Oh, MOST excellent!
It seems we’ve got a significant group going! I’m jazzed by how many of you are willing (if not eager) to play along! Please remember that if you’ve got a post you want put up as you read – if you’ve got a question or an observation that you don’t want to get lost in a comment thread, say, or if you have a connection to make to a text that you don’t want anyone to miss – email it to me at mrschili at comcast dot net and I’ll post it for you.
I’m about 100 pages in as I write this. I’ve been reading, as I do when I’m examining a text closely, with a stack of Post-it flags next to me (in fact, I have several books whose leading edges are wider than their spines because all those sticky notes pile up. Somewhere, I’ve got a picture of my working copy of Frankenstein showing how significantly wider it is at the pages than the spine…). Here are some of the questions I’ve raised and a few of the observations I’ve made so far:
• Who is our narrator? I’m not going to call the narration “omniscient,” because I’m not getting the impression of “all knowing, all seeing” from the voice, but I have noticed, in several places, that our narrator has a very wide compassionate streak; look carefully at the scene involving Tony to see what I mean here. I don’t find the narration at all intrusive; in fact, I have to turn on that sensor to really see what the narrator is doing (see my last observation about Pullman’s facility with the subtle). What I do notice is that our narrator cares about the story, and that comes through in the voice of the novel.
• The relationship between human and daemon is fascinating to me. My understanding of it is that they are connected in a way that goes far beyond intimacy, yet they are distinctly separate beings with different perspectives (and, sometimes, morals). I love that Pan scolds Lyra early on, and that Lyra tricks him into the adventure that opens the book because she knew that if she told him the truth he’d never go along with her plan. Later, Pan sees important details that Lyra doesn’t – not only because he’s in a physical position to actually see such things, but because he’s got a different, more mature mindset than she does – and those pieces are critical to how both Lyra and the reader understand what’s going on.
• The narrator does a wonderful job, even early on in the novel, of letting us know that pretty much everyone knows more about who Lyra is than she herself does. There are several instances of tertiary characters making little slips that, once certain facts are revealed to Lyra (and the reader, who learns of them as she does), all fall into place. Having read this novel before (and just recently, too), I find myself catching those little hints all over the place.
• Pullman is a genius at conveying the subtle. His description of the Master’s behavior, both before and after Lyra leaves, is gorgeous; the narrative made me feel for this character, even though (at least, in the first reading) I had no idea what he was so profoundly conflicted about. So, too, does the description of Mrs. Coulter and her behavior move me. I actually shudder at this woman, and the skillful way the prose gets across the idea of a simmering violence just below the surface is a wonder to me, even on a second reading. I find myself on my guard whenever I read her sections, and the fact that I have a seething hatred for her daemon delights me. Books that can make me care enough to expend real emotion are well worth the time it takes to read them.
So, how’s YOUR reading going? What are YOU seeing?
