When I got my copy of La Belle Sauvage, I misread it as “La Belle Sausage.” The sad thing is the French word for sausage is saucisse. The words “La Belle” should have tipped me off that the title wasn’t in English. I’m from Canada. I’ve studied these things. I even lived right next door to La Belle Province (literal translation: Land of a million nameless dark terrors).
Probably didn’t have anything to do with Patti Labelle, either.
So I sat there feeling like a right dingbat, until I got several pages in, and the protagonist is outraged over the fact that one of his classmates has taken some paint to his canoe, named “La Belle Sauvage” and changed the “v” to an “s”. He responds well, punching the classmate into the Thames.
I cheered right up. I wasn’t the only one who made that mental pratfall. Well, good.
Philip Pullman likes to play games with the assumptions and expectations of his readers. The results are almost always entertaining.
This first novel in his His Dark Materials prequel is in the same world, and features a number of the same characters. It’s just about 8 or 9 years earlier, when the protagonist, Lyra, is about six months old.
The setting is a small village, just several miles upstream from Oxford, towards the very source of the River Thames. There are references to various landmarks in and around the college area, and some of them I recognized, having seen them with my own eyes. Others…well, I got curious after finishing the book and looked. The village of Wolvercote really does exist. So does Godstow, and its nunnery.
And so does The Trout Inn. In the book, it’s presented as a public ale house, an type of establishment from the 11th century and beyond, seen in works by Robert Louis Stevenson, Charles Dickens, and Neil Gaiman. (Pubs in general, that is: The Trout in our reality dates from the 17th century, one of those new-fangled ones with inside plumbing.) These days, The Trout Inn is an upscale restaurant (but still a pub) with a yummy-looking menu online.
It’s our world, except of course, it isn’t. They all live on the Isle of Great Brytain, and in a country known as Albion. The Church seems to be the main authority. There’s a few other differences, such as daemons and dust, but that’s a bit involved for a short review.
This all got me to wondering something that elided me through the entire His Dark Materials trilogy: what era is this supposed to be? Seventeenth century felt about right, But then about a third through the book, I learned they had internal combustion engines. They weren’t prevalent, but there were enough of them around that people found them unremarkable. They had a form of electricity, and gyrocopters, along with zeppelins.
It’s an odd mix of past, present and fantasy, and it works fairly well. Philip Pullman is aware of this ambiguity (how could he not be?) and at one point twits the reader (me) about it, giving the fourth wall a quick, decisive elbow poke.
The protagonists are on the run from a bad guy and his three-legged hyena daemon, and hole up in a deserted potions and pharmaceutical shop. They have a baby (Lyra) with them, and having found bottled water, milk powder, and nappies, decide some heat is in order. There is a fireplace, complete with kindling and dry wood. The protagonist, Malcolm, decides to light it, since warm babies are happy babies.
He took out his knife and struck the sparker again and again on the rasp, producing a shower of sparks each time, which each time failed to light the paper in the fireplace.
“What you doing?” said Alice, throwing him a box of matches. “Idiot.”
Pullman is rightfully seen as one of England’s greatest fantasy writers, and this first book of his Book of Dust trilogy will only add to that repute. Descriptives and characters are richly drawn, without slowing the pacing or detracting from the suspense-driven plot. His world, so very much like ours and yet so different, is unique. The writing is sure-footed, and he is unafraid to challenge his readers.
A few years ago they made a movie, The Golden Compass, of the first book of His Dark Materials, Northern Lights. The movie, featuring Nicole Kidman, Dakota Blue Richards, Daniel Craig, Sam Elliott, Eva Green and Ian McKellen, was well-made and should have been the start of a franchise to rival the Harry Potter series. Unfortunately, someone at the Catholic League actually read the books, no doubt at the loss of his immortal soul, and the League declared the series “atheism for kids.” Faux News, always eager to pander to religious fear and hate, chimed in, and the movie underperformed at the box office.
Of course, Pullman is an atheist, and in his books, the Church are emphatically not the good guys, but rather a version of the church familiar to any English historian. Pullman is engaged with his own fantasy building, and has no need for the fantasy building of the Catholic Church and Faux News.
However, common sense has prevailed. There is to be a second Golden Compass movie, due to be released in 2019. It won’t follow the plot of the original trilogy, but will take up the story some 12 years later, since the star, Dakota Blue Richards, is no longer able to convincingly play a nine-year-old girl.
Of even greater interest is the announcement that the BBC will do an eight-part series as the opening set of a projected 40-parter based on His Dark Materials. Jack Thorne (Skins, The Fades) will be adapting the series for television. Signed stars include Ariyon Bakare (Rogue One) will play Lord Boreal, James McAvoy, Dafne Keen (Logan), Luther‘s Ruth Wilson, The Wire‘s Clarke Peters, and Hamilton‘s Lin-Manuel Miranda.
If they do it right, this could be BBC’s answer to Game of Thrones. Certainly the source material has the scope, originality, and richness of plot and characterization.
But for now, there is The Good Sausage. Enjoy.