Review: The Book of Dust, La Belle Sauvage by Philip Pullman

One of the reasons I don't use a formal rating system on this blog is that assigning something a certain number of stars always seems to result in injustice. For example, if a book by my favourite writer isn't quite as sublimely brilliant as I know they're capable of producing, I might give it four stars, even three if I'm feeling vindictive. However, were I to read the same novel by an unknown, it would have breezed its way to an effortless five based on my surprise by all the skill and qualities which familiarity would otherwise cause me to take for granted.

As a reader, a writer's work cannot be separated from their oeuvre, nor indeed from what they have meant to you at various points in your own life. Therefore, when I encounter a book that, taken solely on its own merits, is a perfectly adequate piece of middle grade fiction trying to pass itself off as an adult novel, I would probably be likely to give it three stars. Unless, of course, it was written by Philip Pullman, when I would feel a remarkable degree disgust, anger and personal betrayal.

Look. I loved His Dark Materials. I read them relentlessly as a child, they being one of the few things that did not talk down to me in terms of content, character, or events. I've written before about the state of middle grade and YA fiction for avid and intelligent readers of fantasy when I was that age, and Pullman was a huge part of me making the transition from Diana Wynne Jones and Susan Cooper to Robert Holdstock and Angela Carter. I cannot overlook this when I say that La Belle Sauvage is such a dreadful disappointment.

You see, it wants to be The River at Green Knowe when it grows up, an ambition which perhaps misses the point that The River at Green Knowe is a children's book. 

Moral messages that were subtle and carefully handled in the original trilogy are here presented with all the nuance of a cosh to the back of your head - we get it Phil, the church are the bad guys - the wonder and strangeness of Lyra's world is replaced by a series of frankly generic folkloric cameos, and our deeply abrasive, awkward, believable protagonist is replaced with... Malcolm.

I'm not even going to start talking about Malcolm. 

But on top of this dumbing down of style and content, there was the insistence that this was one for grownups. Perhaps the very same grownups who had grown up reading His Dark Materials, and it was this that really stuck the knife in because, put simply, La Belle Sauvage does not function if viewed as an adult novel.

It has long been a conviction of mine that the difference between adult, YA, and children's fiction is not so much a matter of content, as one of structure, pacing, and focus. Just as children's fiction - good children's fiction - is not merely adult fic with the 'inappropriate' content taken out and all the nastiness coddled up, adult fiction - or at least, good adult fiction - is not just a children's story with a bit of sex, swearing, and an absolutely gratuitous implied rape thrown in to it.

The two modes serve different needs, tells a story differently, talk to their readers in a whole different language, and this is why you never really outgrow good children's fiction - because its qualities remain. Historically, Pullman knew this. His Dark Materials is frequently devastating, lyrical, powerful - they are children's books, unashamedly, and in the very best senses of the words.  

La Belle Sauvage isn't even a very good children's book.

Ultimately, if this hadn't been something I was reading for bookclub, I wouldn't have finished it. I don't want my childhood heroes to diminish this much in my eyes. And, if that weren't enough?

[Spoilers for His Dark Materials, and La Belle Sauvage below]

Look. I completely understand why writers fall in love with their characters, especially those whose actions in the world of the story are perhaps... questionable. You spend a lot of time with your creations, you come to understand them, sympathise with them, care about them. However, I think it is your duty as a writer not to permit that understandable affection to overcome the internal laws of narrative.

Moreover, I also think it's quite important not to mistake the passionate enthusiasms of a predominantly teenage fanbase for a particular, very sexy, character for something you should take on board when making creative decisions. Especially when their enthusiasms involve recasting all this character's negative actions as the work of a a misunderstood rebel. Nor, indeed, if you consider that this very same teenage fanbase was probably also producing great volumes of angsty, grapefruity fanfiction starring Tom Marvolo Riddle.

What I mean to say is that, yes, I would absolutely read smut about a Lord Asriel, I think as a writer of an ostensibly moral novel it is important that you not lose sight of the fact that he murdered a child.

My main - indeed, my major - complaint with The Amber Spyglass was not the much decried ending, the mulefas, or even that it got a little on the nose in places, but rather that Asriel (a villain in Northern Lights who, and I emphasise this, MURDERED A CHILD) is recast as some kind of authorially endorsed noble rebel against a God who - unless it hadn't been made clear enough to you - is the bad guy here.

While as an adolescent this may briefly have satisfied my need for the woobifcation of a crush,  on each subsequent rereading it has rankled more deeply. Asriel's actions at the end of Northern Lights are not only deeply shocking, but also in character with Asriel's ruthlessness, selfishness, and desire to pursue his own glory and gratification at any expense. His actions in Northen Lights felt like a profound commentary on privilege and authority, and serve as a warning against those who take a such a rigid stand against the Christian God that they permit their morality to become as jaded as those who commit horrors in His name.

That Pullman backtracks on that to serve his own agenda is a betrayal, yes, and a failing in his writing. But that he compounded that by permitting the character of Asriel to have such a disruptive on the narrative in La Belle Sauvage genuinely disgusted me. This did not feel like a more innocent man who tragically becomes the distant father and betrayer in Northern Lights, but rather an idealised swoonfest whose presence overrides every other objective in the characters' lives - inspiring instant trust, reverence, and even love, on no basis whatsoever.

One can be of the devil's party without knowing it, but Pullman picked his side quite consciously, and by valourising Asriel, he shows his hand and pushes us to agree with his rather simplistic moralising. I've read a lot of books I don't like in the past few years, but it's been a long while since I've read one that made me this angry.