Groosham Grange [Import] [Paperback]

ANTHONY HOROWITZ (Author)

Product Details

• Paperback: 160 pages
• Publisher: WALKER BOOKS; New Ed edition (1994)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0744524768
• ISBN-13: 978-0744524765
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #8,727,839 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Anthony Horowitz's life might have been copied from the pages of Charles Dickens or the Brothers Grimm. Born in 1956 in Stanmore, Middlesex, to a family of wealth and status, Anthony was raised by nannies, surrounded by servants and chauffeurs. His father, a wealthy businessman, was, says Mr. Horowitz, "a fixer for Harold Wilson." What that means exactly is unclear -- "My father was a very secretive man," he says-- so an aura of suspicion and mystery surrounds both the word and the man. As unlikely as it might seem, Anthony's father, threatened with bankruptcy, withdrew all of his money from Swiss bank accounts in Zurich and deposited it in another account under a false name and then promptly died. His mother searched unsuccessfully for years in attempt to find the money, but it was never found. That too shaped Anthony's view of things. Today he says, "I think the only thing to do with money is spend it." His mother, whom he adored, eccentrically gave him a human skull for his 13th birthday. His grandmother, another Dickensian character, was mean-spirited and malevolent, a destructive force in his life. She was, he says, "a truly evil person", his first and worst arch villain. "My sister and I danced on her grave when she died," he now recalls.
A miserably unhappy and overweight child, Anthony had nowhere to turn for solace. "Family meals," he recalls, "had calories running into the thousands&. I was an astoundingly large, round child&." At the age of eight he was sent off to boarding school, a standard practice of the times and class in which he was raised. While being away from home came as an enormous relief, the school itself, Orley Farm, was a grand guignol horror with a headmaster who flogged the boys till they bled. "Once the headmaster told me to stand up in assembly and in front of the whole school said, 'This boy is so stupid he will not be coming to Christmas games tomorrow.' I have never totally recovered." To relieve his misery and that of the other boys, he not unsurprisingly made up tales of astounding revenge and retribution.


Anthony Horowitz is perhaps the busiest writer in England. He has been writing since the age of eight, and professionally since the age of twenty. He writes in a comfortable shed in his garden for up to ten hours per day. In addition to the highly successful Alex Rider books, he has also written episodes of several popular TV crime series, including Poirot, Murder in Mind, Midsomer Murders and Murder Most Horrid. He has written a television series Foyle's War, which recently aired in the United States, and he has written the libretto of a Broadway musical adapted from Dr. Seuss's book, The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T. His film script The Gathering has just finished production. And&oh yes&there are more Alex Rider novels in the works. Anthony has also written the Diamond Brothers series.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Before Harry Went to Hogwarts, David Went to Groosham Grange!, September 15, 2007

By 

James N Simpson (Gold Coast, QLD Australia) - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: Groosham Grange (Paperback)

Anthony Horowitz today is better known for his successful Alex Rider series (which have also been turned into movies) but back when I was a kid he wrote the best comedy thrillers and comedy horror junior paperbacks you could find. Groosham Grange first published back in 1988 is easily up there with the best of his career's work. I just reread it today and it is even better than I remembered it. You definitely don't have to still be a kid either to enjoy it.

I guess the closest comparison to this storyline would be the first book of the Harry Potter series although this is a lot less magicy and more kid monsters/horror. Obviously J.K. Rowling read this book as a kid herself before coming up with her successful series.

In Groosham Grange 12 year old David Eliot is expelled from school. His abusive father isn't too pleased, nor does his mother stick up for him either and goes along with his dad's evil plans usually while being the victim of domestic violence herself. When a letter addressed to his father seems to magically arrive just when he is thinking up punishment explaining that a school located on an island off the Norfolk (part of the UK) coastline is heavily into discipline and doesn't expect the parents to ever visit at all he decides to send David there.

