La Belle Sauvage, tells the tale of 11-year-old Malcolm Polstead, who lives with his parents at The Trout Inn in Wolvercote. This book is the first book of the not yet completed The Book of Dust trilogy. The book, the first in a three-part prequel to Philip Pullman’s Dark Materials and tells the story of the key characters in this trilogy.
First impressions, when choosing a book, can be lead to missed opportunities – some of us would not have chosen to read this book had it not been a book group choice. Decisions would have been based on the size (it look huge), the target audience (young people) and the genre (fantasy). How wrong we would have been!
The size of the book is daunting to those of us who squeeze their reading in around busy lives – the text though is also large! Big text = big book but the time to read was no more than a typical, average book.
The target audience – it may be targeted at young people but it is a really good read for any age. Don’t be put off by that.
And, fantasy – well, yes it got a bit extreme, overly magical and odyssey-like in the second part but ‘fantasy’ (it turns out) does not mean ridiculous or fairy tale or overly complex or even unrealistic.
It was actually quite a realistic read for us as we live close to Oxford and we thoroughly enjoyed the setting. It is easy to visualise many of the locations, even with ‘author license’ applied. The description of The Trout is spot on, including the peacocks, there is a ruined convent just beyond the Trout AND there is Oxford has a Polstead (Malcolm’s surname) Road (probably named after the village of Polstead near Stroud in Gloucestershire).
(UNRELATED?) FACT
While putting these notes together, I found that Lawrence of Arabia lived at number 2 Polstead Road from the age of 8. Lawrence was a talented translator and his work included translation of the epic poem The Odyssey of Homer and of The Forest Giant.
Anyway, having got over the ‘do I want to read it?’ hurdle we all enjoyed this read very much. (Including one of our group who thought she would have to be tied to a chair to read it but after the first chapter she had got over that thought!)
The fantasy element of fairies and daemons was uncharted territory and some of the group had more trouble getting to grips with this concept, than others. Daemons though we concluded are an absolutely brilliant concept and we spent a while discussing what our own might be. The pain of being separated from your daemon was painful to read. And the relationship between Malcolm and Lyra’s daemons (Astra and Pantalaimon) was very touching.
The content is quite dark and there are some quite explicit references to sex, which we discussed with regard to the likely young audience (some of us know readers of Phillip Pullman as young as 10 years old) and concluded that it would be interpreted differently and the subject of sex and rape had been well handled in the book.
The League of St. Alexander which has schoolchildren hunting out atheists and heretics led to some particularly chilling scenes. We dwelled on this a while as Pullman is known for his dislike of organised religion and we pondered on the purpose of the concept. Well, in his own words: “In my view, belief in God seems to be a very good excuse, on the part of those who claim to believe, for doing many wicked things that they wouldn’t feel justified in doing without such a belief.”
Because this is a fantasy the time in which the story takes place is irrelevant but we were intrigued by the mix – there were no cars, no mobiles, no TV. There were hot air balloons, a gyrocopter, and motorboats. There were disposable nappies!
The story is beautifully written. The description of the canoe (La Belle Sauvage) is fabulous. We hope all comes good with regard to the canoe in later books.
Of the characters, we loved Malcolm (Mal) he was so responsible for his age and exceptionally caring. We also enjoyed seeing Alice ‘blossom’ on the journey with her love for Lyra, her growing awareness of her feminity (the fairy makeover scene is particularly touching) and as her friendship grew with Malcolm.
Bonneville and his awful daemon made for horrific yet intriguing reading. We loved the Giant (even though at this point the book was getting just a little bit silly.) We would like to know what happened to the Nuns and hope for more news in the second book in this trilogy.
Overall, this is a very rich book, with so much to discuss and so little time to do so - we only just got started on the Nuns and didn’t even get to discuss Lord Asriel or the Gyptians.
We concluded that this is a modern day Enid Blyton ‘rollicking good adventure with a baby’.
So would we recommend this book? yes definitely. Our one member who hadn’t yet got hold of a copy of the book, but came along for the chat anyway, grabbed at the chance to borrow a copy and rushed off into the sunset to make a start!
The rest of us eagerly await the Book 2 (The Secret Commonwealth), which is yet to be published. If we are lucky it may be ready for our 2019 Summer Read!
Our next read is Their Finest by Lissa Evans and we will meet at 8pm on Thursday 27th September 2018 at The Hundred to discuss this.
