Claire Mabey and Freya Daly Sadgrove discuss the final book in Philip Pullman\u2019s The Book of Dust trilogy.<\/p>\n
Spoiler alert: to give this review our fullest, we have decided not to avoid spoilers. Please be warned.<\/p>\n
Claire Mabey: Well, Freya. I badly wanted to love this novel. And for the first few chapters I did \u2013 I loved being back in Lyra\u2019s world. However, by the middle of the novel I was uncomfortable with how perplexed I was; and by the end? Disappointed, even a touch incredulous. This was not the novel I hoped it was going to be.\u00a0<\/p>\n
How about you? Overall impression to start with before we get into the nitty gritty?\u00a0<\/p>\n
Freya Daly Sadgrove: I personally am not incredulous or disappointed \u2013 did you expect like, more?\u00a0<\/p>\n
It felt biblical for me \u2013 and I put that pressure on this book. I expected a similar level of world-shattering as the end of His Dark Materials (HDM). I do feel similar to how I felt finishing The Amber Spyglass (the third book in HDM trilogy) \u2013 discombobulated and adrift \u2013 and part of that feeling is that I am going to be thinking about this for the rest of my fucking life.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Now tell me what you hated\/didn\u2019t like!<\/p>\n
CM: Biblical is the perfect word for it. But, I kept feeling like Pullman has lost so much faith in humanity that he inserted himself into the story \u2013 I could sense him in there, telling us off, and that made me recoil from the world, flustered!\u00a0<\/p>\n
Here is a non-exhaustive list of things I am confused by:<\/p>\n
Plot oddities: many loose threads unexplained. The main one for me was if the windows into other worlds are allowed to\/should be open, why were we subjected to the separation of Will and Lyra? That seemed like a huge reversal of the laws of the world. I was always troubled by the closures of the windows: I thought that the overarching metaphor of the HDM books was that it was about fantasy and storytelling itself. And that every time we open a book we are Will with the Subtle Knife, slicing into a world. Sometimes, bad things come out with the good stuff, and that\u2019s correct and no reason to shut it all out. But I don\u2019t think metaphor should rule a fantasy and in the end, that is exactly what has happened in The Book of Dust. It\u2019s even stated at the end of the novel: Lyra says everything acts like a metaphor all the time.\u00a0
\nWhat was the point of Mustafa Bey? Just to say a system of trade is better than Capitalism?
\nWhat was the point of the gryphons? To give Malcolm a heroic moment? And say creatures who love gold for gold are better than humans who love gold for greed?\u00a0
\nThe ending was so weak?!<\/p>\n
To me, HDM did profound things with ideas of consciousness and faith: faith in the human capacity to expand and not contract. The Book of Dust seems faithless by comparison.<\/p>\n
Also, did Lyra\u2019s personality have to be sacrificed? She is dull!<\/p>\n
FDS: Okaaaaaaayyy so. On the windows into the other worlds: I love that reading. Except then isn\u2019t closing the windows kind of anti-book? Or is it because \u201cyou have to know in which world you are living\u201d \u2013 Werner Herzog said this in an Instagram video and I think about it all the time now. You do \u2026 have to close a book. And that is so sad. But also, Spectres came out of the cuts into the worlds, but didn\u2019t Dust also leak out of the worlds through the cuts? I\u2019m just trying to marry that up to them being books.\u00a0<\/p>\n
I found that I related to Lyra, which was devastating, because she is an adult now, and it is devastating to see adult Lyra after His Dark Materials. She is dull in comparison to herself as a child, and many of her opinions are annoying, which is realistic for a 20-year-old university student. But she is also still badass \u2013 she\u2019s just a shade of her old self. But of course she is! She\u2019s so vulnerable without her daemon.\u00a0<\/p>\n
What did you think of Lyra in The Secret Commonwealth, if you recall, did you find her dull in that too?<\/p>\n
