THE LITTLE GIRL WHO LIVES DOWN THE LANE 👱🏻♀️🔪👦🏻
Synopsis:
Rynn, a thirteen-year-old girl, lives alone with her father in a house at the end of a lane in rural Long Island. With her father absent most of the time, she has become an independent and feisty girl, making use of the great prodigious intelligence with which she was blessed.
However, a little girl being alone most of the time is the best way to attract deviant and foolish people...
Hi, and welcome to my first review. In this case, I will be talking about “The Little Girl Who Lives Down the Lane”—an unnecessarily long title, but enchanting enough—published in 1974 by the writer Laird Koenig. This book also has a film adaptation, but in this article, I will only discuss the book.
In this review, I will be looking at the most notable characters in the book. You can skip any of the characters I am going to talk about, but if you read them in order, it will be easier to connect the dots.
I hope you enjoy this as much as I do :)
I. The beginning (Chapters 1-6).
At the very beginning of the story, Rynn, our protagonist, is preparing to celebrate her 13th birthday. Despite getting to celebrate her birthday alone—since, apparently, her father is too busy to pay attention to her— she seems to be happy with the solitude that's around this special date: October 31st.
Her birthday ritual is interrupted when a man comes to the door, coming into the house without permission, when Rynn opens the door.
The story goes slowly. It takes time to develop itself through the pages, especially at the beginning. You get to know Rynn, her daily lifestyle, her environment, her desires, and the people that are around her. You don't know what's exactly wrong when you start reading and follow the story through the lines, but there's that peak of interest—even if the reading starts to get too slow for the sake of your concentration capacity—that keeps you going even when you want to stop just for a minute.
The first 5 chapters, I would say, go slowly without a hurry, and it's within those chapters where you start to get a little bit of consciousness and say, “There's something wrong with this little girl.”.
It's obvious that her father's nowhere to be seen. He's not inside the house, and Rynn doesn't want anyone to enter her solitude and peaceful life. She just wants to live her life alone in that comfortable house, take care of all the responsibilities that come with it, and stay like that without further interruptions.
The first time we see her interacting with someone else is, precisely, on her birthday, October 31st. A knock on the door resonates around the house, making her turn off the music and take a cigarette to fill the room with its smoke. She opens the door and sees him, a man standing right before her eyes: Frank Hallet.
There's something uncomfortable and weird about the fact that there's a man inside the house that's not her family or friend, an adult alone in the living room talking to a little girl with such “confidence.”. You feel like you're standing next to Rynn, wondering what to do and how to feel, where to run, and how to affront a situation in which you are so small and helpless.
We'll talk about this man later on because there's so much tea to spill about him.
He insisted several times on getting to meet her father, asking questions such as, “Where is your father?” and, “Why are you celebrating your birthday alone?”. She always replied the same thing, “My dad's a poet,” and, “I can't disturb him while he's working.”. During this first chapter, we get to know about her muse named “Gordon.”.
Although the situation remained calm—even if it was uncomfortably weird—things were going smoothly until the man decided it was a good idea to spank the girl, but not before making some rather weird comments. Rynn, furiously, turned around to face the man. He leaves the house without any regrets but rather laughs at the fury in the girl's eyes! Seeing the man walking down the lane, the girl closed the door and locked it.
And from this moment, we get to know Mrs. Hallet, Frank's mother, and Miglioriti, the fond policeman.
II. Miglioriti
Miglioriti is one of the first characters we meet in the book, if not one of the most charismatic and important. He's a grown-up policeman who shows up at her door right before chapter 6.
The purpose of introducing him right before the first plot twist is simple: you know there's someone who could find out what she's doing, and at the same time, it fills you with that uneasy feeling of expecting the worst-case scenario now that you know that the authority is rounding her house.
I'll be honest: I was hoping for him to get more protagonism in the plot of the book, but at the same time I think it was a genius idea to make him leave the town just in time. He's not just another selfish adult who doesn't care for Rynn; he is there for her and everything she needs him for, and he's the only adult who was able to go through that ice heart of hers. He won her heart and her trust even if she wasn't ever really honest with him at all.
