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

[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.