The Children

Guinevere “Guin” Sharpe is in a green room preparing for a morning-show interview to promote her new memoir. The makeup artist, Alison, is a devoted fan of the Ninth City books written by Guin’s late mother, Edith. Alison tearfully explains how the books saved her as a lonely child after her parents’ divorce and shows Guin a tattoo of the Architect’s tree from the series. Alison recalls a scene in which “Book Guinevere” sees her mother onscreen at the Mortal Cinema, “where only the dead perform” (5), though Guin knows the scene didn’t actually happen that way. She notes that fans frequently misremember or invent details in the books and chooses not to correct them. After Alison leaves, Guin has a tense encounter with Peter Lundell, another author in the green room. He’s condescending and openly hostile, mocking her use of a ghostwriter before asking, “When you’re not putting your name on a ghostwriter’s work, what the fuck do you do?” (7). Guin responds, “Cash checks.”

The chapter includes a brief description of the Ninth City series, explaining its premise: Siblings Ennis and Guinevere travel to a magical city constructed from children’s memories. This world is controlled by a morally ambiguous figure known as the Architect. The description notes that the books are darker and more complex than many readers recall from their childhoods.

Backstage, Fern, a member of Guin’s publicity team, warns her that the show’s host, Samantha Brice, is manipulative and that guests are often prompted to cry. Fern also reveals that Guin’s estranged brother, Ennis, has just announced a new art installation. Guin, who hasn’t spoken to him in years, is stunned. On set, Samantha appears lifeless until the cameras roll, at which point she transforms into a warm, empathetic television personality. The interview starts with predictable questions about Guin’s memoir, Ninth City Dreamer, and her famous mother, though Samantha pointedly observes that the memoir is “rather sunny.” She then pivots to Ennis, asking, “Why has Ennis Sharpe so thoroughly rejected the Ninth City and their author—his own mother?” (13). As Guin gives a carefully prepared answer, Samantha reveals the title of Ennis’s new show: Mother. The shock causes Guin to stand up abruptly on live television. She manages to regain her composure and ends the interview by describing her childhood as “magical.”

The narrative shifts to a flashback of Guin’s childhood in 1997-98. Her earliest memories are of New York City, followed by a year living in a borrowed palazzo in Venice. During this time, her mother, Edith, is emotionally distant, and her father, Llewellyn Sharpe, is a struggling actor whose career has declined since he left his first wife for the teenage Edith. The trip to Italy fails to revive Llewellyn’s career. Afterward, Edith’s estranged father offers them the use of a rustic family house in Vermont. The family drives to the property, a large wooden house set in the woods.

Continuing the flashback, the Sharpe children explore their new Vermont home. They’re delighted by the house, with its complex wood carvings of animals. However, they find one room on the third floor unsettling; it contains only a large, strange desk covered in hand-shaped metal drawer pulls. In the attic, they find old guns, books, and several chests. One chest contains a pair of women’s gloves, with the left glove missing its ring finger, and a beautifully carved wooden hand. Guin immediately feels a connection to the hand and keeps it. Soon after, they meet the property’s caretaker, who has a russet-colored dog. He is cryptic and, noticing the wooden hand, warns Guin to keep it inside the house for good luck. That night, Guin wishes her family could stay there forever.

In the present, after the disastrous TV interview, Guin sits in Times Square and reads the press release about Ennis’s art installation, Mother. Her fiancé, Hank, calls, concerned after watching the show. Guin dismisses his concern and tells him that she’s too busy to meet. After the call, she reflects on their engagement, feeling that he’s “slumming it” with her and questioning her own commitment.

In the summer of 1998, the Sharpe children enjoy an idyllic, unsupervised life at the Farmhouse. Llewellyn dislikes the house and spends most of the day in a separate studio on the property, where he practices his acting and tends a garden of protective herbs. More present than he was in Venice, he tells the children stories about his past. He recounts the first time he saw their mother: The night before his Broadway opening, he had stayed behind after rehearsal to go over the blocking alone onstage and found her standing next to the ghost light. He describes Edith as a striking, otherworldly figure who immediately enchanted him. The children watch Edith in her third-floor study as she calls for Llewellyn, who goes inside to join her.

One night in 1998, young Guin overhears her parents arguing. Llewellyn wants the family to leave the Farmhouse and return to the city so that he can resume his acting career; he also cites concern about schooling for the children and recurring nightmares he’s having in the house. Edith refuses, arguing that Venice was “all about” Llewellyn and demanding a year at the Farmhouse to pursue her own writing. Their fight exposes Llewellyn’s affair with their nanny in Italy; Edith asks whether he was “too busy fucking the nanny” to love his wife and children (37). Llewellyn reluctantly agrees to stay but urges Edith to spend time with the children because “[t]hey need [her] now” (39). The argument then turns to the couple’s age difference and Edith’s resentment that she became a wife and mother before she could establish her own identity. She calls Llewellyn a “pervert” and taunts him, “You’re a dirty old man” (39).

