Book Review: The Magician’s Nephew

[osprey_archer]

littlerhymes and I have decided to reread the Chronicles of Narnia, going in internal chronological order since last time around I read them in publication order and it’s nice to switch things up a bit.

This meant of course that we started with The Magician’s Nephew, which I recollected as a distinctly “meh” book, although with some great moments - Jadis! Charn! So I was surprised that this time I actually quite enjoyed it, perhaps because I went in with suitably lowered expectations, but also perhaps because I make different demands from books as an adult.

Jadis and Charn remain fantastic. (littlerhymes and I agreed that Charn has powerful Piranesi vibes, or rather Piranesi has powerful Charn vibes.) The ruined city, the hall of statue-like figures, the terrifying Queen Jadis with the power to turn things to dust… who gets only MORE terrifying when she realizes in London that her power no longer works here, and without batting an eyelash she forges ahead with her plans to talk over the world. She jumps atop a hansom cab and drives it like a chariot through the streets of London!

And then the whole bunch of then, Jadis and Polly and Digory and a few miscellaneous hangers-on, get transported to Narnia. This is where the book lost me all those years ago, because the story just stops dead so Aslan can sing the world into being. Reading it as an adult, this sequence is quite beautiful, but… well, it does seem like cheating that it ends with the unconquerable Jadis simply running away!

She does reappear later on, but now the awe-inspiring queen has been reduced to a metaphorical snake in the garden, tempting Digory to steal one of the apples of the tree of life. It’s for his dying mother, after all! No one needs to know! If Digory is afraid his mother might find out, he could just ditch Polly here, so she won’t be able to tell anyone…

This last bit of wheedling snaps Digory out of it: anyone who could suggest abandoning Polly must be up to no good! (Digory and Polly’s friendship is a delight. Lewis is so great at writing kids bickering.) He takes the apple back to Aslan, and overnight it grows an apple tree, and Aslan allows Digory to take one of those apples home to his mother, and it heals her.

Lewis’s own mother died when he was a child, which perhaps is one of the reasons this sequence is so memorable: I remembered the temptation in the orchard and the cost of turning it down, and Digory’s joy when he can help his mother after all.

So really, both halves of the book are great. The problem is that you can feel Lewis wrenching the book midway through to turn it into the Garden of Eden retelling that he wants it to be, so the second half of the book doesn’t arise naturally from the first, and Jadis who seemed like such a formidable antagonist actually needs very little defeating at all.

Also I personally did not need to know why there was a lamp post in Narnia (Jadis accidentally planted a lamp post crossbar that grew into a lamp post) or how the magical wardrobe came into being (made from the wood of the apple tree that grew from the seeds of the magic apple that saved Digory’s mother), and actually think the explanation makes the lamp post and the wardrobe seem sillier and less convincing than when they were simply numinously There. Always the danger of prequels. They are apt to over-explain things.

But overall I had a good time! I’m super looking forward to this reread. The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, The Silver Chair... might I even come to appreciate The Last Battle? This seems unlikely, honestly, but The Magician’s Nephew surprised me, so who can say.

***

And now I am off on a camping trip at the Indiana Dunes! Will be back Thursday afternoon. Have a good week!

Comments

[philomytha]

Oh, it's a very long time since I last reread Narnia, but yes, the scenes of Jadis driving the hansom cab through London are so incredibly vivid.

And I'm the opposite: I loved the idea of a lamp-post growing from a little bit of crossbar, that always seemed extra delightful to me, though the magic wardrobe wasn't so interesting to me. But I love the visual of a baby lamp-post growing up, I just feel it's a shame it didn't seed an entire lamp-post forest...

I remember being very fond of the cab-driver and his wife and their horse, too, I loved how happy they all became in Narnia.

[osprey_archer]

Yes, she's sooooo badass. Don't want her to take over London but would have been VERY interested to see her try!

I bet that if C. S. Lewis had free rein with the lamp-post crossbar, it would have grown a forest. He was simply locked in to the single lamp-post from The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe!

YES I loved the cab horse who becomes a winged, talking horse in Narnia, and the cab driver and his wife who are country folk really but have been stuck in London get to live in the country again, in Narnia.

[sovay]

So I was surprised that this time I actually quite enjoyed it, perhaps because I went in with suitably lowered expectations, but also perhaps because I make different demands from books as an adult.

The last time I read the series through (c. 2009) I discovered that The Magician's Nephew had become my favorite, which definitely felt like the book sneaking up on me. It's the weirdest genre-wise and structurally and I love so many of its images, including the singing of Narnia up out of the earth.

(littlerhymes and I agreed that Charn has powerful Piranesi vibes, or rather Piranesi has powerful Charn vibes.)

