mgallashaw

It took me a while to get round to reading this. Which I don't mind too much: reading these books is like coming home, in a way. I'll touch on that more when I review The Grey King and Silver on the Tree, I think. Anyway, again, this is a bit of an on-the-spot overview of how I felt reading this book just this time. My longer review, which really covers how I've felt about the book over the course of many rereads, is here. The second book of the series is probably the most familiar, to me. I didn't read it as a child, I heard the BBC radio adaptation. I fell out with my sister badly when she lost the third episode of it that I recorded off the radio, and didn't forgive her until I found mp3 recordings of it last year. Ronald Pickup voiced Merriman, and was amazingly cast. I haven't actually listened to the mp3s yet, but I will soon. In my memory they're slightly badly acted in places, but mostly well-cast and well-adapted for the context, although it does skip some of my very favourite parts. Anyway, enough about the radio adaptation. Just know that Merriman is irrevocably voiced by Ronald Pickup, for me. A man who also voiced Aslan, if that gives you some idea of the kind of voice. Oh, and Struan Roger voiced the Rider, and was also amazingly good. He creeped me out something awful -- quite rightly so. This time, mostly I just sunk into the words. There are some gorgeous descriptions: of magical events, of ordinary events made magical, of family times, of light and shadow on snow, of the smell of new-made bread, of the cold of winter and the violence of storm. I still love how deft a touch Susan Cooper has with people. In just a page she can sketch out the life of a whole family so that the reader feels they've been there, exchanged a few words with each member of it. There's always enough detail to hold on to, to care just enough about each character, without ever getting bogged down. It does strike me that The Dark is Rising is a bit slower and maybe harder to grasp than other fiction aimed at a similar age group -- the difficulties for Will in resolving the two halves of his identity, for example, and the hints at moral ambiguity, and the lack of choice Will has. I wonder what implications it has for children with, say, LGBT identities, that Will is born a member of the Light and the Circle and cannot fight it, can never escape it, is bound to fight for it. I don't know how I think that would read: my struggles with identity were largely over by the time I came to these books. I don't believe people do choose their sexualities, and yet I rebel a little at the idea of Will's identity being so set in stone... I do think there's more ambiguity and food for thought here than it would seem, when you look at the simple Dark vs. Light dichotomy that seems to be set up. Not as much here as later, in a conversation between John Rowlands and Will Stanton -- I think in The Grey King -- but already starting to make itself known, I'd say.

2023-07-05 09:09