albeit several hours late.

Allusions

The title, Shadowland, comes from the writings of C. S. Lewis. The novel's epigraphs are from Charles Dickens and John Barth. From the former: "Little Red Riding Hood was my first love. I felt that if I could have married Little Red Riding Hood, I should have known perfect bliss." Straub's Rose Armstrong resembles Little Red Riding Hood, and also Hans Christian Andersen's the Little Mermaid. The quote from Barth is "The key to the treasure is the treasure." Barth's work often contained elements of metafiction, as does Shadowland. The epigraph for Part Two comes from Roger Sale's Fairy Tales and After: "We are back at the foot of the great narrative tree, where stories can go...anywhere." Grady Hendrix notes that the magic system Straub uses is the same as in Dungeons and Dragons.

Reception

Grady Hendrix said he wondered what Harry Potter would be like if J. K. Rowling had written it for adults, and writes "Fortunately for me, Peter Straub already wrote a literary fiction version of Harry Potter when he wrote Shadowland, 17 years before Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone was even published, way back when JK Rowling was only 15 years old...Rowling’s books leap along, bounding from incident to incident, leavened with humor and character business. Straub’s Shadowland twists itself into its own guts, burrowing deeper into its own dark workings, full of carnage, blood, pain, fairy tales, and occasional flashes of joy and wonder. Stories are nested inside flashbacks which are contained within larger stories. And both authors, surprisingly, wind up in similar places."