CM: I wasn\u2019t as worried about her in that book: I understood how she had become indoctrinated, unsettled, by those loser men who said daemons were an illusion and pure reason rules. She was traumatised, after all. But I also don\u2019t quite buy that Lyra would have lost her gusto quite so much? (Also, yes, closing the windows is anti-book because it\u2019s anti-complexity! But in Pullman\u2019s world, if they leave the windows open the Dust will leak out and that\u2019s what was so harmful and what Lyra and Will had to prevent? So confused!)<\/p>\n
I think what bothered me was where HDM was so wholly convinced of itself \u2013 Lyra as Eve, upending the old story and making new connections to set us all free \u2013 The Rose Field felt weak in its equivalent. Like, what was that angel encounter all about in this book? The dull angel? I just felt ultimately like Pullman was undermining his own magnificent creations.\u00a0<\/p>\n
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FDS: Yeah the angel was weird! But \u2013 the imagination\/consciousness thing \u2013 I think this is where my aspirituality inflects my reading of it. Lyra talking about metaphor \u2013 everything being metaphor; metaphor being necessary bonds \u2013 I am an absolute sicko for metaphor. I see metaphor everywhere. I am literally faithless, so a faithless argument hits for me.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
CM: I think you\u2019ve helped me see how if a person can see metaphor in the world then their imagination is working, which is this book\u2019s primary concern. A new faith, based on what is right there and the poetry within?\u00a0<\/p>\n
FDS: Yeah! It\u2019s our attention\/engagement that creates meaning. This is a quote from page 232 of the novel: \u201cWas that what the imagination did? See connections between things, connections otherwise invisible, and find a meaning in them? \u2026 She had to be part of the process for the meaning to exist at all.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Lyra has to be part of the process!\u00a0<\/p>\n
CM: OK. You\u2019ve made me feel better about Lyra\u2019s trajectory. This makes so much sense and does, again, emphasise how brilliant the daemon device is.\u00a0<\/p>\n
But what did you think of Malcolm? I was confused about him as a character after his strong start in La Belle Sauvage. I was befuddled by his role in The Rose Field.\u00a0Please help me understand him and the gryphon plotline?\u00a0<\/p>\n
FDS: So, the people of Lyra\u2019s world have become more like us: over the past 20 years \u2013 experimental theology has become science, and people just don\u2019t talk about gryphons and witches and the sort of semi-mythical things like The Secret Commonwealth. Except for people like Malcolm.<\/p>\n
Were we allowed unfettered access to the mythical things in HDM because we were with children, and so were enmeshed in it naturally?\u00a0<\/p>\n
CM: I mean, that is part of the pain of the last two books in The Book of Dust: in those, Lyra is adulting and it\u2019s not as fun.\u00a0<\/p>\n
FDS: Which is literally true! Pullman is right: adults get bogged down in the adult world.<\/p>\n
CM: So \u2026 is this why the witches think Malcolm is so special? Because even as an adult he never questions The Secret Commonwealth? Never questions the gryphons?\u00a0<\/p>\n
He doesn\u2019t really credit the gryphon folk with much worldliness, though. He tells them a lot of lies. BUT \u2026 OH! That was Lyra\u2019s lost gift! Is he supposed to stand for what Lyra could be had she not lost her imagination? I.e., her ability to lie\/tell stories?\u00a0<\/p>\n
FDS: Maybe why he\u2019s \u201chappy\u201d in that conversation they have on the gryphon\u2019s back near the end.\u00a0<\/p>\n
You pointed out that the gryphons\u2019 love of gold was a parallel for the way humans love money. The gryphons\u2019 more \u201cpure\u201d love does make you have to think about gold differently from how humans think of it. How we don\u2019t value the things themselves, only what wealth can be made from them.\u00a0<\/p>\n
