Nightbooks

“The woman smiled. There were tiny gaps between her narrow teeth, giving her the look of one of those weird, glowing fish that prowl the deepest part of the ocean.”

This comparison establishes Natacha’s predatory nature and makes the mood ominous. Her “narrow teeth” sound like fangs, and word choices like “weird” and “prowl” are off-putting, adding to the sense of danger her appearance creates. The fish that live in the ocean’s depths are uniquely designed to survive in total darkness, and, consequently, they often appear otherworldly and frightening. Natacha likely does too.

“It was becoming harder for Alex to focus. The room kept tilting back and forth, like when you first step off the pirate-ship at an amusement park. He felt like he might be ill.”

White compares the sickly, off-kilter feeling being under a witch’s spell gives Alex to a common experience: How it feels to ride a popular amusement park attraction. This simile uses these sensory details to illuminate how Alex feels.

“Of course, if he accepted what the woman had said at face value, that meant the apartment was capable of reading children’s minds in order to lure them with the appropriate bait. Like a smarter version of the candy house in ‘Hansel and Gretel,’ Alex thought.”

It doesn’t take Alex long to see the similarities between his real-life experiences and the events that take place in fairy tales, reflecting The Power of Storytelling. He recognizes the connection between them long before Yasmin does. In addition, word choices like “lure” and “bait” add to the sense that Natacha and her apartment are predators, that the children are essentially powerless to resist the magic that compels them to knock on the door of 4E.

“All his life he had loved scary stories, and now he was inside of one. It should have been fun. The problem was that the witches Alex had read about in books were story scary. This was real scary. It was a big difference.”

Alex quickly realizes that characters and scenarios which are creepy and fascinating in a work of fiction are truly horrifying when they occur in real life. He understands that “story” scariness and “real” scariness are very different in terms of degree. This realization will also help him to understand that his appreciation of scary stories doesn’t make him evil in real life.

“If Alex had not already met the apartment’s owner, he would have assumed that she was far older than Natacha, for this was a grandmotherly type of room.”

Alex’s impression that the apartment looks as though it belongs to someone much older than Natacha foreshadows the eventual revelation that Aunt Gris’s magic, not Natacha’s, creates the apartment. Natacha is only 29 while Aunt Gris is centuries old, so this insight suggests, long before Alex sees Aunt Gris, that Natacha is not in control of the apartment.

“Good stories […] build their own worlds. Events that might seem crazy or unlikely in reality can make perfect sense within the right context. That’s called interior logic.”

Alex’s experience as a writer and reader makes him more willing to accept his new reality and to imagine possibilities for escape than Yasmin does. He realizes that, like a story, the apartment has its own set of rules. This understanding makes him particularly perceptive and even empathetic when it comes to the initially prickly Yasmin and hostile Lenore.

“Like all writers, Alex was, first and foremost, a reader […] His gaze strayed to the tantalizing volumes winding along the spiral staircase, a thousand worlds begging to be explored.”

Alex truly loves The Power of Storytelling, and this helps him to identify Natacha’s very different attitude. To Natacha, stories serve a purpose and are not necessarily important on their own. She doesn’t enjoy stories like Alex does; instead, she sees them as a means to an end—which raises the question of why she insists upon them. This question foreshadows their role in soothing Aunt Gris (and allowing Natacha to continue siphoning the older witch’s magic). The metaphor in which each text is compared to a “world” suggests their significance, completeness, and power.

“She threw her head back and cackled loudly. It was […] as though Natacha had watched The Wizard of Oz one time too many and practiced her cackle in the mirror.”

Alex understands character, and this indirectly characterizes him as quite discerning. He knows when someone is being truthful, when they are hiding something, and how they really feel underneath whatever façade they show to the world. His realization that Natacha seems to be playing a part rather than acting as her authentic self demonstrates his sagacity and foreshadows the revelation that she is not actually a witch at all. The allusion to the witch in The Wizard of Oz suggests that she inauthentically styles herself after a caricature.