Even if I think his character was able to be and do more, I think he's a neat character. Its purpose is clear; you know he's a threat, but you still can't help but feel comfortable and uncomfortable at the same time in his presence. He is charitable and kind to Rynn, providing her with intellectual, gentle, and, to a certain extent, brotherly company.
I wouldn't say that the relationship between Miglioriti and Rynn was paternal. I feel that if that had been the case, Miglioriti would have been more present in Rynn's life, and things might have even gone a lot more awry in the plot. Instead, Miglioriti appeared at the right moments, offering support and calm to Rynn, who was too smart for her own good and the good of others. He knew she was smart and clever, too clever, and he didn't look down on her like other adults did. They were on the same level without neglecting Rynn's childlike position.
Miglioriti's presence was a constant that I expected as the pages turned. I wanted him to appear, even though I knew that his presence would be anything but good for the plan that Rynn and Mario were trying to sustain.
By the time he confesses to Rynn that he's leaving town, I felt like my whole world was falling apart. Rynn would now be alone, and she coughed at not being able to confess the truth to Miglioriti because she simply couldn't. It wasn't a viable option to tell him all the things she'd done, nor was it an option to let him know that she'd dragged Mario into her crimes as well. She couldn't complain or refuse; she didn't have the power to refuse.
Miglioriti is a supporting character, you could say. He represents an understandable obstacle but also a helping hand; a contradictory world that draws you in.
I am grateful that Miglioriti did not end up dead.
III. Hallet
Here I am going to touch on the subject of the Hallets, both Frank Hallet and Mrs. Hallet. What can I say about these characters? They are hateful, and they pretend to be so from the beginning.
Both Frank and Mrs. Hallet are recurring characters in the plot, mostly because of the feeling of being stalked by them. On the one hand, Mrs. Hallet detests foreigners, anyone who has not been born and raised—by family lineage—there, and above all, she repudiates Rynn. As for Frank Hallet... he is a deviant.
While the fact that Frank Hallet is a deviant makes it all the more twisted, I was fascinated by the way the author managed to make you feel small and helpless in front of authority figures, especially Frank Hallet. When Frank enters Rynn's house without permission while she is with Mario, I feel genuine dread of the situation. Every move, word, and sound the character made me feel like I was just another little girl standing in that room, knowing that at any moment this man could lose control of himself. There is one part in particular that I loved precisely for this reason: when Frank Hallet throws Gordon, Rynn's mouse, into the fire, the only thing that connected her to her completely lonely past that no longer existed.
At that point in the book, I felt, as I mentioned, like another little girl standing in the corner of the room with Rynn and Mario, watching their every move in horror. I felt helpless and powerless; I couldn't imagine what must be going through Rynn's head.
Both of them—Mrs. Hallet and Frank Hallet—are antagonists who don't need to be overly dramatic to work. They prove that to be a good antagonist in a story, all you need to have, in my opinion, is the following: a purpose, a questionable ideal/moral/ethics, and a personality of your own beyond the circumstances.
The main problem I see in today's series and books is the need to make the antagonists exaggeratedly tragic, with convoluted backstories, as if they wanted to tell the viewer that the antagonist of their project is valid because he has very strong reasons behind him. Humans, if we are honest with ourselves, are very simple. We function according to our belief systems, and that is more than enough to make someone a perfect antagonist.
Frank Hallet only needed his weird attitude, his deviance, and his personality to disturb us. Mrs. Hallet only needed her great hatred towards foreigners and towards Rynn to drive us to despair.
I found both of them to be excellent antagonists. They served their purpose.
IV. Mario
Mario is my favorite character, along with Rynn. From the very beginning, he is presented to us as an intelligent and charismatic boy who manages to bring out the more childish and humorous side of Rynn, a girl from whom we had barely seen a small smile.
From the beginning, Mario's intelligence is clear. He was able to deduce, just by looking at Mrs. Hallet's red car, that Rynn was hiding something. That little clue was more than enough for him to decide that he wanted to know and discover the secrets that Rynn kept inside her house.
