Liz Friend's Reviews > The Apothecary

The story: Janie’s family has just moved from beautiful Hollywood to dark, gray London, which is still a mess after World War II. Life stinks until she meets Benjamin—a boy with kind of a smart mouth who wants to become a spy. When Benjamin’s father, a mysterious apothecary, is kidnapped, he and Janie must uncover the magical secrets of his father’s book of poisons and spells while trying to keep it out of the hands of his father’s enemies...and at the same time, trying to keep the atomic bomb out of the hands of the Russians. Time is against them...can they find a way to alter it?

June Cleaver's ratings: Language G; Nudity G; Sexual Content G; Violence PG; Substance Abuse G; GLBT themes G; magic & the occult PG; adult themes PG (McCarthyism and Communism); overall rating G.

Liz's comments: I thought this story was charming. Its lack of bad words, its plain contrasts between good guys (yay democracy!) and bad guys (boo Communism!) and its 1950s depictions of life in LA and London reminded me a lot of books from when I was a kid. Add a dose of magic and mystery, and you've got a winner...if you can convince a kid to read it. Don't know why, but historical fiction is truly a hard sell at middle school.

Annotation with spoilers: Janie's mom and dad, script writers, have made Senator McCarthy's list and have to move to London to find work. Janie's unhappy to be missing her 8th grade year in Hollywood, especially since she's trading LA for bombed-out 1952 London, which is grey and depressing. Soon after arriving at St. Beden's school, she meets Benjamin Burrows, the son of the apothecary (pharmacist) whose store is around the corner from their flat. He invites her to play chess at the park with him the following Saturday; she goes thinking it's a date, but he's there to keep an eye on Mr. Shiskin, father of one of their schoolmates, whom he thinks is spying for the Russians (the Cold War is the reality of the day). He sees the man pass something to--his own father! They retrieve the ripped-up note that his father trashes, and see that "Jin-Lo as been taken" and that the apothecary is next. What does that mean?

They are in the back, asking his father for answers, when men come into the shop. (Particularly noticeable is a man with an evil-looking scar on his face.) Mr. Burrows quickly hides them in a cellar room with a valuable antique book, telling them to keep the Pharmacopaeia safe--but before they re-emerge, he's kidnapped. The kids, looking at the book he's left behind, recognize a symbol on it and head off to the Chelsea Physic Garden. Here they meet the caretaker, who gives them valuable information about the Pharmacopaeia--a book full of recipes for potions that can transform the users into birds, make them invisible, etc. The kids don't believe the part about the magical potions until they try one--a truth serum that makes Janie admit she has a crush on Benjamin, while he confesses to liking Sarah Pennington, one of the cool girls at school. Both are pretty embarrassed by the admission, but they know the potion works now, so they decide to try the recipe for Truth Serum on Sergei's father, to get him to tell what he knows about Mr. Burrows' disappearance.

After spilling the truth serum, they get the info that the Shiskins' house is bugged, that scar-face is part of the Stasi secret police, that the old gardener is in danger, and that Mr. Shiskin is working with Benjamin's father and two other scientists, one of them called Jin-Lo. They are all supposed to meet in two days' time, and if the others don't show up, it will go badly for Shiskin. He refuses to tell them anything else, and takes a silence potion to make sure he doesn't.

Now worried about their gardener friend, they hurry back to Chelsea, but it's too late--the old man has been stabbed. But he's left them a letter, and a vial of potion for themselves. He instructs them to keep the book safe, but that they must also rescue Benjamin's father.

At this time, Janie's parents leave to go to the country to complete a work assignment, leaving her in the care of their landlady (very convenient). Mr. Danby, a kindly teacher at school, asks Janie why she looks so tired, and she tells him about the book. Little does she know that he's a spy for the Russians, sent into the school to keep an eye on Benjamin, and she's just played into his hands. Next thing they know, a couple of uniformed policemen show up in class, and Benjamin barely has time to pass Sergei the book before the cops haul them off to juvenile detention for questioning. Before that can happen, though, a smart kid from the next cell, Pip, helps them escape. The three kids use the vial sent by the murdered man at the Chelsea Garden and turn themselves into birds. They follow the bad guys to an old WW2 bunker, where the men disappear and the kids turn back into themselves. Looks like Danby is a double agent: working for the British Foreign Service headquartered in the bunker, but spying for the Russians.

The kids decide they'll need the invisibility potion in order to get inside, where they think the boys' fathers are being held. They head back to the school (where Cockney Pip sees and instantly falls in love with the rich and snooty Sarah Pennington), retrieve the book from Sergei, and break into the chemistry lab. However, when they concoct the potion, they soon find out it only works on skin--the three of them (the third one being Pip, not Sergei) have to be naked for it to cover them completely. It's pretty cold outside, but their dads' freedom has to be worth it. Right? They see Danby and follow him back to the bunker; invisible, they go inside and see him speak to a Chinese prisoner who turns out to be Jin-Lo, another apothecary from China. She uses a smoke potion to get them out of the bunker (they steal some clothes on their way), and they make their way back to the apothecary's shop so she can have a look around. As they do, she discovers a pile of salt that is evidently Benjamin's father, water removed and reduced to his constituent chemicals. Jin-Lo reconstitutes him, and they have to use a temporary blinding powder to escape from Danby and Scar, who show up on their heels.

They need to pick some plants from the Chelsea Garden at daybreak, so they end up hiding there overnight, while Mr. Burrows fills them in on the history of the Pharmacopaeia, which originated centuries ago as a book of recipes for healing potions, but which also ended up housing recipes that turned out rather...differently...than expected. After the war, Benjamin's father began using his knowledge of the potions and his expertise as an apothecary to figure out a way to collect the radiation of an atomic bomb after it was released. Jin-Lo's part was to contribute a fine net that would reel itself in, containing the particles and sucking them in on themselves (kind of like a black hole).

To concoct his potion, the Apothecary needs blooms from a tree that isn't in flower now, so he uses his powers to force the tree to bloom out of season. As he does, a dark cloud is released, which he calls Dark Force, and there's a hint it might come back later. It appears to somehow be sentient, even though it's amorphous and cloud-like. He manages to get three blooms and preserve them to use for his potion, and next they're on their way to Nova Zembla, an island in the Norwegian Sea where the Russians are planning a nuclear test. When the apothecary shuts down the idea of the kids' accompanying him and his colleagues on the trip, the kids (sort of) bring Sarah Pennington into their plans to sneak on board ship while invisible. Sarah provides them with cold weather gear, and they get on board to find Sergei's father, whose family has been taken hostage by the Russians and are being threatened with execution if Shiskin doesn't lead the Russians to the ship via radio transmissions. When the truth comes out, Shiskin is allowed to give the signal to preserve his family, but the boat is painted via alchemy and therefore in disguise when the Russians arrive.

The ship arrives at the island, and once again, the kids turn themselves into birds--but this time, Janie is captured by Danby while Benjamin, coming back to try to help her, turns back into a human and falls out of the sky into the freezing cold water. Janie convinces the bad guys to rescue him, just as the atomic bomb goes off. The Dark Force makes a reappearance and causes their helicopter to crash, but the potion prepared by the alchemists works and re-absorbs the shock and radiation of the atomic bomb. The bad guys are captured.

At the end, Janie and Pip are given a potion that erases memories, just before Benjamin and his father disappear, taking her diary with them. For the next year, she can't understand why people are asking her about Benjamin--who's he? But then, when her diary is mysteriously returned in the mail, she comes to a remembrance of the events via its pages, and comes to know that in the future, she and Benjamin will probably have further adventures together. (Sequel is "The Apprentices".)