His Dark Materials by Philip Pullman

After the madness of 2016 I wanted some escapism over Christmas. A much-loved children’s book felt like the right move - perhaps something innocent, fanciful and set far away from the politics of the day.

I tried to finish Phillip Pullman’s His Dark Materials about four years ago, and maybe another four before that. The obstacle I always encounter is that I savour each book in the trilogy a little too much - similar to how I savour a box of quality Christmas chocolate. In particular the first book, Northern Lights, is the perfect companion during a cold December, where all you want to do is cuddle up next to the lights of the tree and a hot cup of cocoa.

The storytelling is dreamy. Lyra Belacqua plays in the rooftops and spires of her Oxford, travels in a gyptian barge to the Fens, and then on past Norroway and off to the lands of frozen lakes, polar bear kings and witches. In a set of perfect moments attuned to the Christmas spirit, she rides a sledge pulled by reindeers, wrapped up in a “hood lined with wolverine fur” and looks up at the fragile pinks and greens of the aurora.

Pullman even plucks out from our world of romanticised technology for his creations – zeppelins, tram-carts, air balloons and steam trains are the chosen methods of transport in Lyra’s world - a world running on anbaric (electricity) which seems so similar to our world, yet so different.

The Oxford-based author is lucky to have his home setting so rich with material to use in his writing. I can imagine him walking around the Pitts Rivers museum when he was conceiving the world of His Dark Materials. The museum is a writer’s dream, an archive of treasures, including displays of Arctic furs, which no doubt were the inspiration behind Lyra and her friend’s wintry attire, while the “Bodley Library” is an endorsement of the Bodleian Library which I’m sure Pullman visited often to select the passages of John Milton and William Blake to introduce his chapters.

And this is where the escapism stops. Clearly, the world of His Dark Materials is an allegory for every religious and political war that scars our history. Lyra’s fall into adulthood is likened to Eve’s original sin. The childlike appeal of Northern Lights and the fairytale creatures that walk its world are part of the Blake inspired “Innocent” stage of the trilogy, but as they move around the worlds of the second two instalments, they become tainted by “Experience”. The machines Pullman writes about may be considered idyllic by today’s standards, but these are the “burning tiger” mechanisms of Blake’s Industrial Revolution.

After finishing the pages of the third novel, finally in early January, the Christmas tree had come down and I could see that Philip Pullman has spoken to the media about the causes of Brexit and the disasters of 2016.

However, I did not finish the series on a sombre note. His Dark Materials is foremost an adventure story about a young child and her friends and it was the perfect read to start 2017.

The Woman in Black by Susan Hill

It’s traditional to read a scary book on Christmas Eve and I would like to say for the purposes of the opening sentence of this review, that, on the 24^th December I snuggled up in front of my Christmas tree and read the opening line of Susan Hill’s The Woman in Black: “It was nine-thirty on Christmas Eve”.

However, I didn’t want to tempt the ghosts of Christmas past this year.

There is something about this story, I feel, that I will always find uncomfortable. So much so I won’t dedicate too much time describing the figure that haunts the unfortunate Arthur Kipps in the lonely house that sits among the marshes.

I had watched the 2012 film before seeing the play at the West End, and after seeing the play I slept all night with the bedside lamp on. So when I came to the book I was sufficiently freaked out enough to decide I would not read it at home on my own. When I did start reading, however, I noticed a theme that had been brushed over in the film and was developed in the play. This was the theme, most obvious given the title, of women.

The story of the woman in black, Kipps explains, is “not particularly unfamiliar”. A woman, unmarried, gives birth to a baby to the shame of her family and she is later pressurised to give him up for adoption. The book was published in 1983 and is described as a traditional English ghost story - quite possibly set in the Edwardian period, with flashbacks to the Victorian era. Sadly, stories of forced adoption span right across these time spans. In Victorian England unmarried mothers were forced to give up their children to foundling hospitals, while Hill was writing her horror novella in the wake of the adoptions of the 50s, 60s, and 70s, as orchestrated by the Catholic Church.

