Melanie is enjoying her luxurious life with her siblings, provided to them by her father and mother, unaware of her future. She is dreaming of a bright luxurious life with a prince charming on her side, like the ones she reads about in her novels. In her 15 year-old teenage curiosity and angst she decides to take her mother's weeding dress for a nightly outing. It is the night that changes everything. There are elements of foreshadowing as she observes her uncle on her mother's weeding photograph; the wedding dress gets destroyed and the veil is left hanging on the apple tree out if reach. The following morning the news arrive of her parent's deaths.
Melanie and her younger siblings are set off to live with their uncle. Barely a teenage herself, Melanie is taking in the feeling of responsibility with pride. Her uncle is a toy maker and has a red-haired mute wife who brought along her two brothers to live under his roof.
After the orphan children's arrival in the new home, most of the focus lies on the comparison between the poor-looking house and the luxurious previous home from Melanie's perspective. She finds it difficult to assimilate at first, while little Victoria and a bit older Jonathon, assimilate at once. She barely talks to anyone, aside from Finn, for whom she feels both disgust and attraction. Melanie only begins to feel at home at that one incident where she sees a bloody hand in a spoon drawer. She begins to love all three of the Jowles siblings from that point on and begins to feel at home.
Uncle Philip is a paradox in person. He despises everyone, is a dark shadow cast on the house and it is strange that a man like that has a passion and lives for making toys. The relationship between Irish red-haired siblings is a peculiar one and at one point Melanie sees a naked photo of her aunt in the brother's room through a peephole. Strangely enough, Melanie pays little attention to the bizarreness of it and seems genuinely surprised at the discovery of their incestuous relationship.
Uncle Philip is a villainous character who doesn't have a solid justification for his despicable nature. He hates his sister's children because they are also children of a man who comes from a more accomplished background than him. The bizarreness of the play where Melanie is playing the nymph that is about to be raped by a swan doll, controlled by Uncle Philip mind you, showcases the disgusting nature of his character; not even mentioning the previous incident where he almost killed Finn. He loves the inanimate objects and treats them with utmost care while having no sympathy for real humans.
It could be said that the climactic ending leaves one desiring more; it seems to be made in a way that almost appears rushed and unfinished. Uncle Philip burns down the house and the toy shop and the reader is left wondering what happened to the rest of the character, if they all burned together with it. Only Finn and Melanie's fate is clear and at the end they are facing each other in the garden of their first kiss.
The title of the novel seems incoherent with the content of it. It could be described as a choice to emphasize the irony of it, as there is hardly anything magic about the toy shop when one meets the character of the toys' creator.