“My guess is that you never share these wonderful nightmares you’ve set to paper. Are you afraid of what people might think? A young boy with such a hideous imagination?”

Natacha’s appreciation of Alex’s stories gratifies and scares him. She is a self-proclaimed witch who abducts children, eventually killing them. The fact that she appreciates his stories and applauds his mental darkness, so to speak, makes him even more concerned that he is a creepy loser. He worries that her praise confirms his fear that he is different from others.

“Alex, who felt that libraries possessed their own sort of magic, still believed that there was something important to be learned here.”

Just before he finds the first message from Unicorn Girl, Alex decides to explore Natacha’s extensive library. This word choice, comparing books to magic, foreshadows the “Unexpected Magic” of Chapter 21, when he casts a kind of spell over Aunt Gris by reading single sentences from his remaining nightbook. This passage reinforces The Power of Storytelling. In addition, Alex’s sense that there is “something important to be learned here,” in the library, also foreshadows his finding of Unicorn Girl’s messages, which ultimately lead to his escape.

“‘This can be a good home for you, storyteller,’ Natacha said […] ‘A place where you can be yourself. I was thinking about what you told me yesterday, how you wanted to sacrifice your poor little nightbooks so you could be as boring as other children your age.’”

Natacha appeals to Alex’s loneliness and social isolation to convince him not to attempt an escape. If she can endear him to her, she can relax a bit and guarantee the production of stories that keep Aunt Gris soothed and sleepy. Alex’s stories promise safety for Natacha as much as they do for him, though he doesn’t know it yet. She knows how it feels to be lonely and believes Alex is a kindred spirit, though she is more devious and malicious than he.

“Maybe Natacha was overly fond of correcting him, especially if the story contained magic, but at least Alex didn’t have to worry about the witch thinking he was a freak for having such a dark imagination. As Natacha said again and again, they were one and the same.”

Natacha’s ploy to make Alex feel accepted works, to an extent, as she twists The Value of Friendship for her own ends. However, Natacha’s insistence that she and Alex are “the same” affects his self-confidence: He doesn’t want to be like this terrible woman who abducts children and forces them to work for her under threat of death. It is only as Alex begins to discern the differences between himself and his captor that he comes to understand his own goodness and creativity as opposed to her selfish desire for power.

“There was something different between them now, a link that hadn’t been there before. For the first time, they were acting as a team.”

When the danglers appear, Yasmin asks for Alex’s help and rewards him with her attention when he assists her to dispose of them. Their circumstances compel them to rely on one another, and their compassionate natures prompt them to help one another when they can. Their growing bond highlights The Value of Friendship, especially during difficult times.

“He was glad that the apartment hadn’t crumbled into dust, but unnerved by the power his stories held over such an evil place.”

Alex is ambivalent about the effect his stories have on the evil apartment. He knows that it lures children by reading their minds, then captures them via manipulation and deception, so knowing that his stories appease it leads him to question his own nature. This ambivalence characterizes Alex as dissimilar to Natacha in an important way: She whole-heartedly embraced the apartment’s malice when she realized her power was tied to it, while Alex would rather be good than powerful.

“Happy endings can be dangerous things.”

Natacha tells Alex and Yasmin that happy endings can be “dangerous” because she fears that more stories with “happy endings” will result in Aunt Gris waking up and destroying them all. On some level, Alex understands that Natacha only wants stories to keep the apartment from rumbling, but her statement worries him because most of his stories don’t have happy endings. He fears they could be more similar than he would wish.

“There were no cute pictures of unicorns, no bubbly little hearts above the i’s. Instead, letters were slashed into the page like paper wounds.”

Alex and Yasmin note the change in Unicorn Girl. While her messages start off innocently and she’s optimistic about her chances of survival, something happens to alter her outlook dramatically, though she does not address it. In the message this line describes, Alex and Yasmin see a major shift in Unicorn Girl from innocence to anger. The simile that describes her writing as “wounds” that are “slashed” into the pages conveys the violence of which the child becomes capable, later confirmed by Alex’s realization that Unicorn Girl is Natacha. She changed dramatically after Aunt Gris killed and ate Ian and she was forced to clean the oven.

