No elsewhere?

[dolorosa_12]

This is the second of my January talking meme posts. I was asked to talk about the new Philip Pullman books in the Book of Dust trilogy, for nyctanthes.

The first such book — La Belle Sauvage, a prequel, in terms of content and chronology, to the original His Dark Materials trilogy — was very much to my taste. I was so relieved that it was published at all, and that it was well written, and showed off Pullman's strengths — a vivid sense of place, gorgeous prose that danced on the page, and a rolicking, page-turning plot. I was full of gratitude and emotion, and delighted in celebrating the book with all my friends I'd made through the Philip Pullman forum that was my first experience of online fandom.

Sadly, I did not enjoy The Secret Commonwealth, the second book in the new trilogy — the first one to pick up Lyra's story after she's reached adulthood (save the brief glimpse we got of her as a teenager in Lyra's Oxford). It did things I disliked to Lyra's character, and unfortunately made me reassess my previous opinion of Philip Pullman as one of the few male authors who were able to write female characters well. Oddly, I disliked the book more and more the more I thought about it after I had finished reading it. I had finished it off thinking it was solid, but not Pullman's best work, but the more and more I contemplated several narrative and characterisation choices (and discussed these elements in verbose Twitter DMs with McDougallSophia), the more I revised my initial opinion to something much more negative. It hasn't tainted my opinion of the original trilogy, which I still maintain is an absolutely extraordinary work of literature, but it does make me more cautious about reading every work that Pullman puts out into the universe and assuming it will be fantastic.

I've still got slots open for prompts for the January talking meme. You can leave prompts here.

Comments

[luzula]

I am most of the way through this book (listened to as a wonderful audiobook by Michael Sheen), but was distracted by other fannishness and haven't quite finished it yet. I am annoyed by the upcoming romance--seriously, first you see him taking care of her as a baby and then he's her teacher in her teens, and then they get together?? /o\ /o\ I actually found the ideas about mental health isses as expressed through conflicts between a human and their daemon to be pretty interesting, but it's also frustrating how it changed Lyra's character.

[dolorosa_12]

I agree with you 100 per cent on the romance — I found it really squicky, particularly the fact that he knew her as a baby, which is a particular dislike of mine.

I wouldn't have minded those ideas being explored, but not through Lyra herself. One of the things I liked so much about her in the original trilogy was how confident and brave she was, and how little made her vulnerable (although I suppose leaving Pan behind in the world of the dead was the first thing that really made her vulnerable). I don't object to a story in which she had relatively little power, I guess I object to the ways Pullman chose to render her powerless.

[chronikle]

I reread HDM following the broadcast of the television series (which I need to go back to, it kept airing during my D&D games and I never got back round to catching up) and still enjoyed it (and cried, as always)--and then immediately went and read the Wikipedia plot summaries for La Belle Sauvage and The Secret Commonwealth and was very... well... teeth-clenched emoji about the latter.

(Partially because of how the relationship between Lyra and Pan is, and partially because of events that reportedly almost happen to her towards the end of the book.)

[dolorosa_12]

Yes, those two things — her relationship with Pan, and the almost-happening event at the end of the book (plus the romantic pairing in the book) were incredibly offputting. Repellent, even.

I enjoyed La Belle Sauvage, though.

[wheatear]

I didn't like The Secret Commonwealth that much either, but I feel like my problems with it weren't the things that everyone complained about... The whole concept of the "secret commonwealth" and the critique of a rationalist worldview bothered me and felt like a departure from the way I'd interpreted HDM.

[dolorosa_12]

My problems were the things everyone complained about ... and what you're complaining about, too. I agree with you that it seemed to undermine the entire point of HDM: that this world, the things we can sense and understand, the experiences we seek out that spark emotions and knowledge and learning in us, the things we can change with our own abilities and understanding and a lifetime of hard, intentional, purposeful work, is what matters, and we should strive to live a meaningful life within it. 'We must build the Republic of Heaven where we are,' and all that. I think what he meant with the 'secret commonwealth' was stories and the imagination, and how powerful those can be in service of a life well lived in the physical world, but it was a very garbled message, and lost a lot in the execution. That's the most charitable explanation I can give.

