100 book, #7: The Perilous Gard

[osprey_archer]

VICTORY! I went to a used bookstore today - a very splendid little bookstore, which overstuffed shelves arranged in bays - and stumbled on Elizabeth Marie Pope's The Perilous Gard. "Oh!" said the clerk, touching the book with reverent hands. "I haven't seen this in so long. Have you read it?"

"YES!" I said. "IT'S AMAZING. I LOVE KATE SUTTON SO MUCH."

I think if I hadn't, she might have told me the book was awful, just so she could keep it herself. The Perilous Gard has this effect on people. I stole my original copy from my mother, then lent it out to a friend, who loved it so much that she forgot it wasn't technically hers.

In the last days of Queen Mary's reign, clever, clumsy Kate Sutton is exiled to Elvenwood - so named because it's rumored to be inhabited by the Fairy Folk. And what Fairy Folk they turn out to be! They're still my favorite of all the Fairy Folk I've read: secretive and shadowy, terrifying, ambiguous figures. Are they truly otherworldly creatures? Or merely pagan humans who have remained hidden from the church?

The book's use of religion is another treat. It wears religion lightly, just as it wears its history: both are so well-integrated into the characters and their reaction to the world that they need never become obtrusive. Kate's attempt to convince the Lady of the hill of that Jesus paid the teind for all time is a particularly excellent example: the incompatibility of their worldviews, inherent in all their interactions, becomes explicit here.

And how much do I love Kate's composure? The teind will be paid that night, by Kate's friend Christopher Heron, so she's terrified and under pressure; but still she tries to explain her religion in terms that the Lady will understand. She manages it quite lucidly; the Lady doesn't understand because the gap between her culture and Kate's is simply too wide.

Is there a romance between Kate and Christopher? Is the sky blue? Their conversation crackles: it sparks between them like electricity, bright and beautiful and painful as they talk in the darkness of the Fairy Folk's Hill. They're both wounded people, even before they were taken into the Hill, but wounded in a way that fits together perfectly. In a book where I love everything, I love Kate and Christopher's romance most of all.

Comments

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

This is one of my favorites of all time. I love this one too. I *so admired* Kate. I wanted to learn to walk like one of the Fairy Folk so that Randall wouldn't recognize me when I came out from under the hill.

Everything about it was so perfect! The ending was perfect--oh, everything.

[ladyherenya]

Ooh, this is the first of your 100 books that I actually know! How exciting that you found it secondhand - I bought it new the other day, having concluded that the chances of finding it secondhand were non-existent, because why would anyone who had it want to get rid of it?

And I don't really have much to add, except to nod emphatically to everything you've said. Especially the point about how the book's use of religion, and how that affects the characters' worldviews.

I also love the illustrations - how they accurately depict what is happening in the story and are placed so that they don't spoil anything. I can't think of many other novels which actually manage to do that.

[osprey-archer.livejournal.com]

because why would anyone who had it want to get rid of it?

I know! I nearly fell over when I saw it in the used bookstore. How could anyone get rid of it? I suspect a tragic backstory to its journey to the bookstore.

And YES, the illustrations are brilliant and beautiful - so atmospheric. I wish children's/YA books were published with illustrations more often!

[osprey-archer.livejournal.com]

Doesn't everyone want to learn to walk like the Fairy Folk? I tried (very briefly) to teach myself how to fall the first time I read it, but eventually gave it up as useless without a Gwenhyfara to tell me what I was doing wrong.

I loved Randall. It so infuriated me what the Fairy Folk had done to him - even more than their taking Christopher Heron for the teind (after all, if they hadn't, he and Kate would never have gotten together!).

And yes. There aren't many things in the world that are perfect, but The Perilous Gard is one of them.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

Richard Cuffari. I loved his illustrations too <3

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

Out of curiosity, when you first read it, did you think of the fairy folk as actual otherworldly beings or just pagan people from earlier times?

I totally thought the latter, so much so that I was bewildered when my best friend read it and totally thought the former. But over the years I've come to the conclusion that my reading is either a minority reading or that people think it's immaterial--by which I mean, they think the distinction is immaterial.

[osprey-archer.livejournal.com]

I thought they were pagan folk from earlier times. But at the same time, they clearly have some uncanny powers - I'm thinking specifically of the Keeper of the Well, who washes out of the well at the end and has clearly been long-dead...

So even if they are only long-hidden pagan humans, they're long-hidden pagan humans with eldritch powers.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

I guess I put down the Keeper of the Well to sleight-of-hand and stage tricks, just like I put down most everything else to drugs (the other serving women, poor Randall--that, by the way, is what got me started on this thread: your remark about Randall).

Getting back to things I loved about them: I loved their self-discipline. I think after reading it, I wanted to only eat porridge for a while :D

[osprey-archer.livejournal.com]

How boring it would be to eat nothing but porridge! It's one of the things that makes them seem so uncanny: the fact that they do eat porridge, only porridge, day after day, with total self-possession. (Or self-discipline. I admired that self-discipline so much.)

The children of the Fairy Folk clearly do not throw temper tantrums in the candy aisle.

[intertext.livejournal.com]

Oh, oh, oh - how I love that book. And the illustrations (I always loved his illustrations for The Far Side of Evil by Sylvia Louise Engdahl, too). But The Perilous Gard is really one of my absolute all-time favourite books, for all the reasons everyone has stated.

[osprey-archer.livejournal.com]

He illustrated The Far Side of Evil too? :( My copy doesn't have his illustrations! So sad! I love that book, too. Clearly I need to start scouring used bookstores for a copy with the proper illustrations...

[intertext.livejournal.com]

There's an interesting comment about it here (http://collectingchildrensbooks.blogspot.ca/2011/06/sunday-brunch-for-june-19.html), with a copy of the cover image. I hadn't realized that Richard Cuffari had died so young :(