(courtesy Harper Collins Publishers Australia)
What is there to be said about the wondrously fun and glittering festive fun that is the familially festive joyfest that is The Christmas Carrolls: A Fantastically Festive Family by Mel Taylor-Bessent?
Why you could call it “‘festabulous” or “Christmasriffic”, “merrynifiscent” or perhaps even “bauble-illiant”.
Whichever of the made-up and hugely entertaining words used by protagonist Holly Carroll, a nine-yer-old who, like the rest of her family lives and breathes Christmas every single day of the year, one thing is you will want to reach for them all and use them as much as you can because this wholly delightful novel is an absolute treat to read from start to finish.
Constructing a world in which the Carrolls are almost like The Addams Family or The Munsters – weird outliers in otherwise normal but very boring mainstream society – the The Christmas Carrolls: A Fantastically Festive Family manages to be both endlessly and imaginatively charming while going deep on what would impel an entire family to hold Christmas dear to their hearts, as Scrooge swore to do in the family’s favourite text, all year round.
You are allowed for much of the third act to lose yourself, rather happily and giddily it should be noted, in the marvellously lush and super Christmassy world of the Carrolls where wrapping rooms are a thing, reindeer are kept as pets in stables out back and where all the meals are festively themed, as is the fashion and decorative touches such as 24/7 x 365 fairy lights strung everywhere and toilets that play carols.
Now, I don’t know if it’s because I developed superhuman speed or because I wanted to hide somewhere and scoff my chocolate coins in peace, but I rehung the tinsel on the tree, straightened the snowman doormat, opened today’s door on the Christmas calendar and dusted the giant ice lanterns before Mum finished her first Christmas carol of the day. Next, I checked the lights on the miniature Christmas village that covered half of the floor, pulled the red velvet curtain open that hung across the door, and stepped outside to check the snow-o-meter.
The Christmas Carrolls: A Fantastically Festive Family is a LOT of fun and it’s easy to think how utterly wonderful it would be to never have to leave a world so festive and self-contained and full of the spirit of the season to almost wall-bursting degrees.
But not even the Carrolls are immune to the pressures of society and after a house move to a very Christmassy-named street, Holly’s mum and dad, Snow and Nick, have to go get jobs to pay for all their lavish festive fun and Holly, previously homeschooled, has to go to the local primary school leaving her cosy existence behind where Christmas cheer, and the spreading thereof, is a constant given.
The clever part of The Christmas Carrolls: A Fantastically Festive Family, is that like Dahl and other escapist writers for a younger demo, is that it is both wondrously escapist and full of thrills and treats that feel like a balm to the soul when your current reality may be wholly lacking – in a personal side note, this reviewer was bullied terribly at school and it was books that gave me a place to escape to and dream of realities not as brutally exhausting – and quite sage and understanding about the world outside.
In fact, it goes so far as to tenderly and empathetically explain how it is that the Carrolls came to be Christmas 24/7 x 365 and why it’s far more than just some odd, tinsel-draped affectation.
(courtesy official author site)
The truth behind the glitz and the baubles, and a whimsical donkey named Reggie who thinks he’s a reindeer, is almost as dark as the bullying this reviewer experienced, and it helps to give the eccentrically brash and cheerily bright lives of the Carrolls some real emotional heft and substance.
Lest you worry that The Christmas Carrolls: A Fantastically Festive Family goes way too dark and lose all that Christmas spirit, fear not because Taylor-Bessent beautifully and and quite affectingly balances the realities of a society which doesn’t have a lot of time for untrammelled joy and the fact that cheer is all the Carrolls really care about.
They want to make the world a better place and can’t understand why you wouldn’t want to soak yourself in Christmas all year round, but as Holly comes face-to-face with the glaring truth that most people aren’t joyful and think she’s quite strange for being all Christmas, all the time – the only exception at first is her school BFF and foster kid Archer who slowly but surely comes to understand that behind all the fruit mince pieces and oddly-timed Christmas cards is a festive heart so big that it can’t contain itself to just one time of the year and that it must burst forth, a surfeit of household decorations included, into a world that doesn’t quite get its endless and at times overwhelmingly intense exuberance.
I [Holly] stood, blinking at the empty street corner, my heart crushed like a mound of trampled snow. Was it really that easy to lose a best friend? Like dropping a glass bauble and watching it smash into a thousand pieces? Could something like that be repaired?
Beautifully executing on a vibrantly fun-filled and emotionally thoughtful storyline that misses an elf shoe-clad step and which delivers on its vivaciously festive premise to a gorgeously out-there and always welcomed degree, The Christmas Carrolls: A Fantastically Festive Family is one of those books that, like the town of Lockerton itself which goes from Grinchy-y to Christmassy by book’s end in ways that will DELIGHT every fibre of your being, a journey from festive fabulousness to a loss of Christmas faith and all the way to a place where people begin to fully appreciate that the Carrolls may actually be on to something.
If you’ve ever wanted to live in a world of endless Christmas, then The Christmas Carrolls: A Fantastically Festive Family is your book and your heart and your soul but if you’ve also wished that it could sit somehow alongside and thead through your bleak reality so it’s less escapist fluff (though there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that and it should be embraced without reservation) and more real world augmentation, the kind that makes everything better with community, love and belonging, then this is also the book for you.
The Christmas Carrolls: A Fantastically Festive Family is a fantastically vibrant and endlessly alive joy that goes all out on the festive everything and celebrates how much that can change some pretty sad and awful things, and which does so in a way that’s witty, moving and quirkily funny and which leaves you feeling like endless Christmas might be less weird wish fulfillment and may be a very good way to live your life, whatever the time of year.