A Daemonstrably Good Book

My Brother in law is from Aberdeen and the very mention of the ‘Northern Lights’ brings a tear to his eye and a unique rendering of “The Northern Lights of Old Aberdeen mean home sweet home to me...” I’ve never actually seen the brilliant display myself but the pictures I’ve seen on the net of the ‘Aurora Borealis’, as the lights are properly known, show that Pullman’s description is no exaggeration - the author has described the phenomenon perfectly and I can now fully understand my brother in law’s feelings.

Philip Pullman is undoubtedly one of the best contemporary authors around and his tremendously well-written books are the product of his incredible imagination and immense descriptive powers. The winner of the Guardian Children’s Fiction Award and the Smarties Award of the Carnegie Medal, for some reason he has been ‘pigeon-holed’ as a children’s author, but this or the remaining books of the trilogy appeal to a whole spectrum of ages and are incredibly multi-layered. There’s something for everyone in them. This is seriously good literature, a heady mixture of Dickens, Mark Twain, C.S.Lewis, Milton, Ian Fleming, Aesop, Tolkein, Macbeth and Dr. Who.

The heroine is Lyra, a wild and resourceful child with a wonderful colloquial accent who is consigned to the care of the scholars of an Oxford College. In the opening chapter she is drawn into the academic intrigues of the infamous Lord Asriel and then into the national outbreak of kidnapping thought to be the work of the ‘Gobblers’. The scenes here are very impressive because the action takes place in the ‘gothic’ colleges of Oxford in what the reader assumes to be the twentieth century, yet this is clearly a very different world than the dreaming spires we know.

But there’s more to this book than just a good read. It has real depth. The world which Phillip Pullman describes is truly imaginative. It is a world where the truth can be devined by use of an alethiometer and everyone has a ‘daemon’, a visible soul, which takes the shape of any animal at will. A world where bears can speak and craft magical armour. A world where armies of witches patrol the skies armed with bows and arrows and the establishment is obsessed with ‘Dust’ an enemy to some or a source of enlightenment to others, depending on your point of view.

I understand that they’re going to make a movie of it. If they do it right that will be some achievement as the book has so much spectacle, majesty and fantasy in it that even your imagination has to work overtime – goodness knows how they’re going to transfer that onto the ‘silver screen’.

If you haven’t read it, give it a try. I’m sure you won’t be disappointed. If you have teenage children tell them about it, reading it will be the prefect antidote to the pre-dominance of Soaps - it should be a must for every school library. And if you’ve got time, have a look at those pictures I referred to; they really are amazing.