Midwinter Magic

A few weeks ago, in December, I read The Snow Child by Eowyn Ivey. I thought it was a wonderful book - I've written about it below. It's set in Alaska, and just as I finished it, I glanced out of the window - it was early morning, and still dark - and in the light of a street lamp, I saw that it had just begun to snow. It seemed quite magical.

Shackleton's Antarctic Expedition: photo by Frank Hurley

Since then, I seem to have been in thrall to books set in the frozen north - or, well, in frozen Britain. I read Susan Price's Ghost Drum series, set in the snowy north of Russia (again, scroll down); then, in company with lots of fans all over the world, I re-read Susan Cooper's The Dark Is Rising. This, if you've not read it, tells the story of Will Stanton, who, one mid-winter, finds out that he is not just an ordinary boy, but the last of the Old Ones, whose task it is to fight in a battle against the Dark. As the struggle begins, the snow falls, until it is so thick that normal life goes into abeyance.

It turns out that Robert MacFarlane is a great fan, and he suggested on Twitter that people should re-read it during the season in which it is set, and discuss it. Lots of artists took part too, and posted marvellous illustrations - it was great!

Then I went on to Stef Penney's Under A Pole Star. I'd had this on my Kindle for a while, but somehow it hadn't been the right time to read it. Now it was. Set in the late 19th century, it's about Flora, the daughter of a whaler, who yearns to get back to the Arctic where she went to as a child with her father. There she meets Jakob de Beyn, an American geologist and explorer, and the two, already both in love with the Arctic, fall deeply and irretrievably in love. Unfortunately, there is a third player in their story, Lester Armitage: a driven and dangerously ambitious explorer. Things don't end well. It's a vivid evocation of the frozen landscape and of the Inuit people who are Flora's friends, and it's cleverly told in several different stories and two different timescales.

Following that, I headed east to Iceland and read two detective books by Ragnar Jonasson, Black Out and Rupture. I read the first two in the series some time ago; they're about a young policeman called Ari Thor, and like most good detective series, they're as much about the lives of the characters as about the crimes that have been committed. And, naturally enough, there's a lot of snow.

And now I'm nearing the end of another book by Eowyn Ivey, called To the Bright Edge of the World, also set in Alaska. But more of that next time.

What is the fascination of the poles? (I just heard on the radio of a musician who is about to set off to the Arctic to be a song-writer in residence, so it's not just me!) I remember when I was a child reading in a big, dark red encyclopaedia, called The Children's Wonder Book or something similar, about the Aurora Borealis, the Northern Lights, and thinking how much I'd like to see them. (I still would.) And I'm fascinated by the eerie beauty of the photographs of Ernest Shackleton's Antarcticexpedition; I have a book about them.

Of course, I could go. These days it's quite easy - not as it was for Flora, Jakob and Shackleton. Perhaps one day I will. But in the meantime, how delightful it is to read about extremes of cold while curled up in front of a warm fire - to hear the call of the icy wastes, but to leave it for others to answer.

PS Some feedback, please: do you prefer the font smallish, like this, or larger, like the post below? Thanks.

Ghost Drum, by Susan Price

I've just finished reading Ghost Drum, which was originally published by Faber in 1987 and won the Carnegie Medal. So it's thirty years old - but it doesn't feel it. It feels intensely fresh and vivid.

Like The Snow Child, it has its roots in Russian folklore. And like Northern Lights and La Belle Sauvage, it features a shaman - well, several - and the ghost drum itself has a good deal in common with Pullman's alethiometer. I had been thinking how interesting it is that serendipity often leads you to books that link up with the one you've just read - but I guess it's actually the other way round: Ghost Drum had been on my Kindle for a little while, and I was prompted to read it because I vaguely realised that it had links with The Snow Child and with La Belle Sauvage.

But it's a very different book from either of those. It's like a piece of embroidery, worked with rich jewel colours on a piece of dark velvet, intense and vivid. It's remarkable.

I was going to write a proper review, but I came across this one by Julia Jones, and it says everything I would have said and more, so I'm just going to point you towards it here.

But one last thing. This book won the Carnegie, and it's wonderful - but it's out of print with traditional publishers. (Though Susan Price has published it independently herself, together with its two sequels.) Why is it out of print? I can just see the three books bound together and illustrated, perhaps with woodcuts - it would make a beautiful book!

La Belle Sauvage, by Philip Pullman

First, an apology - I read this while I was away, a few weeks ago; the copy was borrowed, so I don't have it by me to refer to. But I did make some notes.

I really loved Northern Lights. I felt spellbound by this world, so similar to ours, but so different in such enchanting ways. Lyra was a delightful character; warm, brave, loyal, stubborn - it never seemed surprising that she commanded such loyalty among the other characters. And what characters they were: Iorek the bear, Serafina Pekkala the lovely witch, the intrepid balloonist... and in each case, you get two for the price of one, because of the brilliant concept of the daemon - the familiar creature which each person has. Imagine that - always having someone with you to have your back, someone who knows you as no-one else can, who can advise you and encourage you!

