Reviews: (by author)

Philip Pullman (5 Reviews)

The Amber Spyglass: His Dark Materials, volume 3. New York: Knopf, 2000. 518 pp. ISBN 0-679-87926-9. $ 19.95.

At long last here - the eagerly awaited third volume of Philip Pullman's fantasy trilogy His Dark Materials, which has been so unfortunately eclipsed by the unprecedented success of Harry Potter. Pullman's novels are everything that Harry Potter books aren't: thought provoking, unpredictable, highly ambivalent in their treatment of good and evil, demanding, stimulating. Hopefully, when the young Potterites have satisfied their first lust for easily digested reading, they will proceed to the more mind-nourishing books by Pullman.

When I finished reading Part Two after it was published in September 1997, I was - I suppose together with many Pullman fans all over the world - curious about how he would manage to bring together all the loose threads. Would he be able to keep the delicate balance between his dark worldview and the convention of children's literature demanding optimism and restoration of harmony? Would he succumb to the temptation and allow the inhabitants of two parallel worlds to live happily ever after together, breaking the laws of nature? How would he resolve the young protagonist's ambivalent feelings toward her parents? I think Pullman does all this elegantly. Maybe too elegantly. A strict critic's eye will discover some cracks in the otherwise perfect structure, but as far as the reader is concerned it does not matter. When you for once are reading a masterpiece, who cares about minor flaws?

Reviewed by Maria Nikolajeva

 

Pullman, Philip. His Dark Materials Trilogy. New York: Knopf. (Includes The Golden Compass (1995), The Subtle Knife (1997), and The Amber Spyglass (2000))

It is likely you have already seen this trilogy of fantasy novels, sandwiched between Tolkien's Lord of the Rings and Rowling's Harry Potter series in the display windows of chain bookstores. While Philip Pullman does not yet have the global following of his countrymen, his cult is growing; this trilogy, under the rubric His Dark Materials, has appeared in 37 languages, received honors from Horn Book and the ALA, and spawned a popular stage version in the U.K. Furthermore, New Line Cinema, fresh from the triumph of Peter Jackson's rendering of Lord of the Rings, is putting the story into production, reportedly with Tom Stoppard as screenwriter.

As young adult fiction, Pullman's trilogy has much to recommend it. Like his fellow fantasists, he has created an intricate and self-consistent world. In the first book, The Golden Compass, we are introduced to an alternate earth where every human being has an animal familiar, essentially a pet soul, called a "daemon." Our young heroine Lyra Belacqua and her shape-shifting daemon Pantalaimon scamper through an alternate Oxford, England, one in which an authoritarian Church still operates the university. The pre-pubescent Lyra, raised as an orphan by the scholars of Jordan College, is a complete rebel and skilled liar. She soon discovers she comes by her heroic flaws naturally as the illegitimate child of two powerful and dangerous individuals: the beautiful Mrs. Coulter, a wealthy widow who is using the Church for her own sinister ends, and the arrogant, Byronic Lord Asriel, who is plotting against that very Church.

Underpinning the fantasy plot is a clever use of modern physics (called "experimental theology" in Lyra's world). The "dark materials" of the trilogy's title refer among other things to "dark matter," a mysterious substance that-our own astronomers and physicists recently decided-makes up roughly 70 percent of the universe. Since we cannot detect it except through its gravitational influence on the cosmos, Pullman freely speculates that it is nothing less than consciousness itself. Called "Dust" in the novels, it explains among other phenomena the existence of both daemons and sin. Dust also motivates a device that Lyra inherits, the "golden compass" of the title-actually an instrument that allows her to make accurate predictions. It aims her on a quest that pits her against her amoral parents and the Church, in the process gathering the aid of a polar bear warrior-king, helpful witches, vengeful gypsies, and a host of other fascinating characters.

The second book, The Subtle Knife, introduces the reader to a boy from our world, allegorically named Will, who has his own lethal talents. Will encounters Lyra on yet another alternative earth scourged by soul-devouring Specters, and they join forces. In this volume we learn that they are actors in a replay of the Miltonic war of heaven, on the side-it turns out-of the rebel angels. The Amber Spyglass carries the reader onto an Edenic planet inhabited by intelligent beasts, into a grim afterlife, and even onto the doorstep of the Deity for an unrelenting climax.

The story ventures into the sublime, but it contains strong stuff. This is definitely dark fantasy, without the traditional moral strains of Tolkien or the occasional horseplay of Harry Potter. Pullman endorses the revolutionary notion that the age of inherited authority is past, that our era needs a "Republic of Heaven" to replace the "Kingdom of Heaven." Not surprisingly, New Line Cinema is planning to mute this message.

Many university students to whom I introduced the first book have felt compelled to read them all-even practicing Christians who recognize the trilogy's subversiveness. Despite the "10 and up" recommendation on some editions, His Dark Materials is not for the very young-not just because of its antinomian theme but because of its grimness, its cosmological and eschatological underpinnings, and some subtle sexual content. On the other hand, these are definitely young adult books that both anti-authoritarian teens and thoughtful older readers can enjoy. Grab them before the book burnings begin.