[wheatear]

Yeah, I found it rather strange. If the secret commonwealth is stories and imagination then that didn't come across clearly to me because there were several things that happened in the book that were part of the secret commonwealth and the critique seemed to be more "these things are real, look at those crazy rationalists denying reality because they don't want to understand this fantastical world" which just makes no sense in a world like Lyra's. I felt like I didn't understand what was meant by "imagination" in the book. At one point it's described as a form of perception and, like... it's not? Then again I found myself more often siding with Lyra when she argued with Pan and I don't think I was supposed to.

[nyctanthes]

I really enjoyed La Belle Sauvage as well - though the age difference, one-sided UST made me clench my teeth a bit. Too bad the next one seems to go back to that well, in a far more direct way.

I didn't realize TSC took such a big jump in time, to Lyra as an adult. I would have liked to read more about the earlier times.

Making that shift - in fiction - from child to adult is hard, especially when the focus of previous work has been on the POV characters as children and adolescents. (Akin to the TV problem of shifting characters out of high school into college/adulthood.) It's interesting to think about authors who have gotten it right.

Yours and others comments make me curious, though. I might end up giving TSC a quick read through at some point.

[dolorosa_12]

the age difference, one-sided UST made me clench my teeth a bit. Too bad the next one seems to go back to that well, in a far more direct way.

You're not wrong, and it's really repellent. I don't have any issue with a relationship with an age gap, as long as both characters meet when they're both adults. When they spend a significant amount of time knowing each other when one is a child and the other is an adult in a position of authority, then I get really squicked.

Making the shift from child to adult is hard, but I fear that the problem goes beyond that in these books, and has exposed real problems with how Pullman writes women. It's really sad, because I love, for example, the character of Sally Lockhart, Mrs Coulter (at least as she is in HDM) and Serafina Pekkala are great, and Mary Malone — all adult women in books by Pullman. This new series has retrospectively soured my enjoyment of those characters.

[rachelmanija]

What a weird coincidence, I posted about it today. I also didn't like it and additionally thought it had extremely squicky implications. It unfortunately made aspects of La Belle Sauvage seem worse in retrospect - one climactic rape is bad, but two are more than twice as bad; Malcolm's relationship with baby Lyra is adorable in isolation but becomes creeptastic in context.

[dolorosa_12]

I saw your reviews, and I was squicked by exactly the same things as you — I have no issue with relationships with large age gaps, as long as both characters met when they were adults, and if one character knew they other when they were a child and the older character was an adult it's a particular squick of mine.

When I was discussing this with McDougallSophia I realised that Pullman's problem with female characters is similar to that of Joss Whedon: superficially, if you don't look too closely, they write nuanced, strong female characters. But if you scratch the surface, what they actually write is sexless girls, tropey older women (femmes fatale, celibate scientists, cozy maternal characters, etc), and heroines made vulnerable through sexual trauma. And although most of my favourite female characters are the latter type (most of my favourite female characters are survivors of trauma), I need them to be written better than Pullman seems capable of managing.

I get the impression from your posts that you only really liked the first book of the original His Dark Materials trilogy. For me I adore the whole trilogy, it was super important to me as a child and young woman, Will is one of my favourite characters (I kind of adored Lyra and enjoyed reading about her, but identified really strongly with Will), and it was my intensity of feelings about the books that first got me online and into fandom, introducing me to my first online fan community, and to friends who saved me from really dark times and who remain some of my closest friends to this day. It's really difficult to separate my feelings about the books from my feelings about all this personal stuff, friendships, fandom and so on. So Pullman writing a book that implies he doesn't really understand the point he was making in his own, earlier trilogy is really upsetting to me, in a way that I find hard to articulate.

[The sentiments in my choice of icon are directed at Pullman, and not at you, obviously.]