Vinegar Street

Vinegar Street is a wasteland of derelict jerry-built houses in a sea of urban mud near an abandoned nuclear power plant. Just one family of eccentrics lives in this wilderness, happily undisturbed. Chief among them is Poppy Picklesticks, aged twelve and a bit, who dresses strangely, makes Creations, has a mind which now and then gets 'overcooked' with its own powers, and is blessed or cursed with a special version of the inner voice (conscience? intuition? premonition? second sight?) that all of us have in a more modest form. She loves this bizarre and glorious desolation, but it is threatened when the one remaining empty, habitable house is occupied by the odious Mandy Nylon, high priestess of tidiness and conformity, ambitious to turn Vinegar Street into a manicured suburbia. A titanic struggle then ensues, which calls for all of Poppy's powers. And all of Ridley's powers, too, because he is a Poppy among storytellers. The book is a storytelling firework, a verbal and typographical extravaganza of lunatic comedy, like a strip cartoon turned into crazy poetry. It is even (literally) a kind of music. Children of twelve or so who have a taste for the surreal will find it sheer delight.