On route to the school David meets two other new classmates, Jeffrey and Jill. They decide to stick together no matter what. What is however not anything they could have expected! From the train station they are driven in a hearse to a rusty boat which takes them to the island. There they made to sign onto the registry with their own blood, the teachers are weird, the history teacher is old, bald and wrapped in bandages. The French teacher disappears every full moon, the Latin teacher teaches in darkness by candlelight with the blinds closed because he doesn't like the sun and why does the headmaster's door's sign say The Heads? The food doesn't resemble any animal they used to eat and where do all the other students disappear to after midnight? Why does everyone keep mentioning how fortunate David is to be born the seventh son of a seventh son? These are just some of the weird things going on at Groosham Grange. David and Jill want to leave but you're never supposed to leave Groosham without graduating. The school even has its own cemetery!

Horowitz is a great author. Another book you absolutely must read is called Granny. It's the story of the evilest Granny on the planet who plans to attend the Golden Granny Awards where she can compete for awards such as making everyone at the post office wait for the longest amount of time, the longest time to get on bus, most difficult shopper, the most unnecessary visits to a doctor and many other awards. The evil grannies of the world also have a new invention that will make them young again, all they need is the enzymes of a young boy and what better boy to use than her own grandson!

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Groosham Grange a review by Ryan Cole in Hull, December 13, 2004

A Kid's Review

This review is from: Groosham Grange (Hardcover)

Groosham Grange is a brill book, it is about a boy called David Eliot and he gets expelled from Beton College. He gets a letter from a school on the coast of Norway called Groosham Grange.He meets a girl called Jill and a boy called Jeffrey on a train to Norway.When they get to the train station they find a humpbacked person waiting to drive them to the school. When they
got there they found out that nothing was as they expected and far from normal. This is a book for people who like adventure and mystery books. Recommended for ages 7-13.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A Short, Fun Romp Through a Familiar Setting, September 2, 2011

By 

ikirkwood62 (Cape Cod, MA) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Groosham Grange (Hardcover)

In Hollywood, there is a saying that "any publicity is good publicity." In most cases, I would disagree with that statement. But with Anthony Horowitz's Groosham Grange, that statement is very true.

This book has received a somewhat revitalizing surge in orders recently, due primarily to the constant comparison to Harry Potter. The books both concern fantasy schools, dark secrets, and themes that just *might* be too explicit for kids to be reading. There are a lot of instant haters of the book who call it a "rip-off" of the popular series and denounce it as poorly written or plotted. In reality, all of this "controversy (which really isn't big enough to call it even that) is good, because it is bringing a new readership to this book series, which really isn't all that bad.

Groosham Grange is about a young boy, David, who escapes his abusive parents and gets selected to go to a special school off the coast of Scotland. On the train there, he meets two friends, a boy and a girl, and together the three stick through it at their new, sinister academy. What ensues is a suspenseful mystery that delivers on many levels.

I had never read anything by Horowitz before I read this, and, honestly, still don't think I'll continue on to any of his other works. I am a high school senior and don't know if "young adult" is really my favorite genre anymore, but I do love Harry Potter, so I bought this book (cheap) and gave it a try.

I was surprised. When boiled down to summary form, the plot of this novel sounds incredibly like that of Harry Potter's. This novel, however, came first (1988, to be exact) and therefore has its own original authenticity. The book is actually quite dark, some scenes that are comedic have an almost Charles Dickens-esque way of making you laugh, but question the atrocities that are being comitted at the same time.

The writing is very simple and easy to get into. In fact, I read this book in day. Some may take that to mean that this is a short book, which, I'm not going to lie, it is. But its not all that much of a bad thing. There are no fluffy filler scenes, nor is there wasted description. It is refreshingly straightforward, revealing itself to be as well plotted as modern NY-Times bestsellers. At the same time, it isn't all too predictable. Although I figured out a few of the twists prematurely, there were still some surprises in store, and younger readers (for whom this book is intended) won't be able to recognize the clever tricks the author uses for plausibility.

As a whole, this novel (novella?) was a fun quick read, and I do plan on continuing with the next book in the series: Return to Groosham Grange: The Unholy Grail