And then, the gryphons are like the witches and the armoured bears \u2013 majestic and unknowable and bizarre and a bit inexplicable? Am I being too forgiving? They may have been a tangent but I did fucking love being up there in the mountain palace with the gryphons and Malcolm and his tools.\u00a0<\/p>\n
CM: You\u2019re helping me see Malcolm\u2019s point \u2026 I think. But I have this lingering discomfort that Pullman put himself too far into the story.\u00a0<\/p>\n
FDS: What bits did that for you?<\/p>\n
CM: There\u2019s a bit on page 545 where Malcolm and Lyra are talking about binary absolutism. I agree with the conversation \u2013 binary absolutism sucks. However, the conversation felt staged. Malcolm was schooling Lyra rather than Lyra discovering this for herself. And it made me feel a little\u2026 suspicious that Pullman\u2019s avatar is Malcolm. A scholarly, vital sort of chap. And I did not enjoy that thought. Especially when I was confused about Malcolm\u2019s role in the end. I don\u2019t think he was really needed!\u00a0<\/p>\n
FDS: Interesting! I did feel the staged vibe of that conversation \u2013 and I did feel things were a bit too discussed and less embodied in this one \u2013 but I don\u2019t think it ever occurred to me that Malcolm was a Pullman. Also, if Pullman has lost his faith\u2026\u00a0<\/p>\n
CM: I think what I mean when I say Pullman has lost his faith is that I felt his gaze on our world, acutely. It felt like he was making very plain big (truthful) statements: Capitalism = bad; imagination = good. Maybe it just felt too obvious? I could see the mechanisms at work too clearly? I worried that he doesn\u2019t think his readers will get it without labouring it?<\/p>\n
FDS: I feel like it wasn\u2019t all the way spelled out, though. I thought that was all left quite vague. Like, who killed Mustafa Bey? Was the implication that it was the third enemy who killed him? Was the third enemy Capitalism itself? The conglomerate?<\/p>\n
Also, I forgive Mr Pullman for losing some faith in us. I myself have been losing a great deal of faith in us. But lately I have also been shoring it up again in other ways. And that\u2019s the Faerie Queen bit quoted at the end, right\u2026? We\u2019re getting buffeted about but we know what\u2019s good and we keep going towards it\u2026<\/p>\n
Philip Pullman. (Photo: KT Bruce).<\/p>\n
CM: Can we swerve and just spend a moment on the witches? Pullman has the best witches of all of literature. I want to be one very badly.<\/p>\n
FDS: Oh, hell yeah. Cloud pine? The flight with Pan, where he talks about how she moves with it? The bit at the forge where they read all the wispy intention of the clouds and direct it?<\/p>\n
CM: Those were my favourite parts. This sense of being a creature in and of a world that is both seen and unseen (like Dust flowing all around!). I love intentions and the idea that you can move through the world with them.<\/p>\n
Is there anything you\u2019d like to add? Linger on?\u00a0<\/p>\n
FDS: So much! The thing about Will \u2013 it did seem like a massive expectation that we might see him again \u2013 I was sure the world through the red building would be our world.\u00a0<\/p>\n
CM: Massive set up there for sure, right? What I do love about this book is how invested I still am in it. I will read it again. But I can\u2019t shake the disappointment. Am I disappointed because adults are disappointing? I wanted young Lyra back?<\/p>\n
FDS: I think that is key.<\/p>\n
I always thought the hugest thing at the end of HDM is when Lyra loses the ability to read the alethiometer \u201cby grace\u201d. That should be so profoundly and painfully felt \u2013 The Book of Dust is an expansion of that terrible, terrible disappointment.<\/p>\n
I have a memory that I constantly revisit while reading these books: I was 12, and playing with toys, they were in my hands, and I had known it was coming, and while they were in my hands the magic went out \u2013 that particular ability to play just evaporated. It was completely devastating. And I felt like I was living in that moment, a lot of these two books\u2026 \ud83d\ude41<\/p>\n
CM: Send in the gryphons. Fucking hell. Send in the gryphons!<\/p>\n