The Curse of the Windigo

Recently, I finished reading the excellent second installment in Rick Yancey's Monstromologist trilogy. As with book one, The Monstromologist, this second novel, The Curse of the Windigo, is categorized as a 'young adult novel'; and, as with book one, I really don't see why. Is it because the main character, young Will Henry, is a young adult? But if so, wouldn't that make, say, Catcher in the Rye a young adult novel as well, or Great Expectations, or Lord of the Flies, or even Robert Louis Stevenson's Kidnapped and Treasure Island? But no, The Monstromologist, is no more a young adult series than any of these other titles. It's a small point, I know, but it annoys me. Mr. Yancey writes with a sophistication, in prose, in vocabulary, in theme and in character development that is quite perfectly adult. These two novels, with a third on the way, deal not only with monsters, but, on a deeper level, with what is monstrous in common human beings. They deal very artfully with matters of the head and matters of the heart in conflict, with what is healthy and with what is crippled in the human soul. In Windigo, we see the progression of a complex relationship between an orphan, Will Henry, and his guardian, a sometimes kind, sometimes cruel, generally self-absorbed and anal retentive 'man of science' by the name of Dr. Warthrop. It is not so much the scientific education of Will Henry that is the center of this series, but the moral and emotional education of Dr. Wartrop's own soul. Reminiscent of Hawthorne and of Edgar Allan Poe, of Wuthering Heights and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, these novels are serious contributions to the gothic tradition, and, honestly, more worth reading than many of the empty-headed popular novels of our day. I can't wait for the appearance of the third in this series (which is likely already available in English, but here I am in Indonesia, awaiting the Indonesian language translation!).