Review: La Belle Sauvage

La Belle Sauvage by Philip Pullman
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

4.25 Stars

(I also listened to the audiobook, read by Michael Sheen.)

Philip Pullman has returned to the world of Lyra in La Belle Sauvage, the first book of The Book of Dust series, which is reportedly a trilogy like His Dark Materials. The book is set in Lyra's Oxford but not in Jordan College. It begins in the humble Terrace Room of the Trout Inn. Giving us two new children to follow, Malcolm, age eleven, and Alice, age fifteen to sixteen, Pullman again grounds the story in the perspectives of adolescence. Malcolm, a curious and resourceful child, becomes fascinated with a baby and her daemon at a nearby Priory and becomes quite protective of her and determined to keep the baby safe. (And for any of you who don't think a male child could show this level of protective interest in younger children, I would like to have you meet my nephew, Jorge.) That baby is, of course, none other than Lyra, placed in the safekeeping of nuns at the Priory by Lord Nugent, head of an organization called Oakley Street. It is very obvious that from the moment of her scandalous birth Lyra is a baby that everyone is interested in. And by interested, I mean interested in possessing and controlling. The witches' prophecy about Lyra is known seemingly from the moment she is born. The Consistorial Court of Discipline wants her, people trying to curry favor with the CCD want her to give her to the CCD. Mrs. Coulter wants to know what she gave birth to. And Lord Asriel... well, Lord Asriel wants to see his daughter, to croon to her in the moonlight, to keep her safe and happy. One of the surprises of this book is how much Asriel seems to love his little daughter. It adds a layer of complexity to his character because I was never sure it was love as much as a cool attachment in The Golden Compass.

Among the new villains and heroes, we have the disgraced, predatory, and truly odious Gerard Bonneville, a younger Coram Van Texel (yes, Farder Coram!), an Oxford researcher named Hannah Relf, and a beautiful witch queen named Tilda Vasara. Most heroic of all though, are Malcolm and Alice, who will go to great lengths to safeguard Lyra from Bonneville, Mrs. Coulter, and the CCD people. Malcolm is also really good at safeguarding treasured objects that later end up in an older Lyra's hands.

The broad-reaching control of the Magisterium, into the classroom, families, and the social milieu is shown in all its glory. In a manner not unlike (ironically) that of the Cultural Revolution in China or the Hitler Youth, the Magisterium has found a way into the lives of the young as a way to guarantee control of future adults. The vile organization whose goal is absolute control, the League of St. Alexander, glorifies the memory and actions of a boy who sent his parents to their deaths for apostasy. The growing reach of the organization is rather horrifying. It manages to turn its child members into fearsome tyrants. Pullman has created a cautionary tale for young people in telling them about this type of organization.

There are a few interesting developments in this book vis a vis the HDM story and Dust. But I'm not exactly sure where they are taking us, frankly. Whereas His Dark Materials gave us portals to many other worlds within other universes, Pullman turns the spyglass around in this book and gives us a story that takes place in the worlds within Lyra's world. I was intrigued by the title of the second book in the series, already listed as The Secret Commonwealth because as a lifelong reader of folk and fairy lore, the one Secret Commonwealth I knew about was that of Reverend Robert Kirk, a 17th-century Gaelic folklorist, who wrote a book titled The Secret Commonwealth of Elves, Fauns and Fairies. This unpublished book was later taken up by Sir Walter Scott and later by Andrew Lang (yes, that Andrew Lang) in the 19th Century. I can tell you, reader, that there is a definite correlation to that book within La Belle Sauvage. What is far less clear is how this all relates to Dust and our journey to figure out what Dust is and does (beyond what we know from The Amber Spyglass). Frankly, though I loved the passages in LBS that relate to the Secret Commonwealth, I'm at a loss to where this is headed. I'm also chastened to realize after searching in The Golden Compass that there is nary a mention of a Malcolm and the only Alice is the false name Lyra gives a man who buys her some food after she's run away from Mrs. Coulter. Thus, the fates of these new children are obscured. At the time of TGC they would have been in their mid-twenties. By the way, the idea that an 11-year-old and a 15-year-old are a romantic pair, as some reviewers have suggested, is pretty absurd. Malcolm, as the central character, is entering puberty at age eleven and starting to realize that he is attracted to girls. That does not make the relationship between Malcolm and Alice a romantic one.

The story of La Belle Sauvage develops slowly, in the typical richly detailed Pullman fashion. It would sort of work as a standalone for those who have not read His Dark Materials but I'm not sure how well it works. There is far less information about what daemons represent in this book that the reader is given in The Golden Compass. The narrow constraints of Malcolm's world also may provide less interest to the reader. This book is about how a baby Lyra got to where we meet her in TGC. It shows us that the battle over Lyra has been going on since she was born and that the study of Dust and alethiometers has been going on for just as long, if not longer.

Caveat 1: One thing that may bother some readers is that this book ends very abruptly. I wouldn't call it a cliffhanger because we arrive at a clear point of safety, but it ended leaving me turning pages back and forth going "wait, what?!" I know for some readers that may be frustrating.

Caveat 2: This is a big one. Parents seeking to put this book in the hands of younger children should be aware that there is a shocking scene in this book. Malcolm does not fully understand it and so younger children may not quite either, but it is very clearly implied to be a rape scene. As it does involve a central character, for some, this may be a deal-breaker. It is not discussed or detailed in any degree but it is clearly there. I was very taken aback that Pullman wrote this scene and I'm not fully sure it was necessary.


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