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osprey_archer) wrote2024-05-23 09:33 am
osprey_archer) wrote2024-05-23 09:33 am
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Book Review: The Boggart
Although I've enjoyed all the Susan Cooper books that littlerhymes and I have read, I have also all this time been waiting impatiently for The Boggart. The Boggart was the first Susan Cooper book that I read in my youth; we had it on audiobook, and I listened to it five hundred times, and can still hear the exact intonation of the narrator's voice on certain lines, all of them to do with Emily because Emily was my secret favorite.
But really I love all the characters in this book, except of course the evil Dr. Stigmore, but I love to hate him. Such a good antagonist. The MacDevon dies at the end of the first chapter, but he's such a vivid presence, as indeed is Duncan the Boggart's first friend hundreds of years ago; and I think the description of Duncan MacDevon's funeral, with the drums and the pipers and the procession all taking the clan chieftain to the island of Iona, is the most beautiful in the book, perhaps the most beautiful in any of Cooper's books, and she has many, many beautiful passages.
After the modern MacDevon's death, the distantly related Volnik family in Toronto inherits his castle, a tumbledown place near Port Appin. Kidnapped fans: yes, that Appin, and there's are a number of Kidnapped callbacks that I never appreciated as a child. And the Volnik children Emily and Jessup befriend local boy Tommy Cameron, who takes them around and introduces them to the seals, and Emily gazes into a seal's eyes... a hint at selkie lineage.
When the Volniks head back home, Emily takes a rolltop desk with her (this book introduced me to rolltop desks, and I still lust for one), and accidentally locks the Boggart in one of the compartments.
So the Boggart is off to Toronto! And this becomes a fish-out-of-water story, always one of my favorite kinds of stories, in which the Boggart learns about pizza and peanut butter and computers. I've shared my theory before that children's authors are often, sometimes accidentally, writing about their own childhoods. On the whole, I think this holds true, but this book is an exception to the rule: reading this as a child in the 1990s, it really felt like the nineties, especially in the use of computers. And reading it now, it feels so nineties in a different way. Jessup's black and white monitor! The computer disks!!!
The Boggart is the disembodiment of harmless mischief - but out of his element, dealing with forces he doesn't understand (like, say, the electricity in traffic lights), he sometimes causes harm by mistake. His memory is none too good - here again we have that favorite Cooper theme of forgetting, only this time it's the magical creature forgetting, rather than causing others to forget - but he knows he is out of his element, and he begins to pine for his own home. The way that he communicates this to Emily and Jessup and the way they send him back is - well, I won't spoil it, but it's one of my favorite parts of the book; as beautiful in its own way as Duncan MacDevon's funeral, with the pipers piping as the clan bears the MacDevon's body up and over the hills.
littlerhymes and I have read, I have also all this time been waiting impatiently for The Boggart. The Boggart was the first Susan Cooper book that I read in my youth; we had it on audiobook, and I listened to it five hundred times, and can still hear the exact intonation of the narrator's voice on certain lines, all of them to do with Emily because Emily was my secret favorite.But really I love all the characters in this book, except of course the evil Dr. Stigmore, but I love to hate him. Such a good antagonist. The MacDevon dies at the end of the first chapter, but he's such a vivid presence, as indeed is Duncan the Boggart's first friend hundreds of years ago; and I think the description of Duncan MacDevon's funeral, with the drums and the pipers and the procession all taking the clan chieftain to the island of Iona, is the most beautiful in the book, perhaps the most beautiful in any of Cooper's books, and she has many, many beautiful passages.
After the modern MacDevon's death, the distantly related Volnik family in Toronto inherits his castle, a tumbledown place near Port Appin. Kidnapped fans: yes, that Appin, and there's are a number of Kidnapped callbacks that I never appreciated as a child. And the Volnik children Emily and Jessup befriend local boy Tommy Cameron, who takes them around and introduces them to the seals, and Emily gazes into a seal's eyes... a hint at selkie lineage.
When the Volniks head back home, Emily takes a rolltop desk with her (this book introduced me to rolltop desks, and I still lust for one), and accidentally locks the Boggart in one of the compartments.
So the Boggart is off to Toronto! And this becomes a fish-out-of-water story, always one of my favorite kinds of stories, in which the Boggart learns about pizza and peanut butter and computers. I've shared my theory before that children's authors are often, sometimes accidentally, writing about their own childhoods. On the whole, I think this holds true, but this book is an exception to the rule: reading this as a child in the 1990s, it really felt like the nineties, especially in the use of computers. And reading it now, it feels so nineties in a different way. Jessup's black and white monitor! The computer disks!!!
The Boggart is the disembodiment of harmless mischief - but out of his element, dealing with forces he doesn't understand (like, say, the electricity in traffic lights), he sometimes causes harm by mistake. His memory is none too good - here again we have that favorite Cooper theme of forgetting, only this time it's the magical creature forgetting, rather than causing others to forget - but he knows he is out of his element, and he begins to pine for his own home. The way that he communicates this to Emily and Jessup and the way they send him back is - well, I won't spoil it, but it's one of my favorite parts of the book; as beautiful in its own way as Duncan MacDevon's funeral, with the pipers piping as the clan bears the MacDevon's body up and over the hills.
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Every so often, unbidden, I still think the words, "Far, far beyond. Good afternoon." I don't know why that's what stuck. And when years later I was set to memorise poems, I chose 'Fear no more the heat of the sun' because it turns up in this book.
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