Susanna Clarke has all-round Magician's Nephew vibes, which really delights me: I noticed them first in Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell when Norrell confronted by the gentleman with thistle-down hair demanding to know the name of his master in magic has to stammer that he taught himself out of books, to which the gentleman with thistle-down hair reacts with about as much respect as Jadis to Andrew Ketterley's similarly self-taught status—"'Books!' (This in a tone of the utmost contempt.)"

I have never warmed to The Last Battle beyond the two pages of the actual apocalypse of Narnia. If anything, over the years, that one's just gotten worse.

[osprey_archer]

It was so strange rereading it, because I remembered finding it such a disappointment and this time... it was not?? I grew into it, perhaps.

I still haven't read Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell. This year perhaps!

[troisoiseaux]

I still haven't read Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell. This year perhaps!

READ IT READ IT READ IT

[osprey_archer]

Perhaps that will be my next Long Book after I finish this gigantic Soviet history book I've been working on.

[sovay]

I still haven't read Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell. This year perhaps!

I'm very fond of it! It is recognizably by the same writer as Piranesi while being mostly a very different kind of book.

[silverusagi]

Always the danger of prequels. They are apt to over-explain things.

Yeah...

Somewhere I've got a really old boxset of the Narnia books that was put together in publication order, though the ones sold now are always in chronological order.

While I can appreciate The Magician's Nephew more now, I doubt the series would have been a smashing success if it was the book that had actually been published first.

[osprey_archer]

My box set is in chronological order, although on my first go-round a knowledgeable friend told me I MUST MUST MUST read them in publication order, so I rearranged them.

[sovay]

though the ones sold now are always in chronological order.

Which I still think is n-v-t-s nuts.

[grrlpup]

I think as a child reading LionWitchWardrobe, I didn't really wonder about the whys of the lamp-post and the wardrobe. They were mysterious and intriguing, but I didn't make up theories or anticipate that further books would ever explain it; if anything I just checked the closet-backs around me more closely. So the kick I got out of the fairly pedestrian explanations when I read Magician's Nephew was outsized! with a feeling of discovering connections instead of an author having made them up.

[osprey_archer]

How many children made a habit of crawling to the backs of closets/cupboards/wardrobes after reading The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe? The true number may never be known!

[lucymonster]

Oh, a Narnia reread is so tempting! Magician’s Nephew was never my favourite either, but I wonder if like you I might find it improved through adult eyes.

Enjoy your camping trip! ❤️

[osprey_archer]

I remembered enjoying the Jadis parts and finding the rest a disappointment, so it was quite a surprise how much I enjoyed the book as a whole this time around. You indeed might find it improved, too!

Camping was great! Rained for a couple of days, but then the sun came out and I got a nice long walk on the beach.

[lucymonster]

I’m glad the trip went well despite the rain!

You ended up inspiring me to pick up The Magician’s Nephew myself, and your thoughts are more or less my thoughts. The Charn adventure and the Narnia adventure feel like two separate stories that don’t really work joined together, but the kids are delightful and overall I really enjoyed it. And of course now I’m going to have to read the rest as well.

[osprey_archer]

I'm so glad that you were inspired to reread The Magician's Nephew! I've been really enjoying this readthrough. littlerhymes and I usually do two chapters a night and it is a STRUGGLE to stick to that with The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, even though I've read it multiple times and know exactly what happens!

[asakiyume]

Really glad you enjoyed it more on a reread. I love it very much--but then, I enjoy five of the books (all but Prince Caspian and The Last Battle) so much I can't pick a favorite--they are all like magical talismans I can deploy at hard moments. Then after those five comes Prince Caspian, and after Prince Caspian comes The Last Battle.

(somehow I must initially have posted this in reply to a comment, so I'm reposting it as just a comment on the entry)

[sovay]

Then after those five comes Prince Caspian, and after Prince Caspian comes The Last Battle.

What puts Prince Caspian so far down the list?

[asakiyume]

I think in the same way that the other stories have talismans, that one has anti-talismans (for me--though it does have a couple of talismanic good scenes too). I really found the dwarfs and hag scheming scene disturbing, as a kid, and I continue to not-like it in memory. Maybe it was one of my first experiences of sitting in on the bad guys scheming? And I found the Narnia that the Telmarines had created depressing in a mundane way, with the schools that seemed a little too much like schools I knew. (Thinking of the scene when the natural world takes over and e.g. the river spirit breaks the bridge--I did love that! But I was depressed that things had gotten so bricked up in the first place) And I had liked Susan very much in the first book (first for me; "back in my day we read them in publication order"), but in Prince Caspian you begin to see the route that Lewis has mapped out for her. Of course I had no idea about that trajectory when I was reading it, but I was disappointed that Susan couldn't see/was stubborn in the way she was.