Reviewed by Stephen Potts, UCSD and SDSU
April 2004

 

Philip Pullman. Illustrated by Kevin Hawkins. I Was A Rat! Alfred A. Knopf, NY, 2000. 164 pages hardcover. $15.95. ISBN 0375801766.

A delightful book to read aloud to younger children, and a good book to tempt reluctant readers, this book also has the honor to be just all-around good. After a prefatory page - a story torn from an imaginary tabloid announcing the wedding of "playboy Prince Richard" and the mysterious princess he met at a ball recently, the story begins. It begins late one evening, with Bob the cobbler and his wife Joan the washerwoman sitting in front of a fire. Bob is trimming the heels of a pair of tiny red leather slippers that he is making just for the love of making them. A knock at the door . . . and a little boy in a torn page's costume stands in the night, saying, "I was a rat."

If you say it right, it's hilarious.

Bob and Joan take the little page in, sure that he's lost and confused - and quite certain that he was never a rat. When he eats a pencil and tears up the bed sheets and pillows to make himself a nest, they're rather less confident. But they are fond of the boy, who they name Roger after the little boy they never had, and determine to try to find where his real home is. The following chapters are a very funny satire on public servants, as the couple tries to take him to City Hall, the police station, the hospital. No one, it seems, has lost a little boy. And Roger himself doesn't think he is lost; he thinks he came up from the sewers and found himself a little boy. A trip past the orphanage is enough to convince Bob and Joan to keep Roger, and , accordingly, they send him to school the next day.

We can all imagine how well that turns out

Roger eats the pencils, bites the teacher, and flees in terror from the Headmaster who tries to cane him. Running away is the beginning of a series of adventures as Roger is first stolen by a con man who exhibits him as a circus freak, then rescued by a boy who uses him to break into houses. These sequences are pleasantly reminiscent of Pinocchio and of Oliver Twist - "pleasant" only because Bob and Joan are faithfully searching for Roger and the reader is certain that they will find him. The book takes a turn for the less pleasant as Roger, certain that he is no longer a good boy or even a good rat-boy, decides that he doesn't deserve to live with Bob and Joan and plunges back into the sewers.

But the sewers are no longer a safe haven for Roger (assuming they ever were). City workers think he is a gigantic rat-monster, and in one of the book's most hilarious and horrifying sequences, the demon Rat-Monster becomes a cause celebre in the tabloids. Roger is brought up from the sewers, examined by experts who proclaim that he is obvious sub-human, disgusting, and dangerous. Public frenzy is whipped up though the papers, and Roger is determined by a court of law to be a public menace. He is to be exterminated. Bob and Joan, helpless to do anything, try to speak on his behalf, but are ignored. They decide to approach the new princess and ask for her help, since she has a nice kind face.

Will the mysterious princess save Roger? Will we find out if he was really a rat? How on earth would a rat get into the clothes of a little page-boy?

It would have to be magic, and magic indeed is this story. Not the magic of fairy-tales, but the magic of good old-fashioned common sense, loyalty, and ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances. This book is highly recommended for children between 8 and 11, but adults will also enjoy reading it aloud. The nasty rat-stuff (particularly Roger's appalling eating habits) are a wonderful gross-out for kids, while the social satire will satisfy the adult reader.

Recommended reading level: Age 8-11

Reviewed by Jamie Madden

 

Philip Pullman. Illustrated by Ian Beck. Puss In Boots. London--New York: Doubleday, 2000. ISBN 0-385-41032-8. £10.99.

A marvelous new version of Puss in Boots by a British author-illustrator team (and not just any author!). Pullman has added many witty details in the text, and words are integrated with pictures in form of clever speech and thought balloons, commenting on the events and revealing the characters' true feelings. The illustrations are dynamic, rich in detail, enhancing the text and bringing forward unexpected aspects of the well-known story.

Reviewed by Maria Nikolajeva

 

Pullman, Philip. Lyra's Oxford. Oxford: David Fickling Books, 2003.   £9.99. ISBN 0-385-60699-0.   49pp. 

Lyra's Oxford is a great addition to Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials series.   Within this book the reader is given a sense of what Oxford is like for Lyra.   The story progresses entirely within the city of Oxford, establishing demographics through the added maps, inserts and the diagrams; each giving a since of what it would be like to wonder the streets of Pullman's Oxford.    True to character, Lyra attempts to help those in need and discovers that things are not always how they appear.   Unlike the others within the series, Lyra's Oxford is one adventure that is interlaced with details hinting to other events that have occurred in the past and some that have yet to occur.   Since my only experience with the Golden Compass series is Northern Lights (renamed Golden Compass ) , I am not completely lost.   But I would say that this is not the book you would want to begin your first encounter of Lyra's world with.   There are things hinted to and discussed that without having some idea of the characters' background, a new comer would be lost.   I would recommend Lyra's Oxford as a fourth in Pullman's series.  

Recommended
Dawn Brophy, May 2004

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