Angelica Banks, A Week Without Tuesday : a Tuesday McGillycuddy adventure, Allen & Unwin, May 2015, 400pp., $15.99 (pbk), ISBN 9781760110376
Strange things are happening in the world of Tuesday McGillycuddy – writers are being abducted and then deposited thousands of miles from home, winged dogs are falling out of the sky and mountain ranges are growing and crinkling up the atmosphere. This is possibly because there is something wrong ‘there ‘, the world of story which exists at the end of a silvery thread of imagination, a magical place that is the collective secret of every writer that ever lived. Tuesday, with the help of her dog, Baxterr, and Vivienne Small set out to fix things. Vivienne is the fairy creation of Tuesday’s mother, the famous writer, Serendipity Smith, known at home as ordinary Sarah McGillycuddy.
This is a complex fantasy adventure rich in language, crazy names, and wild imaginative situations. Banks is not afraid to take quantum leaps with ideas as the two girls disappear for a week to save the worlds of story threatened with extinction. The story gallops along written in a fluid and assured style, with the occasional big word thrown in to challenge a confident reader. Perennial themes of love and loss, of heartbreak and loneliness are touched upon but basically this is a rollicking very enjoyable fantasy that celebrates the power of story along the way.
This is the second in the Tuesday series, the first being Finding Serendipity, where Tuesday’s mother disappears in the land of story and Tuesday has to find her. A Week Without Tuesday is a satisfying sequel, expanding our knowledge of the worlds established earlier, but quite easy to read on its own.
reviewed by Mia Macrossan