This somewhat short book (only 197 pages in the edition that I read) weaves the amazing tale of the so-called Eternal Family. They have lived for centuries in a legendary and mysterious house, supposedly located in the state of Illinois high on a hill by a forked tree. The very first to come to this house was the cat Anuba, who was mummified long ago in ancient Egypt, but was resurrected during Napoleon’s campaign in Egypt. Stowed away on a ship, she finally arrived to the New World. Next came the so-called Sleeper Who Dreams and after her, one by one, came everyone else.

This family is truly very different from those living in the surrounding countryside. They are rarely ever encountered during the day, when the sun is out, and the oldest members of the family have existed long before the Sphinx “first sank its stone paws in tidal sands.” And, as if that weren’t strange enough, most of them, during the sunlit hours, sleep in beds with lids...

So, who really make up the Eternal Family? Those actually living in the House itself are Father, arisen from the earth; Mother, who never sleeps but dreams; A Thousand Times Great Grandmère who sleeps in a sand-filled sarcophagus; Grandfather, who keeps centuries of memories in his head; and the beautiful and mysterious Cecy, who is always sleeping, but lives through the eyes and ears of the creatures she visits in her dreams.... And then there is also the mortal child Timothy with the spider in his ear. He was a foundling, left on the House’s doorstep in a basket “with Shakespeare for footprop and Poe’s Usher as pillow.” Timothy yearns to be like those he loves: to fly, to sleep in daytime, and to live forever, but he is and always will be mortal, doomed to grow old while his adopted family lives on forever. It is his duty to be the Family’s historian and scribe, to write down everything that happens to them.

In the beginning of the book, everyone in the House is anticipating the great All Hallows’ Eve “family reunion” that will gather together the many distant members of this remarkable family. In the stillness during the late midnight hours, the family can hear the soft fluttering of Uncle Einar’s large wings and while in her sleep, Cecy can feel the many strange beings drawing nearer, as she soars high above the earth in the consciousness of a bird or a bat. The carefully timed arrival of the rest of the family at midnight is described in one of my favorite passages from the book:

And this confluence of air and land struck the House through every window, chimney, and door. Things that flew fair or in crazed jags, that walked upright or jogged on fours or loped like crippled shades, evicted from some funeral ark and bade farewell by a lunatic blind Noah, all teeth and no tongue, brandishing a pitchfork and fouling the air.

One of my favorite parts in this book is when four cousins decide to stay at the house a little longer after the ball, so that they could spend time with Cecy, whom they all love. While they are sleeping in the barn, Cecy invites them to travel around using only their consciousness. However, while they are out of their bodies, the barn accidentally burns down along with their sleeping bodies. So, without bodies, the four men are stuck in Cecy’s head. She doesn’t want them (because they are very annoying) so she hands them over to Grandfather, who agrees to temporarily keep them in his head. It was very amusing to read of their antics when the four cousins try to control Grandfather’s limbs and as they wander through his memories. Eventually, all four of them of them calmly settle down in different parts of Grandfather’s memory, in different times in history, and with different pretty girls as companions.

The rest of the book is how the family tries to cope with the fact that the world is changing and that the Family might eventually die. Wars and humankind no longer believe in magic and ghosts, and this is slowly killing the members of the “October People.” Without people believing in them, ghosts can no longer exist.

I really like this book, even though it is somewhat difficult to understand at times, due to the complicated and metaphorical language. Nevertheless, the language is still beautiful, the expressions are very imaginative, and the story itself is spectacular.