“Maybe she just chickened out on the actual stabbing part. Saying it is one thing. Doing it is another. I hate Natacha, but I wouldn’t be able to go through with it.”

This is another key difference between Alex and Natacha. Natacha, as Unicorn Girl, planned to put Aunt Gris to sleep with a potion, then stab and kill her. However, as much as Alex hates Natacha, he cannot imagine going through with such a plan. Natacha is capable of a kind of aggression and malice that Alex and Yasmin aren’t.

“[K]indness beats cruelty every time.”

Yasmin is shocked when Lenore changes allegiance from Natacha to the children. Alex, especially, proves to be a loyal friend multiple times—offering the cat Froot Loops, treating her wounds, and even defending her from Natacha’s cruelty. He is not surprised when Lenore takes the children’s side because he understands that kindness always wins. This also separates him from Natacha and suggests The Value of Friendship.

“All she cares about is keeping the apartment calm and under control, he thought, feeding it darkness like you’d toss hunks of meat to a wild beast.”

Alex is the first to realize that Natacha doesn’t love The Power of Storytelling for its own sake. Instead, she values stories only as a means to control the apartment. The narrator uses a simile to compare the way she “feeds” the apartment scary stories to the way someone might throw meat to a wild animal to keep it calm or attract its attention to something other than oneself. This also foreshadows the vicious characterization of Aunt Gris, whose voracious hunger for children borders on the insatiable, very much like a wild animal who thirsts for blood.

“The story was scary because it was so normal. I could picture it in my head. So maybe you should write about something in your life. It doesn’t even need to be anything scary at first. You can just dress it up that way.”

When Alex has writer’s block, Yasmin helps him to come up with new ideas. He tells her a scary story about a subway tunnel, which she finds particularly frightening because it is relatable. Her advice leads to his story about two brothers and their bunk bed, a story he writes quickly due to her assistance. Yasmin’s help also demonstrates that writing creepy stories doesn’t make Alex himself creepy, because Yasmin isn’t creepy. Yasmin’s support helps Alex gradually accept The Universality of Weirdness.

“It’s better that the two of you have become friends. That will make tonight’s lesson even more effective.”

This line highlights another key difference between Natacha and Alex: Their view of friendship. While she exploits the children’s friendship to wound them, Alex recognizes The Value of Friendship in developing one’s self-confidence and as a means to establish mutual support. Natacha wants a “friend” to assuage her own loneliness, not to contribute meaningfully to a two-way relationship. She might even be jealous of the friendship the children have established, eager to endear Alex to herself so that she will have some companionship. Ironically, her desire to kill Yasmin is similar to Aunt Gris’s murder and consumption of Natacha’s friend, Ian.

“[T]hen he saw Natacha’s downcast eyes and the nervous way she plucked at the tiny hairs on her arm, and a shocking realization kept him from speaking. She’s lonely, he thought.”

Natacha’s body language indirectly characterizes her as nervous and vulnerable, as someone who ultimately lacks confidence. Alex’s ability to read her body language indirectly characterizes him as perceptive and insightful. He’s just about to reject her offer of “friendship” when he realizes the smartest thing is to pretend to go along with her so as not to hurt her pride, which always makes Natacha vicious.

“If scary stories are the sweet dreams that lull her to sleep, Alex thought, backing toward the other side of the room, then courage, friendship, compassion—those are the nightmares that will wake her up.”

Alex realizes that he can tell stories of courage, friendship, and compassion as well as creepy stories, and that his own life story can end the way he chooses. He can choose courage, friendship, and compassion rather than loneliness and despair. In this moment, while he addresses Aunt Gris’s sleeping form, he gains a new sense of agency. His story, which began with pain and loneliness, shifted when he befriended Yasmin rather than Natacha—despite Natacha’s promise of power and Yasmin’s initial reserve. Therefore, he is characterized by these positive, empowering qualities rather than the fact that he simply enjoys scary movies and stories.