Nocturnal Book Reviews

The Price family originated in England, and are nominally Anglican, although they don't tend to go to human churches and they live with a colony of talking pantheistic mice, which has made their religious observances a little...strange. At the same time, Christmas is hugely important to them, because it's the one time of year when the whole family can be together, and nothing gets smashed over anyone else's head.




Christmas night, around midnight, the mice begin their long Observance of the Fallen. It will take three days to complete. Every time it is revised, it takes a little longer, because there are so many things that have to be remembered. The priests from each branch of their small, strange church come together, and under the pine wreaths hanging in their attic, they remember all the Prices and Healys who have come, and gone, and been lost forever. They remember Enid, who was kind, and Alexander, who was clever. They remember Jonathan, who was quick, and Fran, who was quicker. They remember generations, and they weep for every one of the lost like their deaths happened on that very night. Aeslin mice never forget. It is their gift and their burden.


Alice Price-Healy, the oldest currently known member of the family, always stays long enough to see her grandchildren open their gifts before she slips away again. Most of them assume she goes straight back to her endless search for her missing husband. Angela and Sarah, the family telepaths, know that really, Alice goes home first: she goes back to Buckley Township, Michigan, to a crumbling farmhouse still held in her name. She visits the graves of her parents and grandparents and baby brother. She sleeps in the bed she once shared with Thomas, and she cries herself to sleep. One more Christmas alone.


Sometimes she thinks she can't bear another one. Another always comes.

Being a family means carrying the past everywhere you go, forever, and the Prices know that; they understand the cost of who and what they are. So when they can, they gather in the bright lights of the Christmas tree, and they give thanks for one more Christmas. They've made it this far. Who knows how far they still have the potential to go?