It's been an up and down ride with the twenties, so we're in a book I remember liking last time. And the last book before we take another trip into a sequel. Will this cleanse the palate beforehand, or drive us coo coo? Let's roll back the clock on The Cuckoo Clock of Doom.
THE CUCKOO CLOCK OF DOOM
RELEASE MONTH: February, 1995
FRONT TAGLINE: Keep your eye on the birdie!
COVER STORY
I don't think this one scared me, though the bird on the front does have a freaky enough face that it might have early on. This one definitely works, while using one of Tim's favorite gimmicks, the warped angle. Not super warped, but enough to make things feel more bizarre than they really are. A good example of taking the normal and shifting it just right to feel bizarre and alien. Another top notch cover.
DON'T BEAT THE CLOCK!
Tara the Terrible. That's what Michael Webster calls his bratty little sister. She loves getting Michael in trouble. Making his life miserable. Things couldn't get any worse.
Then Mr. Webster brings home the antique cuckoo clock. It's old. It's expensive. And Mr. Webster won't let anyone touch it.
Poor Michael. He should have listened to his dad.
Because someone's put a spell on the clock. A strange spell. A dangerous spell. And now Michael's life will never be the same again...
Michael Webster is our protagonist. He's about to turn twelve, which would be cause for celebration, if not for one seven year old problem. His little sister Tara. Tara isn't just a bratty kid, she seems to revel in making Michael's life a living hell. And despite his best efforts to defend himself, his parents tell him that he's the one in the wrong since he's the older brother. Oh god, this is where it all started didn't it? Stine's ultimate sibling gimmick? We'll get to it in the conclusion, believe me. But more importantly to the plot, Mr. Webster brings home an antique cuckoo clock from the nearby antique shop. It's old and strange and has this weird dial that goes up to the year 2000 (at least in the original print I got, in the later reprint from the Ebook and collector tin set, it goes to 2050). He also tells Michael and Tara (particularly Michael because they blame him for everything) not to touch the clock.
Things get no better for Michael on the Tara front. She leaps out of the cuckoo clock to scare Michael and he gets blamed for it. She breaks his new bike, Michael gets blamed for it. At Michael's birthday, she opens all his presents, then trips him, embarrassing him in front of his friends, but yet again, Michael gets blamed for it. We also learn that while Michael was rehearsing for his role in the school play of The Frog Prince, he gets dressed, only for Tara to send the girls upstairs to see Michael in his underwear. Also, she steals the hat of another kid and puts in Michael's backpack so he'll get beaten up. And of course, the abusive cycle remains the same. Michael is always in the wrong in his parents' eyes while Tara is an angel incapable of doing such cruel deeds.
Michael decides that he's going to set her up for a fall for once. One night, he goes to the cuckoo clock and grabs the cuckoo. He twists the head around and thinks that somehow this will get Tara blamed for it. How, I'm not sure, but well, he's not the smartest kid. However, when he wakes up, everything seems strange. His birthday is being set up again. And the events all seem to be repeating themselves. Michael thinks that this do-over might go better this time, but despite his best efforts, he still gets tripped by Tara. Time keeps on slippin' as Michael soon wakes up again on the day of the underwear incident, which still happens, as does when he travels backwards to the beating he got for the cap incident.
Time starts to really slip after that as Michael wakes up and is now eight, but has retained his previous memories. And despite Tara being three, she still manages to get the better of him. Same case the next day when he's seven and she does it again. Maybe half of this issue is that Michael is a really easy mark. So easy that a toddler can best him. Now that he's gone further back, he realizes that if this continues, he'll disappear entirely. Michael thinks that maybe he has to fix the cuckoo clock's head, but there's one problem, the cuckoo clock is still back at the pawn shop. He runs off to the shop on his own, but the store is closed. His father finds him and scolds him for going off alone at such a young age.
Michael turns five next, but at least there's no Tara this time. When he mentions her, his parents just think it must be some imaginary friend of his. He turns four the next day and gets dared to climb a tree by his friends, which he does, only to fall and break his arm. You know, maybe it's not Tara that's even the problem, maybe it's just fate that Michael's life sucks so much. He wakes up the next day and is now a toddler. Things are looking bleak for Michael, who now realizes he doesn't have much time left. But, coincidentally, his dad takes him to the pawn shop, which still has the cuckoo clock. And then we go full Rugrats as Michael manages to escape his stroller and climb up to the cuckoo clock, twisting the head back on the cuckoo. He also manages to turn the dial to 1995.
TWIST ENDING
Michael wakes up, back to his twelfth birthday yet again. When he mentions Tara however, the parents seem confused. He doesn't have a sister named Tara. Michael checks the dial on the clock and sure enough, Tara's birth year is missing. Michael ends the book contemplating if he'll ever bring her back. So, happy ending? Dark ending? It's an ending, I'll take it.
CONCLUSION
First time I covered this book, I was far more lenient towards it, because this was really the first time we had this level of bad parenting and awful younger siblings. Now that I've read many of these books, and a lot of later books continue this bad younger sibling trope, I kind of hate this book more now. It again feels really abusive and wrong, with parents who treat their older kid like a menace and the young kid like an angel. Playing clear favorites which you know is wonderful for a child's mental health on both ends. As we see with Tara it gave her free reign to ruin Michael's life, while for Michael it just means he lives in misery because his parents act as if he's this rotten bully who constantly assaults his baby sister. Simply put, the Webster parents are the truest candidate for ultimate Goosebumps Parents in that they represent the absolute worst traits. And that makes the first half of this book a pain to get through. But as a positive, that makes the twist ending so dark, yet so satisfying.
I do like a lot of the rest. For a time travel story, it's one of the better thought out ones. And its horror works well given the concept of time moving backwards without your control and the realization that you may fall so far backwards that soon you won't exist at all. Definitely adds tension to the plot itself. The story flows well, especially once the timeslip begins. Michael is a fine enough protagonist, if not a bit too dumb, especially in how he just lets the past events happen again. Like, again Tara was a problem, but it's not like he seems to be that bright himself. So, this book hasn't held up perfectly in my eyes and because it contains a trope Stine latched on to, it's going to lose points here. In the end, it falls more in the middle category. Not the worst, not the best. Just okay. You won't go cuckoo for it, but you'll have an okay time.
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