Mario was not only a very intelligent boy, but he was also cunning and very perceptive. He had such a strong will that he could play along with Rynn, with whom he fell deeply in love.
Mario is my favorite character because he represents this deep love that would do anything for the one he loves. Despite being in love with Rynn, he is able to put that aside and think clearly when the situation calls for it. His magic tricks not only serve to make Rynn laugh but are also his most useful weapon.
Mario was a well-used character from the middle of the book onwards, but he started to fall off the wagon towards the end. Personally, I feel like there could have been better ways to remove him from Rynn's scenario the way Miglioriti did. As the book ends, Rynn becomes more and more alone, losing all the important connections she had—Gordon, Mario, and Miglioriti. The way Mario goes off the rails is through pneumonia. Maybe it makes sense that he would end up there given the overall scenario, but for some reason, him ending up in the hospital felt like a bit of a disjointed development.
Objectively, I think Mario could have been better used in the finale. And if I put my sense of objectivity aside, Mario is the best character, period.
V. Rynn Jacobs
Let's talk about Rynn, our protagonist. Rynn is a girl who was left living alone with her father in that house at the end of the lane, where she tries to live a serene and quiet life, but above all, a lonely one. From the beginning she has had no interest in having relationships with other people; she lives for and by herself, she does things by herself, she goes to the bank alone, to the hardware store alone, to the market alone…
At first, Rynn is cold and strategic. She thinks through each and every step with precision, even if it takes time to find solutions to the chaos she ends up in. She knows how to handle herself in a world full of adults who want to look down on her.
From the beginning you could already tell that things were not going well with Rynn, her situation, and her house. The event that occurs with Mrs. Hallet will end up confirming everything, and even then you are left wondering if Mrs. Hallet was just exaggerating or if the girl was really hiding something in the basement. Rynn, who almost never shares her thoughts with us, ends up creating an aura of suspense around her, a veil of perpetual uncertainty.
At first we mistrust this girl. Despite being the protagonist, we remain on the sidelines of the things that happen in her head and what happened in the past. We know nothing or very little about her, who she was, and her life beyond her daily routine from which we begin to make assumptions. Chaotic, cold, and ingenious, Rynn manages to captivate us with that brilliant brain of hers.
As the chapters go by and Rynn is forced to let Miglioriti and Mario into her life, the heart of this girl becomes weaker and weaker, to the point where she allows Mario to be part of this lonely world that she so desperately needed to maintain. But why would Rynn, being so calculating and strategic, let a policeman and a child enter this world of hers and her father's? I thought about this question for a while.
Let's start with Miglioriti. Miglioriti is a policeman, which means that Rynn's secret was in imminent danger if only this man was in the vicinity of her house. Despite this, she made a very clever, albeit risky, move: she allowed him to enter her house, as if she had nothing to hide, and offered him a cup of tea. I suppose that at first Rynn just wanted to make Miglioriti understand that there was nothing to fear, that her father was at work and that she was not alone. The shot was twofold, because Miglioriti turned out to be a suitable companion, the very thing she had been looking for for so long without realizing it. Rynn constantly looked down on those who were her age, thinking that they had nothing interesting to share with her, no important thoughts, no poetry, no literature, and no knowledge. Miglioriti was an older figure of authority who was able to see her for what she really was: a person, not just a child, as if her entire being depended only on an empty label on which all the older adults placed the word "ignorance."
Now, Mario. Mario the magician. Why would Rynn let him into her life in the intimate, personal way that she did? I could say there are several reasons, but I think the main one is this: Not only did Mario see her for who she really was, but in addition to being pleasant and somewhat intellectually challenging company, Mario was able to not ask questions and help her get Mrs. Hallet's car to a place where she couldn't be incriminated. By inviting him into her home and spending an afternoon with him, sharing thoughts and experiences, Rynn tried tooth and nail to defend the secret world she had kept in the basement, but Mario, shrewd and stubborn, continued to ask questions. Rynn knew that anything could happen if she opened the basement door and let Mario see the things she was capable of when fear and anger got the better of her, and she knew that if there were two in the basement, there could be three depending on his reaction. Still, she let him down. That was a leap of faith.
