A Tangle of Knots

In 2016, Graff published a companion novel to A Tangle of Knots entitled A Clatter of Jars. This second novel follows a group of characters at Camp Atropos for Singular Talents, a “haven for the most remarkable children in the world” (233). The protagonist is Liliana “Lily” Vera, a girl with a Talent for moving objects with her mind. After a glowing jar is dropped to the bottom of Lake Atropos, dangerous events begin to occur, and individuals’ Talents and memories are somehow swapped. Lily and her fellow campers must team up to unravel the mystery.

Like A Tangle of Knots, A Clatter of Jars combines mystery fiction with fantasy elements and explores themes of family, identity, and human connection. A Clatter of Jars expands upon the world-building first laid out in A Tangle of Knots. For instance, the Owner is not the only person capable of stealing Talents, and people with this ability are called Ekers. Those with a similar yet distinct ability to pass Talents on to other people or objects are known as Coaxes. Camp Atropos is located just outside of Poughkeepsie, New York, the setting for much of the first novel. The second novel also carries on a stylistic feature from the first, the use of recipes to provide interludes in the story and contribute to character development. In A Tangle of Knots, these recipes come from the perfect cakes that Cady bakes for herself and the supporting characters. In A Clatter of Jars, the campers share recipes for beverages that evoke their favorite memories of summer. The events of the first story set the stage for the second. For example, the Owner steals hundreds of Talents and collects them in peanut butter jars. When he accidentally hits Zane Asher’s bicycle with his car, the jars are scattered and many shatter. Dozens of these seemingly empty jars later wash up on the shore of Lake Atropos.

In addition, some characters appear in both books. A Clatter of Jars opens with Cady and her parents, Toby Darlington Burgess and Jennifer Mallory, on the first anniversary of her adoption. In the Epilogue of A Tangle of Knots, the man in the gray suit shows Cady an unbroken jar containing a Talent. In the Prologue of A Clatter of Jars, Cady drops this glowing jar into Lake Atropos because she decides that she doesn’t want the new Talent. She later becomes one of the camp’s attendees and befriends Lily. The traveling salesman in the gray suit, who represents fate, also makes an appearance at the camp. The author’s fondness for complex human connections and family relationships is reflected in the second novel’s cast. Jo, the camp director who secretly harbors ulterior motives, is Cady’s aunt. Jennifer falls in love with Lily’s father, Juan, making the two novels’ protagonists stepsisters. A Clatter of Jars expands the world created in A Tangle of Knots while allowing readers to revisit familiar faces and experience the intricate mysteries and themes they expect from Graff’s work.