Invisible in a Bright Light

Sally Gardner's Invisible in a Bright Light is a haunting, dreamlike mystery for 10 year olds set in a candlelit opera house beside a snowy harbour.

What happens

Celeste opens her eyes inside a costume basket backstage. And everything is wrong.

The wardrobe mistress calls her a theatre rat and an orphan. Her dress is thin and worn. Everyone keeps calling her Maria and telling her she's a gifted little dancer. Celeste is quite sure she can't dance a step (somebody always used to say she had two left feet).

Her memories are slipping away too. She knows there was a mother, a governess called Anna and a toy theatre. The harder she tries to hold on to them, the faster they swim off.

And then there's the dream. A man in an emerald green suit sits in a cave at the bottom of the sea. Behind him hang rows of sleeping passengers and sailors, all suspended from boat hooks. He's playing a game with Celeste called the Reckoning. If she wins, the sleepers go home. If she loses, they're lost forever.

What would you do if everyone you met was certain you were someone else?

It's a gorgeous book to read. The opera house is all red plush, gold and candlelight, with a king who slips in to watch the rehearsal and a diva who's an absolute monster to her own daughter. You piece the puzzle together slowly, right alongside Celeste, and it's super atmospheric.

It suits a patient, thoughtful reader best. Someone who likes a mystery that feels more like a dream than a detective story, and doesn't mind not knowing what's real for a while.

A word of warning, though. The sleepers in the sea cave are eerie, with fish swimming through their empty clothes. Before long the great glass chandelier crashes down on Celeste. She's badly hurt, with a high fever and splinters of glass in her skin, and she's told she may not survive. A ship lost at sea sits in the background of the story too. A child who's frightened of drowning or hospitals might find it hard going. A reader who loves something shivery and strange will be hooked.

What to read next

If the backstage world is the bit they love, The Steam Whistle Theatre Company by Vivian French is full of it too. Rosie and Charlie Pringle are child actors in a family troupe that's broke and heading north by train, with far more laughs along the way.