Book review
Twelve-year-old Hugo Cabret lives inside the walls of Gare Montparnasse, a busy Paris train station. Trained by his uncle and guardian to keep the station clocks running, Hugo creeps stealthily through the vents and air shafts. Hugo’s very existence is a well-kept secret. Even the stationmaster doesn’t know Hugo’s uncle has been missing for three months.
Hugo lives in the small apartment at the station that he shared with his uncle. His uncle’s paychecks are piling up because Hugo doesn’t know how to cash them. He survives by scavenging food from the trash bins and stealing from the food vendors in the station.
Hugo’s only personal possession is a broken mechanical man, bent over a writing desk and prepared to deliver what Hugo is certain will be a message from his father. His life is framed by loneliness, hunger and a burning desire to repair the automaton.
Hugo’s father, a museum curator, discovered the automaton buried in corner of the museum attic. He often spent hours after his shift tinkering with the gears and other mechanical parts and documenting his efforts in notebooks. The night the museum burned, Hugo’s father was hard at work in the attic. The fire consumed everything, and Hugo became an orphan.
Drawn to the scene of the fire that took his father’s life, Hugo discovers the automaton hidden in the ashes, scorched and more broken than ever. He lugs the mechanical man back to his uncle’s apartment and, using his father’s one surviving notebook, resumes the work his father died trying to complete.
One of the shops in the train station belongs to a toymaker. The parts in his wind-up toys fit the mechanical man perfectly. Hugo watches the bitter old man and his bookish daughter carefully, occasionally stealing toys for parts.
Isabelle, the toymaker’s daughter, has been watching Hugo just as Hugo has been watching her. Intrigued by the boy in the walls, Isabelle pushes her way through his defenses and befriends him. Together, they bring the automaton to life.
The mechanical man does not pen a secret message from Hugo’s father. Rather, he sketches a scene from Georges Méliès’ film, Le Voyage dans la lune. Méliès’ films were lost in World War I, many of them melted down for celluloid to be used in soldier’s boot heels. Méliès himself is believed to be dead. Hugo remembers that Le Voyage dans la lune was his father’s favorite film.
Isabelle’s papa’s reaction to the sketch raises still more questions. For the first time, Hugo wonders if the toymaker’s parts fit the automation by coincidence only.
Brian Selznick has crafted a fascinating mystery based on the true story of innovative French filmmaker Georges Méliès. Each twist is revealed carefully, the shadows drawn away from the truth piece by agonizing piece until the story is fully told.
The illustrations in this book are beautiful and amazingly detailed. Rendered in charcoal, Selznick’s use of shadows lends an added air of mystery to the story. Each of the 300+ illustrations covers a two-page spread and serves to move the story forward without text. The most striking illustrations are in series that cover eight or ten pages. Selznick shifts the frame of each illustration in the series, tightening up the focus or broadening the frame to give his readers the feel of watching the scene through the lens of a camera.
I was completely captivated by the world of Hugo Cabret. The Invention of Hugo Cabret provided the perfect antidote to my post Harry Potter blues this summer. Selznick has joined the ranks of writers such as Lemony Snicket, J.K. Rowling and Marcus Zusak who have proven that juvenile literature isn’t just for kids.
- Goodreads rating – 4.22
- REVIEW – Heather