Reading meaning in things

Vintage illustration of Oxford’s High Street.

Lyra’s Oxford:
‘Lyra and the Birds’ by Philip Pullman,
engravings by John Lawrence.
David Fickling Books, 2003.

“Everything has a meaning, if only we could read it.”
— William Makepeace, alchemist.

This book’s title enshrines a dichotomy. Superficially it asserts that this is a city from the world Lyra inhabits, a world both like and unlike ours, that ambiguity given visual force by a wonderful fold-out map in the first edition hardback depicting the moody streets of Oxford overlooked by an airship at the Royal Mail Zeppelin Station.

But by the final pages it becomes clear that it’s Lyra herself who is to keep this world’s Oxford: “The city, their city — belonging was one of the meanings of that, and protection, and home.” There is a feeling that Oxford is looking after her and her dæmon Pantalaimon, a sense that will last her through the rest of her teenage years.

Will that protection however last through the central events of The Book of Dust?

To the Wounded City

One of Piranesi’s ‘carceri’ or prisons.

The Relic Master by Catherine Fisher.
Volume One of The Book of the Crow Quartet.
[Also published as The Dark City,
Book 1 of The Relic Master series.]
Red Fox, 1999 (1998).

A wonder worker and an apprentice are wandering through a sparsely populated, almost desolate landscape, bearing dangerous secrets and in fear of both strangers and of a ruthless authority.

But someone is following their trail with motives of her own. And then a horseman appears to ask for the wonder worker’s help. How will Galen and his young apprentice Raffi respond to this and other potential threats?

“The Relic Master was the first book I wrote as a full-time writer,” the author tells us, “and I think a lot of pent-up energy went sweeping into it.” That transferred energy is evident right from the start and continues right to the end of this first instalment.

Spine tingles

Haunting bedtime reading? © C A Lovegrove

A Touch of Chill:
Stories of Horror, Suspense and Fantasy by Joan Aiken.
Fontana Lions, 1981 (1979).

These fifteen short stories, six published for the first time in this collection, are full of mystery and surprises, not least because UK and US editions feature — apart from a core of eight — different selections.

I first read these tales in the early eighties, but apart from the odd déjà-vu moment I regret I didn’t remember any of them in this reread — my failing, not Joan Aiken’s, because these are wonderfully dark narratives.

I don’t know who made the final choice for the order of the UK edition but it was curious that pairs of succeeding stories are often linked — witches both black and white, Irish or Welsh characters, youngsters climbing through windows, murder intentional or otherwise, sinister automatons, and finally tales which somehow become true. But despite commonalities each story is very different, very distinct.

Hayley and the Mythosphere: #MarchMagics2024

Comet impact on Jupiter, 1993

The Game by Diana Wynne Jones. Firebird Books, 2007.

The concept of the mythosphere is a wonderful thing, typical of Diana Wynne Jones and full of creative potential. It is the place we go to in dreams, the realm of the Collective Unconscious, the landscape where mythical archetypes roam and Jungian symbols are to be encountered, collected and treasured.

Young Hayley gets drawn into the mythosphere when she is sent by her grandparents to stay with relatives in Ireland, who have invented a pastime called The Game where they have to fetch back mythical objects against the clock. However, there are repercussions which not only put her in danger but also reveal who she really is and the nature of her large extended family.

A clue comes from her name which, as in many of Jones’ books, has a significance beyond it being a girl’s name chosen at random: it is a not-so-closet reference to Edmond Halley who identified the periodicity of the comet that bears his name and whose surname is popularly pronounced as in the girl’s forename. And in The Game Hayley, like the comet, has the capacity to blaze away in the heavens.

Death, wizards and hats: #MarchMagics2024

“… and still the wonder grew that one small head could carry all he knew.” – Oliver Goldsmith.

A Slip of the Keyboard:
Collected Non-Fiction
by Terry Pratchett.
Forward by Neil Gaiman.
Corgi, 2015 (2014).

