Book Review: The Silver Chair
Jun. 16th, 2023 11:05 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
osprey_archerRereading the Narnia books has been an interesting exercise in the fragility of human memory. Going in, I believed that I remembered The Silver Chair rather well, because hadn’t I read it over and over? Or at least read parts of it over and over? Or, perhaps, just read the Silver Chair part over and over, the part where Prince Rillian is strapped into a chair and screams and begs to be let out as the chair saps away his memory for another day and leaves him again the willing slave of his enemies –
“Oh no, Prince Rillian is Bucky Barnes,” I realized, as I enthusiastically described this scene tolittlerhymes. Clearly this kind of thing simply speaks to something deep in my soul.
And to be fair I DID remember the chair scene pretty well. And of course I remember Puddleglum, the hilariously gloomy marsh wiggle! And Jill and Eustace themselves, and the scenes at their horrible school Experiment House, which takes potshots at the kind of progressive school Lewis disliked while also, somehow, being exactly like the horrible boarding school that he described in his memoir.
Somehow I’d conflated the final Scourging of Experiment House with the ending of Prince Caspian, where Aslan leads a bacchanalia to destroy some Telmarine schools. I was quite surprised when Jill and Eustace and Caspian clear out Experiment House without any maenads at all! (Caspian is of course technically dead at this point, but he's been resurrected in Aslan's Country, which I guess clears him to hop off on otherworldly adventures if necessary.)
And I’d forgotten just about everything else about the book. The trek across the north lands! The sojourn with the giants! OMG the giant cookbook which is like “humans are delicious! Not marsh wiggles though,” and Puddleglum is like HEY. I get it. You don’t want to be eaten, but you also don’t want the giants not to even want to eat you.
And then the underground world of the Lady of the Green Kirtle. (Lewis’s villainesses continue to be completely on point.) The darkness, the quiet, the mushroom-like gnomes who make no noise, Prince Rillian prattling on fatuously under the Lady’s enchantment… then of course the complete about face once he’s in the Silver Chair to be re-enchanted for the next day.
I was delighted when it turned out the gnomes had ALSO been enchanted by the Lady of the Green Kirtle. Once they’re free, they all go wild with delight! They burrow back down into the deep depths, the Bism, where jewels grow wild and you can drink ruby juice. Rillian is tempted by the adventure, but the others convince him that he needs to get back to Narnia, which is probably just as well because even in Narnia I think drinking ruby juice might kill you.
Still, what a gorgeous image. The whole book is just overflowing with these wonderful flights of the imagination. What an excellent book! What a high note to end on! What a pity that instead we have to go forward with The Last Battle...
“Oh no, Prince Rillian is Bucky Barnes,” I realized, as I enthusiastically described this scene to
littlerhymes. Clearly this kind of thing simply speaks to something deep in my soul. And to be fair I DID remember the chair scene pretty well. And of course I remember Puddleglum, the hilariously gloomy marsh wiggle! And Jill and Eustace themselves, and the scenes at their horrible school Experiment House, which takes potshots at the kind of progressive school Lewis disliked while also, somehow, being exactly like the horrible boarding school that he described in his memoir.
Somehow I’d conflated the final Scourging of Experiment House with the ending of Prince Caspian, where Aslan leads a bacchanalia to destroy some Telmarine schools. I was quite surprised when Jill and Eustace and Caspian clear out Experiment House without any maenads at all! (Caspian is of course technically dead at this point, but he's been resurrected in Aslan's Country, which I guess clears him to hop off on otherworldly adventures if necessary.)
And I’d forgotten just about everything else about the book. The trek across the north lands! The sojourn with the giants! OMG the giant cookbook which is like “humans are delicious! Not marsh wiggles though,” and Puddleglum is like HEY. I get it. You don’t want to be eaten, but you also don’t want the giants not to even want to eat you.
And then the underground world of the Lady of the Green Kirtle. (Lewis’s villainesses continue to be completely on point.) The darkness, the quiet, the mushroom-like gnomes who make no noise, Prince Rillian prattling on fatuously under the Lady’s enchantment… then of course the complete about face once he’s in the Silver Chair to be re-enchanted for the next day.
I was delighted when it turned out the gnomes had ALSO been enchanted by the Lady of the Green Kirtle. Once they’re free, they all go wild with delight! They burrow back down into the deep depths, the Bism, where jewels grow wild and you can drink ruby juice. Rillian is tempted by the adventure, but the others convince him that he needs to get back to Narnia, which is probably just as well because even in Narnia I think drinking ruby juice might kill you.
Still, what a gorgeous image. The whole book is just overflowing with these wonderful flights of the imagination. What an excellent book! What a high note to end on! What a pity that instead we have to go forward with The Last Battle...
