In Elsbeth Edgar’s debut, The Visconti House, fourteen year old Laura Horton lives in a crumbling old mansion in Australia with her parents and her pet cat, Samson.  She loves living there, but the kids at her school consider it to be haunted and tease her for hanging out with “ghosts.”  Laura is somewhat ostracized in other ways too: she likes to write (her current project is an illustrated dragon encyclopedia), her parents are always having weird visitors over (although she does love these weird visitors), and socializing with other girls doesn’t come easily to her.

Then Leon moves in with his grandmother, who lives next door to Laura.  Leon is considered just as weird as Laura, if not more so, and the kids speculate as to why he doesn’t live with his parents.  His father is occasionally around, but his appearance is scruffy and the kids start to spread rumors that he’s a criminal.  Leon himself is somewhat odd-looking – he’s always a little scraggly – and his attitude is sullen.  He also turns out to be a math whiz, which doesn’t endear himself to his peers.  His grandmother is already seen as odd by the other kids, so that doesn’t help Leon’s situation either.

It’s inevitable that Laura and Leon will become friends, although it takes some time, since Laura is desperate to fit in and initially pushes Leon away, not wanting to be ridiculed for being friends with him.  What eventually brings them together is the mystery of Laura’s house, which was built by a man named Mr. Visconti in the early 20th century.  Mr. Visconti built the strange but magnificent house as a young man and remained in the town afterward, alone and quietly friendless.  He, too, was seen as odd by the townspeople.  Laura and Leon know this much about Mr. Visconti, but they want to know more – why he built the house in the first place, if he built it for anyone in particular, and why he remained there alone for so long.

The mystery of the house is really just a frame story and isn’t the focus of the book.  In researching Mr. Visconti, whose tragic story mirrors Laura’s life to some degree, Laura and Leon’s friendship (and sweet, semi-romance) blooms and Laura learns that it’s OK to be different from everyone else.  The mystery is purely a device whose purpose is to reveal this lesson to Laura, so it doesn’t really succeed as much of a mystery in the end.  The clues are pretty obvious and Laura and Leon encounter very few stumbling blocks on their path to the truth.  The book is more concerned with developing the friendship between Laura and Leon, and it’s more successful there.

Although the book’s protagonist is fourteen, this is really a middle grade book.  The Visconti House is definitely a Book With a Message, and I think it needs a bit of a lighter touch to really appeal to teens (the message is blatantly stated by at least three characters near the end of the book).  For younger kids, however, the overt lesson they are supposed to take away may not interfere so much with their enjoyment of the book.  Many kids can relate to Laura’s feeling of alienation from her peers.  Laura wants to fit in at school, but she also really likes her odd house, her family with its strange visitors, and Leon, who no one else seems to like.  I don’t have to think too hard to remember how this felt when I was a kid.