I’ve come late to Pratchett’s writings. I had tried some comic fantasy and sci-fi and found it wanting; it mostly seemed to be trying too hard to be funny and witty. I enjoyed Red Dwarf on TV and Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy on the radio but somehow on the page much of this genre writing seemed to consist of dull, lifeless things, full of their own cleverness.

So, despite everyone saying I ought to try Pratchett, that I’d like his stuff, I resisted it. Perhaps it was the cover illustrations that put me off: “This is a wickedly weird funny book!” they seemed to scream at me.

Finally I recently took the plunge. Somehow the Piaf song Je ne regrette rien now rings a little hollow…

Patchwork danger

Rag doll, David Wyatt (for ‘The Time of the Ghost’ by Diana Wynne Jones)

The Ragwitch by Garth Nix.
HarperCollins Children’s Books, 2005 (1990).

Dolls can be ambiguous playthings: recipients of affection, they might be assumed to return that love unconditionally; but what if they assumed a personality of their own – could they, would they, turn nasty or even malevolent?

Garth Nix’s early children’s fantasy, The Ragwitch, opens on a beach – perhaps somewhere in Victoria, Australia – which siblings Julia and her younger brother Paul are exploring. Julia is strongly drawn towards an aboriginal midden of shells, bones and feathers.

And it’s on this midden, in a kind of nest, that Julia finds an old, abandoned rag doll with a disturbing expression, and despite Paul’s anxious urgings his sister picks it up. It’s the start of an experience that willy-nilly takes the pair into another far more dangerous realm.

#WitchWeek2023 Day 2: Once was, once wasn’t

All Hallows Day: Interview with Kiyash Moncef, by Lory Widmer Hess.

Once There Was by Kiyash Moncef was published in April 2023 by Simon & Schuster. He grew up in northern California, in a house on the slope of a forested ravine, with his parents, Iranian grandmother and younger brother.

His earliest creative influences were books about monsters, myths and legendary creatures, so it was inevitable that thinking about them would lead to this, his debut novel.

He was kind enough to agree to an interview with Lory Widmer Hess, the originator of Witch Week, and share more about his inspirations and writing processes.

The redoubtable Miss Aiken

‘Interior with the Artist’s Daughter’ by Vanessa Bell (1935-6): Angelica in the studio at Charleston, E Sussex

Inverted Commas 23: Unbearable realities

“Stories ought not to be just little bits of fantasy that are used to while away an idle hour; from the beginning of the human race stories have been used – by priests, by bards, by medicine men – as magic instruments of healing, of teaching, as a means of helping people come to terms with the fact that they continually have to face insoluble problems and unbearable realities.”

Joan Aiken

Today marks the 99th year since the redoubtable Joan Aiken was born in Rye, East Sussex, on 4th September in 1924. When she died in 2004 she left behind a rich legacy of thrillers, children’s fantasy and short stories, as well as visual art and poetry.

She’s well served by JoanAiken.com, the imaginative website hosted by her daughter Lizza and dedicated to her life and works, which I heartily recommend if you like falling down virtual rabbit holes.

Since I first discovered her short stories in the late 60s and early 70s I’ve been enchanted by her often quirky writing which encourages the reader to view life askance, making one almost believe it’s entirely possible to grasp a magic which would otherwise slip clean through the fingers. She can also help us realise that, despite such magic, insoluble problems and unbearable realities may often remain.

Uneasy lessons

London during the Blitz

Bedknobs and Broomsticks by Mary Norton.
The Magic Bedknob; or, How to Become a Witch in Ten Easy Lessons (1943) and Bonfires and Broomsticks (1947): first omnibus edition as Bedknob and Broomstick (1957).
Illustrated by Anthony Lewis (1993).
Orion Children’s Books, 2019 (1993).

The best fiction – as it’s occasionally noted – often comes out of personal experiences, however much or little they are disguised or adapted on the page.