In the present, when Guin arrives at her apartment, she’s intercepted by Candace “Candy” Street, Ennis’s longtime assistant. Candy claims that she’s there without Ennis’s knowledge because she’s worried about him, his secretive new show, and his recurring phantom pain. She attempts to give Guin an invitation, urging her to see the installation and talk to her brother. Recalling a painful encounter with Candy seven years earlier, Guin refuses the invitation and tells Candy to leave her alone.

In a flashback, Guin tracks Ennis the opening of his solo show in Amsterdam, determined to finally see him. After being stopped at the entrance by a well-dressed bouncer, she tries to force her way in. She’s then confronted by Candy. Guin demands to hear directly from Ennis that he doesn’t want to see her, preparing for a fight. Instead, Candy delivers a devastatingly personal message from him, whispering that “the Farmhouse looked like a rocket ship […] in all that blue fire” (46), a detail only the siblings would know.

The message shatters Guin’s resolve, serving as Ennis’s definitive refusal to meet. Defeated, she allows the bouncer to put her in a cab. When he gives the driver her hotel’s name, she realizes that Ennis anticipated her arrival and has been tracking her. Guin accepts the finality of their estrangement, mourning the brother she feels she has now completely lost.

In the present, Guin finds herself reciting the address of Ennis’s upcoming show, which she memorized from the invitation Candy offered. As she considers going, she’s interrupted by a call from Regina Coleman, the head of publicity at her publishing house. In full damage-control mode, Regina is concerned about what secrets Ennis might reveal. She asks directly whether Edith or Llewellyn ever did “the worst thing” to the children (49), which Guin denies. Regina then informs Guin that she has scheduled an immediate interview for her with a friendly journalist from The Cut and coaches her on how to control the narrative, suggesting specific talking points about Ennis’s show.

Back in 1998, Ennis tells Guin that they need to do something to help their unhappy father. This prompts Guin to reveal a secret she overheard: Llewellyn has two estranged children. Furious at this news, Ennis punches Guin—the first time he has ever hurt her—and runs away. Distraught, Guin wanders into the woods and gets lost. The caretaker’s dog finds her and leads her to his cabin. The caretaker drives her home, advising her to start planning for a future in which she might need to run away. On the drive, a massive black bear appears in the road, rises on its hind legs, and then vanishes. When Guin gets home, a remorseful Ennis apologizes. They reaffirm their bond, deciding that it’s “only [them]” against their parents and agreeing to continue building a shelter of sticks in the woods to prepare for an unknown threat.

One autumn evening in 1998, Edith enters the great room, strangely calm, and announces that she has lost her ring finger. A horrified Llewellyn sends the children to search for it. They find a red fingerprint on the wall above the fourth step and a bead of blood on the top step, leading them to Edith’s third-floor study—but there’s no blood at all inside the room. There, they see a notebook where Edith has been brainstorming methods of entering a fantasy world. Llewellyn takes a dazed Edith to the hospital; before they leave, she shows him that her hand has mysteriously stopped bleeding. Alone in the house, the children are terrified and lock themselves in Ennis’s room. That night, Guin hears a strange pattering sound, like small footsteps, coming from the floor above them in their mother’s empty study.

The narrative returns to the present. Following Regina’s orders, Guin meets with Penelope Shirk, a journalist from The Cut, for an interview at a hotel lobby. Penelope is sharp and begins by asking unexpected questions about Guin’s father and why his promising acting career ended so abruptly. Guin deflects with practiced anecdotes about her “idyllic” childhood. When the conversation turns to Ennis, she delivers the narrative that she and Regina discussed, portraying their estrangement as a result of the unique pressures of their upbringing. At the end of the interview, Penelope asks if Guin would ever consider writing the sixth and final Ninth City book herself. Guin laughs it off, claiming that she’s the only member of the Sharpe family with no artistic talent.

In mid-November 1998, Llewellyn is teaching Ennis to shoot a rifle outside the Farmhouse. From a distance, Guin sees a figure in the third-floor window that she initially thinks is her mother. She waves but then feels a jolt of unease, realizing that the figure had long hair like her mother wore years ago, before she cut it. The figure disappears. Soon after, winter arrives with a massive blizzard. As the snow falls, Edith returns from a supply run looking invigorated. That night, as the children head to bed, Guin sees her mother’s reflection in a window, watching the storm with a secretive smile.