A leap of faith that came, in my opinion, from a great need in her to be able to trust someone, anyone, whoever. She wanted to know that she could trust someone, not be alone forever. At that moment when Mario came down, I could only imagine Rynn clinging to all her hopes as tightly as possible, afraid that he would slip from her hands and she would be forced to abandon that dream of not being alone, at least not that alone.
Now let's take a deeper look at why Rynn committed murder.
Rynn grew up under the tutelage of her father, a man who, we can assume, was very kind and gentle, for Rynn remembered him with a certain neutrality but also protected his words with decorum. Leslie Jacobs was a poet who passed on his passion for literature and knowledge to Rynn. Rynn's mother, we might say, was not to be trusted. The woman cared nothing for her daughter, and both she and her father knew it. Before her father went away, as far away as he could, in the face of his illness, he asked Rynn to promise that she would keep herself safe in this life, that she would never let others walk all over her, and that she would try to carry on no matter what.
Rynn took her father's words very seriously. Rynn saw no other way out than to poison her mother. We would think that it is an absurd thing to do, to kill someone! An action that would undoubtedly lead to the deprivation of your freedom, that freedom that you so sought. Rynn, however, and I want us to remember well, is still a child. When her mother came to the house to claim her as her own, Rynn would be 12 years old, and she was alone, without her father. The life that her father wanted her to maintain for as long as possible was threatened by a woman who had never been of any importance to her, nothing more than a woman who did not love her or care for her. As Rynn said, it is surprising how much information you find in a library; Rynn's brain was a library of knowledge, perhaps questionable.
Rynn eventually became fond of Miglioriti, fell in love with Mario, and they both left her at almost the same time. She was left alone again, just that this time she did care. This time it hurt her.
In the end we see the story repeat itself: Rynn alone, with someone at home who intends to stay there with her forever. Rynn alone, with no one to trust. Rynn and the buns.
Conclusion and Review
I consider this book a classic, one that everyone should read at least once in their life. The aura of mystery and suspense that the novel carries—especially in the first 6 chapters—makes you immerse yourself in its pages and in that engaging narrative. Laird Koenig, in my opinion, did a good job of establishing the tone of suspense throughout the book.
One aspect that I think could have been better executed is also found in the first 6 chapters. While it is not a heavy read, at first it feels like it moves very slowly. I don't think it is a problem, but rather an aspect to note. These first 6 chapters work wonderfully to feel the immersive environment that the author tried to create.
I think the characters are very well executed. Although I feel that Mario could have been developed better, all the characters fulfill their purpose. No character is superfluous or missing.
Now, as for the ending... I don't consider it to be a bad ending; maybe the way I try to describe it is that I expected more. I expected a lot more from the ending. I can't say that the ending is bad because it continues with the tone of the novel; it's an ending that isn't predictable, and also, it feels like a genuine consequence of Rynn's somewhat careless actions since she starts to fall in love with Mario. When I think about the muffins, I feel a little better knowing that Rynn is, after all, smarter than she seems. The ending seems adequate to me given the circumstances and the tone that the novel had been taking; I just expected more.
The relationship between Rynn and Mario captivated me. I can only imagine what would have happened if my 13-year-old self had read that: I would have exploded with love. While I don't think their relationship needed to be romanticized that much—at the end of the day, Rynn is a murderer, and Mario became her accomplice—I do understand the point of it: they both needed a safe place and found it in each other. Sometimes people who commit bad actions aren't necessarily bad.
Rynn is a killer. Throughout the book we grow fond of her and hope that her secret won't be discovered, even if we know it's wrong. I think part of that is because we know what kind of people the murdered people were, since we know what kind of people Rynn and Mario are.
Finally, I would like to say that the book does its job. It is very good; it kept me hooked page after page, making it difficult for me to put it down to go to class since I read it during my long 4-hour breaks right before my class started... And I can only say that the ending left me stunned.
★★★★☆
4/5