Reading Mary Norton’s Bedknobs and Broomsticks for the first time reminds me that the author – who went on to write the series beginning The Borrowers – will have certainly drawn on what she’d experienced as a child herself, and then during the second world war as a working mother with four children.

So when, in the first part of this novel published in 1943, a trio of young children are initially sent from London to the Bedfordshire countryside by their mother and get themselves into all kinds of scrapes, we may suspect that it’s informed by events in her own life.¹ Well, maybe not quite in the way that its subtitle – how to become a witch in ten easy lessons – suggests.

The demiurge of Fillory

WordPress Free Photo Library

The Magician’s Land
by Lev Grossman.
Arrow Books, 2015 (2014).

“What do you do, Quentin?”
[Plum] said it as if she were not completely convinced it was his real name.
“Not much,” he said. “My discipline is mending.”

Chapter 6

The third book of Lev Grossman’s Magicians Trilogy is indeed largely about mending, about fixing things that are broken, about returning affairs to their pristine state. But is the former dilettante Quentin, apparently washed up and at a loss, the one to do it?

We’ve followed him through his student days at Brakebills College for Magical Pedagogy, his adventures with Brakebills graduates in the magical land of Fillory, and then his utter banishment from there. As The Magician’s Land opens he finds himself in a strange New Jersey bookstore, drawn there by an enigmatic note.

And suddenly he’s besieged by memories of the Books of Fillory – a fantasy series penned in the early 20th century by American emigré Christopher Plover – when he’s invited to join a team, a select group tasked with retrieving a suitcase. When it emerges that the suitcase is embossed with the initials of a character who featured in the books but turned out not to be fictional, all the signs seem to suggest Quentin may be returning to Fillory – but will it be the Fillory he knew?

Neither here nor there

‘Set design for a tragic scene’ by Sebastiano Serlio (1475 – 1554)

The Magician King: A Novel
by Lev Grossman.
William Heinemann, 2011.

A sequel to a successful novel is always a difficult task for a writer. A major dilemma is whether to stick to a successful formula or whether to plough new furrows in an attempt to avoid a sense of déjà-vu; either way risks alienating stern literary critics on the one hand or diehard fans on the other. One strategy is to combine both approaches, and Grossman’s second offering in a trilogy does exactly that: we’re dished up a lot of the same but also a fair seasoning of new elements which fortunately manage to refresh the taste buds.

The Magicians focused its gaze on Quentin Coldwater as he entered Brakebills College, a centre for learning the discipline of magic. We saw how, through an obsession with a fantasy series written by one Christopher Plover, Quentin and a group of fellow Brakebills graduates eventually managed to visit the land of Fillory.

However, something is rotten in the state of Fillory, and in combating the Beast (in whom Quentin had inadvertently awoken an unwelcome awareness of Brakebills) great sacrifices have to be made — not only severe injury but also a fate as bad as death. The first novel ends with Quentin, his Brakebills contemporaries Eliot and Janet, plus the frankly rather strange Julia, finding a way back to Fillory, life on Earth having proved rather, well, mundane.

A book of Fillory tales

Map of Fillory

The Magicians
by Lev Grossman.
Arrow Books, 2009.

“Martin Chatwin was not an ordinary boy, but he thought that he was. In fact he was unusually clever and brave and kind for his age, he just didn’t know it. Martin thought that he was just an ordinary boy…“
— Christopher Plover, The World in the Walls

You will of course have heard of the popular Fillory series by the late Christopher Plover (pronounced ‘Pluvver’, like the wading bird). In order the five titles are The World in the Walls, The Girl Who Told Time, The Flying Forest, The Secret Sea and The Wandering Dune.

You will also know all about the Chatwin children — Martin, Rupert, Fiona, Helen and Jane — and how they manage to escape to the magical land of Fillory, where they have adventures before they are called back to their own world.

