Say you are the sort of person who sees magic everywhere. Elves are just around the next tree. Mysteries entrance you. And you are always looking for the wardrobe that will lead you to Narnia.
Ransom Riggs, the author well-known for Miss Peregrine’s School for Peculiar Children and its sequels, has lived in magical cities. One of them is Los Angeles, the setting for his new young-adult novel, The Extraordinary Disappointments of Leopold Berry. Another is Portland, where he lived a few decades ago. Portland, he said, “was the first city I lived in when I discovered that spaces could hide so many things just under the skin.”
His list of magical places includes the vintage Rimsky-Korsakoffee House, with its haunted tables that rotate or levitate, the 24-Hour Church of Elvis, and the often-overlooked Woodstock Mystery Hole.
Riggs, who describes himself as the sort who’s always looking for “a door to a magic world,” found similarly exotic escapes in LA, including a branch of Clifton’s Cafeteria, famous for its animatronic forest animals. It plays a role in Leopold Berry.
In that story, Leopold (“don’t call me Larry!”) is a graduating high school senior whose life is derailed by his discovery that Sunder, the secret world of his favorite TV series, is real and accessible. And he has a role to play in saving it.
But first, those extraordinary disappointments, including being laughed out of the magical realm for unwisely boasting of his magical powers. Yes, he does kill that monster, but with a cafeteria lunch tray, not a spell.
Only slightly daunted, Leopold plots a return to Sunder, aided his best friend, Emmet, and a mystical map created with a Thomas Guide from 1987 — the only yearly edition of that map book that can be enchanted.
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Leopold inserts himself into Sunder, even when the community doesn’t want him, in a story that’s both entrancing and poignant, written with Riggs’ customary verve.
Riggs, meanwhile, has settled for the time being in suburban Orange County, where the bland aesthetic helps him concentrate on his richly imagined stories.
“It’s wonderfully sane and calm, which for a writer is wonderful,” Riggs, 45, said in a phone interview.
He also spends time planning and producing short videos, taking photos with a film camera, and visiting swap meets and flea markets, seeking treasures like the strange photographs that inspired the Miss Peregrine series.
At least two more books about Sunderworld are forthcoming, the next arriving in 2025. Although he misses the heart of LA or Portland, where one can find “the unexpected around every corner,” he is living the life he wants to be living. “I’m very blessed. I have a wonderful family and I get to write books for a living. I don’t know what else I could ask for.”
At the Portland Book Festival, he will appear in conversation with Emily Suvada, Portland author of the This Moral Coil series, at 5 p.m. Saturday at the First Congregational United Church of Christ.
The event is titled “Welcome to Sunderworld.”
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Fran Gardner spent most of her career in the newsroom of The Oregonian, as an editor and writer. Many years retired, she curates insights, photos, and poems into a weekly posting called Becoming. Find it at frangardner.substack.com.
