Quia nisi in natus vel.

I love Hilary McKay's books, and Binny in Secret is no exception. This beautifully characterized book tells a story about friendship and love in all its forms. Binny, newly moved to a town where she knows no one except her family, gets off to a rough start when she makes an enemy of a local girl. In her struggles to find a place for herself, she discovers a mystery and a century-old story, and I'd love to say she discovers the true meaning of friendship as well, but for a writer like McKay, things are never that simple. More accurate to say Binny learns a great deal about herself, not all of it pretty. There's something magical about Binny's family in the sheer ordinariness of it, but also in how much they all depend on each other. Binny's in the middle, with an older sister and a younger brother, and all of them have the kind of complex relationships with each other that siblings have in real life. I was impressed at how McKay develops the family relationship without making it sound like those of her other books. This is not the artistic insanity of the Casson family and it's not the laid-back craziness of the Exiles; Binny's family is comfortable with itself, and it made me feel comfortable, too. This book has everything to say about how friendship works. There's the friendship that develops between Binny's mother and Mrs. Tremayne, who at first seems so off-putting and irritable; the two single mothers find a kinship that you can see they both desperately need. There's the relationship of antagonism that exists between Binny and Clare, both of whom keep finding ways to hurt each other. Clare's bullying is nasty, but Binny behaves badly too, and the whole time I was conscious not only of Binny's pain, but of Clare as a person and not just some horrible, vicious antagonistic force the way most bullies end up being. And then there's Clarry and Peter and Rupe, whose three-sided friendship supports the secondary plot so beautifully. Clarry looks at first as if she