And you will remember that Martin was the only sibling to remain in Fillory because after The Wandering Dune the series just stopped, not long before Plover died in 1939.

Confound their language

Vintage GWR LMS poster of Christ Church, Oxford

Babel, Or the Necessity of Violence:
An Arcane History of the Oxford Translators’ Revolution
by Rebecca F Kuang.
Harper Voyager, 2022.

And they said, Go to, let us build us a city and a tower, whose top may reach unto heaven; and let us make us a name, lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth.

Genesis 11:4

The geographical centre of England. Dreaming spires. Ivory towers. But violence? Revolution? But then this is also subtitled “an arcane history” in the chronology of the University of Oxford, so we may take the violence and the revolt with a pinch of salt: such things as are described can never happen, we may assume. Or can they?

Babel is epic, in all senses of the word.  It’s a story, sure enough, from the Greek ἔπος, epos, a speech, a song, demonstrating its love of language and literature; it’s composed to be on a grand scale, ranging to and fro from Guangzhou to Oxford and covering many years; it’s also epic in the modern sense of awesome, impressing through its ambition and sheer imaginative creativity; and it’s also epic in that it’s over five hundred pages long, which for some may be too much and for others deliciously intense.

In focusing on a quartet of language students in the 1830s it encourages us – successfully, I think – to invest in their personal and collective histories. But it also invites us to contemplate ethics, colonialism, racism, loyalty, and privilege; and above all we are asked to consider the necessity of violence in attempting to break the obduracy of those who rule while disregarding the needs of all in society.

Incidental extras

Frederic Edwin Church’s 1865 painting “Aurora Borealis”: Wikipedia Commons

“Everything has a meaning, if only we could read it.”
— ‘Lyra and the Birds’

The recently published short story The Collectors by Philip Pullman was a moderately satisfying stopgap while we awaited the final volume of his The Book of Dust, which is anticipated as the completion of the saga of Lyra Silvertongue and her dæmon Pantalaimon.

Following on from the His Dark Materials trilogy The Book of Dust has been extending the long journey that began in 1995 with Northern Lights (titled The Golden Compass in North America in case the UK title was assumed to indicate a nonfiction book, but erroneous in that the alethiometer is neither golden nor indeed a compass).

But Pullman has been filling in some of the gaps with what I consider as incidental extras, giving us bits of history to enlarge the background to places and personages in Lyra’s world, feeding us tantalising tidbits to assuage our literary cravings.

Love, hate, or indifference

Buddhist temple, Kek Lok Si (credit Daphne Lee)

Black Water Sister by Zen Cho.
Macmillan, 2021.

“She wasn’t Malaysian or American. Just as she wasn’t straight but she definitely wasn’t gay, if anyone was asking. She wasn’t her family’s Min, but she wasn’t the Jess who’d had a life under that name, before her dad had gotten sick. […] She was a walking nothing—a hole in the universe, perfect for letting the dead through.”

Chapter 17

Jessamyn Teoh accompanies her parents from the US back to Penang in Malaysia, a country she barely remembers. So it’s a shock for her to hear a very opinionated voice in her head claiming to be the ghost of Ah Ma, her maternal grandmother.

First shock over, Jess discovers Ah Ma had fallen out with Jess’s mother, and it’s something to do with Ah Ma having been a medium for a powerful local deity called Black Water Sister, named from a neighbouring locale. The third shock comes when she realises that Ah Ma, now a spirit herself, wants Jess to stop Black Water Sister’s shrine being developed by a powerful gang boss.

Jess – or Min, to use her Malaysian Chinese name – is therefore placed in a very difficult position, having to balance demands from all fronts – her parents, her secret girlfriend Sharanya, her relatives, her grandmother’s ghost, the boss, his gangsters, the boss’s son, construction workers, assorted gods and ghosts including, of course, the enraged Black Water Sister herself. What’s a girl to do?