The Little Blue House opens the door for young people to the wonderful world of magic realist novels. The story centres on Cintia, a bookish adolescent who lives with her physically abusive father and cowed stepmother in the tiny Argentinian town of Azul. The town gets its name from a mysterious house that changes from white to blue on Nov. 28 every year. Cintia and her best friend Bruno, with Cintia’s grandmother and the town’s only bookseller, unravel the secret, and in the process, escape from their own forms of confinement.

Comino’s lucid yet lyrical style deftly paints a full, rich portrait of the town and the principal characters. We enter Cintia’s inner world, peopled, in place of her angry father and absent mother, by Jane Eyre, Tom Sawyer, and Jo March. We sample the sensuous pleasures that a poor rural town has to offer: the smell of simmering tomato sauce, the call of birds in the jacaranda trees, the thrill of a first kiss. Reminiscent of Garcia Marquez, Comino also develops a subtle satire of the local politicians, who exploit the blue house for tourist pesos.

In addition to credible and complex characters and a suspenseful plot, Comino also achieves variety of tone. She confronts the theme of abuse head-on, without sentimentality, yet she doesn’t let it darken the whole novel. Even when Cintia’s home life is unbearable, she finds joy in novels, her grandmother, Bruno, and the little blue house. Ultimately very hopeful, this book reminds young readers that, even if they don’t receive it from their parents, they can still find love one day.