Once the theme of women and motherhood is established, this frighteningly little tale takes on a new form. Arthur Kipps reads by candlelight, alone in the creaky Eel Marsh House, Walter Scott’s The Heart of Midlothian, a classic novel that deals with infanticide and the pressures the state place on young females. The ghost tales of Crythin Gifford are dismissed as “women’s tales” and the gender of Arthur Kipps canine companion takes on a little more significance.

It seems just, almost, that the people who suffer under the vengeance of the fearful phantom are Kipps and Jerome, both men who practise the law - the same framework which takes away the moral rights of a young mother.

While this feminist undercurrent helped to distract me from some disturbing passages, it didn’t mean I decided against reading this book in the company of others at all times, in clear view of what was behind me, or that I spent more than 5 seconds looking at the front cover. I would say if you are looking for a true horror story look no further than this one.

The Heart of the Midlothian by Sir Walter Scott

On the evening of the 7^th September 2016, I was smuggled up in bed getting to the “good bit” of The Heart of the Midlothian by Sir Walter Scott. A horde of angry Scots were rushing Tolbooth Prison in Edinburgh, seeking out the incarcerated Captain John Porteous, while the frantic man was trying to escape up the chimney of his prison cell. I turned to the page where a suspended figure can be seen “wavering and struggling” by “the red and dusky light of torches” in Cowgate and thought that would be enough for the evening.

The following day I looked up the Porteous Riots and discovered that, unbeknown to me, I was reading about the execution of the Captain of the Guard on the exact night it happened, 280 years ago.

A charming coincidence, or perhaps a spooky souvenir from one of the UK’s most haunted cities, I will never be sure, yet The Heart of the Midlothian continues to top any list for books about Edinburgh. Although I struggled again with the thick dialects for the characters – trying to do a Scottish accent in my head for 507 pages was a challenge –I still enjoyed walking the streets of the city in the eighteenth century and the book helped to stifle any holiday blues.

The Oxford University Press edition also comes with notes, from Sir Walter Scott and the editor, which expand the folklore and myths hinted at throughout the story. I now know that I did a “Silent Disco Walking Tour” during the Fringe around Grassmarket, once a place of public execution equipped with its own hanging tree, and fun fact, The Maggie Dickson pub in the square is devoted to a woman tried for infanticide who was also the inspiration behind one of the main characters in the novel.

Unfortunately, the long journey by the heroine Jeanie Deans is speckled with the coincidences often found in classic literature I find tedious (Jane Eyre conveniently turning up at her long lost cousin’s house is a prime example), yet the freaky concurrence of the opening pages, the notes on Edinburgh’s past was good payment for my long reading hours and made the book a better keepsake than any pricey Scottish yarn.

The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson

I wanted to read a tale about a haunted house this year for October/Halloween. As autumn started to rear its pretty head I felt a craving for descriptions of old country mansions, stocked full of creaky staircases, bumps in the night and quite possibly a home library I wouldn’t have the nerve to step into.

The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson is the definitive haunted house story.  Sitting high on a wooded hilltop, shadowing a nameless town, it is the ugliest, most fearful beast in the estate of the horror house genre. It is a shame, however, that when reading the book I felt as if the contents had been lifted and used to decorate other second-rate productions. The worst of all is that 1999 thing with Catherine Zeta Jones. I can only warn you like a gatekeeper who already knows the perils that await you, never watch that abomination which unfortunately uses that same names and premises as Shirley Jackson’s creation.

Nevertheless, nothing can spoil this classic which draws you into its confines. The first few sentences would have the well-known and recounted “In a Dark Dark Wood, In a Dark Dark House” scrambling its little legs and screaming at the top of its lungs to get away. How can a selection of the English language produce something so scary?

Hill House is “not sane” you see. Its neat, firm bricks sit in silence and whatever walks there walks alone.

 “Vile”, thinks Eleanor, the shy and unassuming member of the party of invited guest, as she drives up the house’s driveway, “get away from here at once”. The members of Dr Montague’s paranormal case study enter the house with the patter of an Agatha Christie cast and explore the labyrinth of slanted rooms. Glimpses of the history of the house are teased out, the poltergeist never forms beyond a giggle heard behind a closed door, the ending is so abrupt it feels unfinished and leaves questions unanswered.