I still liked The Subtle Knife, but not so much. And I had considerable reservations about The Amber Spyglass. I was not engaged by the creatures on wheels, and felt the whole thing had become unwieldy. But there was still much to enjoy, and I was very sad to leave the world of Lyra's Oxford - especially as she and Will had been so unsatisfactorily separated.

And so to the much anticipated first volume of Pullman's new trilogy, The Book of Dust. At the beginning, it felt wonderful to be drawn back into that world. Pullman is, of course, a master storyteller, confident and immensely skilled, and it immediately feels as if we are in safe hands. The hero is a boy called Malcolm, who lives at his parents' pub close to the river, just outside Oxford. He helps out at a nearby nunnery, and always has his ears open ready for a good bit of gossip. So of course, he's intrigued when a baby mysteriously arrives and is put into the care of the nuns. The child inspires affection in everyone who comes across her - including Malcolm, who soon becomes devoted to her. And he soon discovers that she will need every bit of his resourcefulness and courage to keep her safe from those who are hunting for her. The baby, of course, is Lyra.

All goes well for the first part of the book. The characters seem rather to echo those of the earlier trilogy - Malcolm has the warmth and courage of Lyra herself, and Will's ability to be ruthless when necessary. (Will is also very capable with his hands, and the descriptions of his work mending shutters etc are lovingly detailed.) And there's a courageous woman professor, also as in the earlier books - and a romance which develops, between Malcolm and Alice, a girl who works at his parents' inn. At first the two children don't get on at all, but that changes, and she helps him with Lyra when, as the waters rise all around them, they rescue Lyra from her enemies and flee in a sturdily-built little boat - The Belle Sauvage.

It was at this point that I became a little restive. The waters rise - and rise - and rise. The boat goes on - and on - and on.Though Malcolm is only 11, he turns out to be immensely practical and resourceful, and capable of taking on grown men in defence of his charge. Even so, he has to be baled out (sorry!) by some creatures from what feels like a quite different world - a giant, a fairy enchantress - as well as by a rather more humdrum pharmacy, which pops up at just the right time to provide nappies and other baby supplies for Lyra. I've read other reviews which say that the pace really picked up with the flood; but for me, it went on for far too long, and the world which seemed so solid and certain to start off with began to seem far less substantial. (And not just because it was largely underwater.) And then... it stops: and I gather that the next book will take up the story some twenty years into the future. So... what about the characters we've come to care about? What about the nuns - what happened to them? What about Malcolm and Alice?

There's still a great deal to admire and to enjoy in La Belle Sauvage - how could there not be, with a writer of Pullman's calibre? But with Northern Lights, he set the bar very high. With this book, beautifully written and full of splendid things as it is, I don't think he quite reaches it.

The Snow Child, by Eowyn Ivey

A few weeks ago, I was in Brussels, staying with my son and his family. I woke up early, when it was still dark, and settled down to finish the book I'd been reading. It was The Snow Child, by Eowyn Ivey; it's about a couple living in Alaska who have lost one child and never been able to have another. Then, out of the snowy landscape, a girl appears. Is she real, or have they created her out of their need?As I finished it, I glanced out of the window. In the light of a street lamp, I saw that the soft drizzle was turning first to sleet, then to snow. I didn't expect it to settle, but it did. It was a magical moment - it was as if the book itself had conjured up the snow, just as the couple had conjured up the child.

That snowfall was the finishing touch, but even without it, this is a beautiful, brilliant book. It's based on the old Russian folk tale of Snegurochka, which is about an old couple who make the child they have never had out of snow. In this story, the couple are called Jack and Mabel. In middle age, they have moved north to Alaska as pioneers, to carve a farm and a new life out of the wilderness. The landscape is vividly evoked, with its abundance of wildlife (including bears, pine martens, silver foxes, lynx and salmon), its remote mountains, its swift-running rivers - its beauty.

Mabel has never recovered from the death of her baby some years before - one reason for the move to Alaska is to escape the heartbreak of seeing other people's children. They keep themselves to themselves, but eventually realise they need other people in order to survive, and they make friends with their neighbours, George and Esther. Esther, practical, warm and unconventional, is the perfect friend for quiet, sad, self-contained Mabel, whose icy heart begins to thaw. She and Jack begin to live again, and to rediscover each other.

And then an extraordinary thing happens. After a snowfall, Jack makes a child out of snow. And immediately after that, they glimpse a real child, who has apparently emerged from the snow. Is she real?

Well, she turns out to be. But there's more than a sprinkling of magic about this child.

I won't say any more. I know I'm late to the party with this book and many of you will already have read it, but I don't want to spoil it for those who haven't. But - I read a lot. I read many books I would be happy - no, delighted - to have written myself. But it's not often I read one and think - there. That's how to do it. That's what it's all about. Mal Peet's Keeper was one, and this is another.

Happy New Year!

So, as 2017 recedes into the mist...

Looking towards Glastonbury from the Mendip Hills

 ... may your path through 2018 be as clear and bright as this one, between land and sea!

The coastal path on the Ile de Re, near La Rochelle in France