Philip Pullman: La Belle Sauvage
May. 8th, 2018 06:16 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bibliogrammaPhilip Pullman’s YA novel La Belle Sauvage is the first volume in a new trilogy set in the same universe as his earlier His Dark Materials novels. This volume is a prequel to The Golden Compass, and Lyra appears as a six-month-old infant.
The protagonist is 11 year-old Malcolm Polstead who, along with his daemon Asta, lives with his parents in Gostow, a village not far upriver from Oxford. Malcolm has a busy life - he attends school, works as in his parent’s inn, The Trout, does odd jobs at the Priory of St. Rosamund just across the river, and spends his free time on the river in his canoe, La Belle Sauvage. And he’s a spy, although that’s a rather new thing, and something that he rather fell into by accident through being a bright, observant and compassionate young lad.
Malcolm lives in a time when conservative, religious forces are taking power. Scholars are finding their researches examined fir the taint of heresy. The Church has a thought police division who can make questioners disappear. Children are being encouraged to watch their families and report any suspicions of disbelief. And Malcolm, after witnessing such a disappearance, and accidentally intercepting a secret message intended for scholar Hannah Relf, has been drawn into the fight for intellectual freedom.
Malcolm quickly learns that there is a great deal of mystery surrounding an infant being cared for at the Priory, a baby who is apparently the consequence of a rather scandalous relationship between the influential and wealthy Mrs. Coulter, and the adventurer Lord Asriel. This baby is, of course, Lyra. In the course of helping out around the Priory, Malcolm becomes both charmed by and devoted to Lyra, and is soon swept up in a desperate struggle to save the infant from threats, both human and natural. When a catastrophic flood damages the Priory just as a threatening and dangerous individual, Gerald Bonneville, makes his move to seize the infant from the care of the nuns, Malcolm and a local girl, Alice, must flee with Lyra in La Belle Sauvage, seeking sanctuary for the little girl.
The novel portrays the well-chronicled descent into fascist social control through the eyes of a bright child who instinctively feels that ruling through fear and throttling free thought are distinctly wrong. Malcolm’s instinctive commitment both to freedom from oppression, and to saving the infant Lyra, make him a very sympathetic character. His intelligence, loyalty and resourcefulness are on display from the beginning of the novel, but the most interesting character development lies with Alice, who begins the story as a sullen and rather unpleasant teenager, but is transformed through her choice to help Malcolm save Lyra.
While I wouldn’t call it a favourite work, I enjoyed Pullman’s His Dark Materials trilogy, and I found myself feeling much the same way toward La Belle Sauvage - it’s an interesting and enjoyable novel, and certainly worth reading.
The protagonist is 11 year-old Malcolm Polstead who, along with his daemon Asta, lives with his parents in Gostow, a village not far upriver from Oxford. Malcolm has a busy life - he attends school, works as in his parent’s inn, The Trout, does odd jobs at the Priory of St. Rosamund just across the river, and spends his free time on the river in his canoe, La Belle Sauvage. And he’s a spy, although that’s a rather new thing, and something that he rather fell into by accident through being a bright, observant and compassionate young lad.
Malcolm lives in a time when conservative, religious forces are taking power. Scholars are finding their researches examined fir the taint of heresy. The Church has a thought police division who can make questioners disappear. Children are being encouraged to watch their families and report any suspicions of disbelief. And Malcolm, after witnessing such a disappearance, and accidentally intercepting a secret message intended for scholar Hannah Relf, has been drawn into the fight for intellectual freedom.
Malcolm quickly learns that there is a great deal of mystery surrounding an infant being cared for at the Priory, a baby who is apparently the consequence of a rather scandalous relationship between the influential and wealthy Mrs. Coulter, and the adventurer Lord Asriel. This baby is, of course, Lyra. In the course of helping out around the Priory, Malcolm becomes both charmed by and devoted to Lyra, and is soon swept up in a desperate struggle to save the infant from threats, both human and natural. When a catastrophic flood damages the Priory just as a threatening and dangerous individual, Gerald Bonneville, makes his move to seize the infant from the care of the nuns, Malcolm and a local girl, Alice, must flee with Lyra in La Belle Sauvage, seeking sanctuary for the little girl.
The novel portrays the well-chronicled descent into fascist social control through the eyes of a bright child who instinctively feels that ruling through fear and throttling free thought are distinctly wrong. Malcolm’s instinctive commitment both to freedom from oppression, and to saving the infant Lyra, make him a very sympathetic character. His intelligence, loyalty and resourcefulness are on display from the beginning of the novel, but the most interesting character development lies with Alice, who begins the story as a sullen and rather unpleasant teenager, but is transformed through her choice to help Malcolm save Lyra.
While I wouldn’t call it a favourite work, I enjoyed Pullman’s His Dark Materials trilogy, and I found myself feeling much the same way toward La Belle Sauvage - it’s an interesting and enjoyable novel, and certainly worth reading.