The text of this book has been analysed by so many mediums; was there an actual haunting or was it a psychological manifestation of a young woman slowly going mad? I would be able to provide some concrete evidence if I was not taken over a compulsion to hide the book in my freezer every time I delved too close to the words on the page.

I’ve personally decided that The Haunting of Hill House is exactly that. The story is cleverly built on the past cases of other haunted mansions; Borely Rectory, Glamis Castle and Ballechin House are mentioned by Dr Montague on page 138, the arrival of the Dr’s wife brings the occult tool of the  planchette (a variation of the ouija board), while the Victorian volumes the Dr reads in bed hark back to a time of maidservants and wicked masters, that combined with the humour and twisted vocabulary of Shirley Jackson, means this book serves up a treat for October reading.

Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde and Other Stories by Robert Louis Stevenson

I brought this copy of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde and Other Stories by Robert Louis Stevenson at The Writer’s Museum in Edinburgh. The free museum is dedicated to lives of Edinburgh’s literary greats, Stevenson, Sir Walter Scott and Robert Burns. You can find it after hefty walk up the Mound Steps, just to the right of St Giles’ Cathedral, tucked away in Markars’ Court. The courtyard’s flagstones are forever marked with the words of Edinburgh’s writers, and perhaps on a more seasonal basis, dotted with leftover bottles of wine from Fringe Festival revellers.

I was surprised to learn about the life of the author of one of my all time favourites, Treasure Island. The exhibition displayed photographs of Stevenson lounging in his final home in Samoa in camel coloured trousers and long riding boots, twirling his very impression moustache. After reading a timeline of his exploits in Europe, New York, San Francisco and New Zealand – to name a few – I hope one day to add his biography to my ever increasing home library.

This edition of the Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde is accompanied by stories which reflect the life of the globe-trotting author. If you want to read a gothic tale set in every Victorian metropolis, London, Edinburgh and Paris, this version is for you. While the witchy tale of Thrawn Jane  is written in a such strong Scottish dialect, I must plead ignorance of what actually happened – donning an appalling Frankie Boyle/ Billy Connery impression didn’t help in the slightest – the ghoulish tales of Burke and Hare in The Body Snatchers  gave me a full blown case of holiday blues and promise myself I would one day go back to "Auld Reekie”.

Go Set A Watchman by Harper Lee

I never really wanted to read this book but a long train journey and a lack of any other reading material led to it being ticked off the list. I questioned the motives surrounding the publication of Harper Lee’s follow up. It was suspicious that after a 55 year hiatus, the elderly author was wheeled out of her secluded, and most likely pleasant, existence to face the second bestseller storm she would encounter in her life. However, as To Kill a Mocking Bird is such a classic, I thought I would read Go Set a Watchman just so I could answer in the affirmative when asked if I have read it.

However, I didn’t get it.

About 200 pages in I was enjoying the retreat to Maycomb, Alabama. The drawling tones of the residents, the non-abiding auto-mow-bills and the slacks the grown-up Scout loafs about in - like a fictional Katharine Hepburn - opens the story up like a feature picture in waiting. I also admired the witty rural humour and eloquent language Lee put down with ease – words like “axiomatic” and “coterie” had me hastily reaching for the dictionary.

But, spoiler alert! It was the ending that I just didn’t understand and as I thought the publication of this book was fathomlessly pointless.

So Jean-Louise (Scout) finds out her father Atticus Finch is racist and this devastates her whole conception of the world and her memories of childhood. Her fiancé is also a racist and after engaging in a blow-out row with the both of them Jean-Louise decides to promptly leave Maycomb and never return. Her uncle then shows up, proceeds to beat her up until she is seeing stars, then he gets her drunk and THEN she decides to stay.

I’d love to throw in terms like “disillusionment” or “love of family” but instead I think I will forever view To Kill A Mocking Bird and Go Set a Watchman as two things that are part of the same story -yet completely separate - like the Jackson Five and Michael Jackson’s solo career, Grease and Grease 2, Dirty Dancing and Dirty Dancing 2… the list goes on. It’s a bit of a shame really.