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Best Books of the Year So Far
Looking for something great to read? Browse our editors' picks for 2015's Best Books of the Year So Far in fiction, nonfiction, mysteries, children's books, and much more.
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Best Books of the Month
Want to know our Editors' picks for the best books of the month? Browse Best Books of the Month, featuring our favorite new books in more than a dozen categories.
It's hard to categorize "The Thirteen Clocks" -- is it a children's fairy tale? a book for grown-ups? Who cares? Readers from 5 to 95 will enjoy this wonderful book; the kids for the story and the adults for Thurber's marvelous way with words. It's a simple little fantasy tale of an abducted princess, a murderous duke, and the prince who comes to her rescue. And it starts off as all fairy tales should, with "Once upon a time..."
Thurber brings us the beautiful Princess Saralinda, the Duke of Coffin Castle who was so cold that he managed to stop time one snowy night when all thirteen clocks in the castle stopped at ten minutes to five and never started again, and Prince Zorn of Zorna, who called himself Xingu, the prince whose name begins with X and doesn't, who is the one man who can defeat the duke's evil plans and rescue Saralinda. But Thurber's best invention by far is the Golux, a spaced-out wizard whose spells have a way of backfiring from time to time, who assists Zorn in his quest to save the princess. And there is a deliciously spooky, never-seen monster called the Todal, that "smells of old, unopened rooms and sounds like rabbits screaming", who is the cold duke's infernal weapon, and, ultimately, his nemesis.
Thurber's way with words will leave you boggle-eyed. This is the quintessential read-aloud book and the kids love it. On the second or third reading they'll be chanting along with sentences like these: "The brambles and the thorns grew thick and thicker in a ticking thicket of bickering crickets..." And Thurber goes hogwild in making up all kinds of words that somehow managed to portray what he want to get across.Read more ›
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32 of 32 people found the following review helpful
James Thurber went to Bermuda to finish a book, and wrote The Thirteen Clocks instead. He says it was escapism and self-indulgence. If so, the world needs more self-indulgence, because this book is pure fun. It's a simple fairy tale, a book to be shared with a child. The water-color illustrations by Mark Simont are a perfect enhancement to the mood of the story.
The tale opens with an evil Duke in a gloomy castle--a Duke who is always cold. "We all have flaws," he says, "and mine is being wicked." (p. 114) The castle has thirteen clocks, all frozen at ten minutes to five. The lovely Princess Saralinda, "warm in every wind and weather," is the only warm thing in the castle and the Duke (her so-called uncle, though actually her kidnapper) purposefully thwarts all her suitors with tasks impossible to perform. When they have failed, he slits them from guggle to zatch and feeds them to the geese.
The Thirteen Clocks is built of standard fairy tale elements. A wandering minstrel who is really the youngest son of a king falls in love with Princess Saralinda and accepts a seemingly impossible test to win her hand. Assisted by a magical creature called Golux, he sets off to fulfill the test. Their progress is threatened by a number of unsavory characters; the Todal, for example, an agent of the devil sent to punish evil-doers for having done less evil than they should. Needless to say, all turns out well in the end.
The story itself may be standard, but the telling of it is typical Thurber wordplay. The Thirteen Clocks is not exactly poetry, but it begs to be read aloud for the rhythm, rhyme and alliteration. A particularly hectic passage from page 73 illustrates:
"The brambles and the thorns grew thick and thicker in a ticking thicket of bickering crickets.Read more ›
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19 of 19 people found the following review helpful
Thurber's "The Thirteen Clocks" is one of the best books ever written. The fairy-tale plot line appeals to both the young and the young at heart. No matter your age, after reading this book you will come away feeling like the world is not as rough of a place as it seemed about a half an hour ago. This book is also great to read to young children. While it doesn't have a poetic meter, the dialogue and narration progress in an almost sing-songy way that will hold the attention of even the most restless child.
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16 of 16 people found the following review helpful
...the writing is so lyrical, the characters so funny, and characteristic of thurber, frought with human flaws while still being heroes, and each adventure solved, in the end, by wit and ingenuity. the prose is beautifully tight. it is written, like E.B. White, for the inner ear -- sonorous, and full of Thurber mischief. "I am the Golux, the one and only Golux -- and not a mere device." My eight-year old loves the rhythm. My 11 year old loves the humor, and I love thurber's wink to me about literary devices...for us, this book is always at hand for the sheer joy of reading it aloud.
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16 of 17 people found the following review helpful
In summary form, "The Thirteen Clocks" will almost certainly come across as a clever but fairly conventional fairy tale, populated by amusing variants of the archetypal beautiful princess, wicked Duke, and poor-hero-who-isn't-what-he-seems. This is unfortunate, because while all of these characters are great fun, the real hero of this little book is the English language. Few authors are as skilled as Thurber when it comes to playing with words, and in "The Thirteen Clocks," verbal gems pop out of almost every page. Moreover, when it comes to making up new words for comedic or literary effect, only Lewis Carroll's "Jabberwocky" does it better - you'll not find "guggle" or "zatch" in an anatomy textbook, but in the context of the tale, their meaning is both perfectly clear and perfectly hilarious (also perfectly clean - this is definitely an all-ages book). I'd offer more examples, but that would deprive you of the joy of discovering them for yourself - and not even a Todal in full gleep could make me do that.
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