And both child me and adult me is uncomfortable with what the Telmarines coming from another world and then being sent away in a similar manner means for the Narnia world's cosmogony. Well, child-me wouldn't have used that word. But I was definitely confused, because there seemed to be some implication that Telmarines were responsible for the outsized human population in Narnia, and yet there had been humans in Narnia at the end of The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe, when the grown-up Pevensies are on the hunt. (And then of course in The Horse and His Boy we see a whole world of other humans--but I didn't know that yet when I was reading Prince Caspian initially.)

I did like the single combat, and I liked the trees dancing, and the freeing of the fords of Beruna.

[sovay]

Thinking of the scene when the natural world takes over and e.g. the river spirit breaks the bridge--I did love that! But I was depressed that things had gotten so bricked up in the first place)

The waking of the trees and the breaking of the river-god's chains are the parts of the book that have always stayed with me and I get a real thrill of deep time from the realization by the Pevensies that Cair Paravel has become a thousand-year ruin and they are haunting it like a quartet of King Arthur, but from your mention just now of the mundanity of the schools I wondered if Lewis would have done better writing an eruption of the Narnian Dionysiac into our world, like Jadis in the streets of London, instead of making Telmarine-colonized Narnia sort of half England and half not.

[asakiyume]

An eruption of the Narnian Dionysiac into our world would be very cool.

I was talking about this with the ninja girl after leaving the comment, and I think adult-me's most lingering problem with the story is the nature/purpose/role of the Telmarines. Most kids' fantasy stories, when they have the bad guys defeated, just handwave away what you do with the enemy armies. "Oh, they had to settle down and accept the new king, of course." --Why not that solution here? Sending all those men off through the world gate... what about their children, wives, parents? IDK it's just UNCOMFORTABLE when you start to think about it. If you want to do "send them back to Planet X," then don't have them living there for generations!

[osprey_archer]

Yes, I'm really looking forward to rereading the series! So many good books in the sequence. Pity it has to end with The Last Battle, but it always ends with the last battle no matter what order you pick (if you're doing a full reread rather than a "I feel like reading Voyage of the Dawn Treader," of course).

[thawrecka]

This one was my favourite as a child. I think it was the second I read, after The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, and it captured me a lot more, I think because I was so enamoured by the images of Polly and Digory sneaking between each other's houses, as well as the wood between worlds. It has probably aged better than my childhood fondness for A Horse and His Boy, at least...

[osprey_archer]

The bit where they sneak through the secret sub-attics between houses is SO fun! Almost a little sad they DON'T get to explore the empty house next door, although of course it could not be as exciting as the wood between worlds...

Yes, I expect A Horse and His Boy to be an Experience when we get there.

[anna_wing]

Jadis in London was clearly influenced by E Nesbit's Queen of Babylon in The Story of the Amulet! I remember wondering what her sister was really like...

[littlerhymes]

Oh I have got to read that - I will download it now. Thank you!

[osprey_archer]

Oh, a good reason to read more E Nesbit! I always mean to read more E Nesbit but then other things get in the way...

[littlerhymes]

Jadis, queen of my heart! I sigh dreamily as she turns me to dust. I hate the monarchy but for Jadis... from the afterlife, I make an exception.

This was SO fun to read, I am glad we picked this as the next project.

[osprey_archer]

I feel that Jadis is a perfect example of Why Monarchy Is Bad Actually, so you are well within your rights to love her! A queen in all senses of the word, who firmly demonstrates monarchy in peak failure mode. Both aesthetically and politically/morally pleasing.

YES, I'm so glad we're doing Narnia! Astonishing honestly that we haven't before? But we have been focusing mostly on things that at least one of us hasn't read before.

If we aren't weary of C. S. Lewis by the end of our Narnia adventures, I'd love to buddy-read some of his other novels. I've never read the Space Trilogy, and although I have read Till We Have Faces, that was back in high school (was it high school? maybe college? YEARS ago anyway) and I think I would get a lot more out of it now.

[littlerhymes]

We exchanged culturally on more obscure series and now we are tackling THE series! ... oh my should we read the Oz series after this?

I've read the Space trilogy but not since I was a teenager. I would definitely be interested in more!

[osprey_archer]

I read the first Oz a while ago and didn't like it very much, so I don't want to commit to ALL of Oz (in any case I think we would only do the original Ozes by Baum... I know there have been continuations), but we could try the first one and see if I like it more now.

We will see where we're at on Space Trilogy when we finish Last Battle!