A Geography of Reading

"It is by reading novels, stories, and myths that we come to understand the world in which we live." -Orhan Pamuk

Revisiting a Beloved Childhood Favorite for #TheDarkisReading: The Dark is Rising by Susan Cooper

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the dark is rising - susan cooperWhen I saw on Twitter that Robert Macfarlane had proposed a book group where we all start reading The Dark is Rising by Susan Cooper on Midwinter’s Eve (the day the book starts) and share our experiences under the hashtag #TheDarkisReading, I was in heaven. He’d brought together my so many of my favorite things in one simple idea: my favorite social platform, sharing thoughts about books, and a beloved childhood classic. What a wonderful trip the past few days have been.

The First Time I Read The Dark is Rising

I can’t remember if I was nine or ten when I read Greenwitch, the third book in this series, for school, but I was instantly hooked and read the whole series. Though I’ve always been a reader, this was my first “gotta read ’em all” experience. I don’t remember a lot else from that first exposure, except a swelling pride in my Welsh heritage and maybe (just once I swear) asking my mom if we were descended from Welsh magicians. And when I saw the word “rook” in this text, I remembered these books were my introduction to that word (and others) and what that quest to understand first felt like.

The Dark is Rising in the Past 30 Years

I may have re-read the series once since I was a child, but my main relationship to the books since then has been forcing them on anyone I cared about who I thought would enjoy the books themselves and maybe also sharing in this magical other world that I carried in my heart. My victims included my brother (who lost my copies but eventually bought me the new ones I’m reading today), my now husband (who probably never actually read the books but humored me with Salinger so he’s forgiven), and my stepbrother (who found the books too scary at his tender age and was the reason I stopped forcing them on people). I’ve been saving my (new, thanks Tosh!) copies in my son’s closet for the day I thought he might be ready for them, but at the age of two he thinks Gruffalo is scary, so we have a ways to go.

What Re-reading The Dark is Rising Felt Like

The Old is New Again

In opening The Dark is Rising for the first time in decades this past week, I realized how little I remembered and how much this book now reminded me of other books. From echoes of Woolf’s To the Lighthouse on the first page to more expected similarities between Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings and Grossman’s The Magicians and L’Engle’s A Wrinkle in Time. Some of these convergences are unavoidable coincidences of trope and some are loving tributes (in all directions because some of those books predate The Dark is Rising, one is a contemporary of the book and one is modern to now). Regardless, The Dark is Rising manages to feel fresh and compelling throughout. Even to someone who’s read it before.

Coming of Age, Coming to Light

“As he stared at the fierce, secret lines of that face, the world he had inhabited since he was born seemed to whirl and break and come down again in a pattern that was not the same as before.” – Susan Cooper, The Dark is Rising

Perhaps one of the most important things The Dark is Rising made me appreciate was the way books written for children use the specialness of one child to inspire generations of children on their own individual quests for greatness. This should have occurred to me with Harry Potter (which I still haven’t read) or any number of other books, but the craft in The Dark is Rising is such that I could see how other children could aspire to be like Will, an otherwise ordinary boy among a passel of siblings, who happens to be born on Midwinter’s Day as the seventh son of a seventh son. It isn’t until his eleventh birthday that he starts to realize he is special, the last of the Old Ones to be born, and even that realization takes much coaching from a mysterious old fellow called Merriman Lyon (a name that made my heart leap with glee and reminded me instantly of his true name—but that’s a story for another book).

“He was crystal-clear awake, in a Midwinter Day that had been waiting for him to wake into it since the day he had been born, and, he somehow knew, for centuries before that.” – Susan Cooper, The Dark is Rising

This type of story reaches into the heart of every child at an age where they’re growing from the light of their mothers’ eyes to being parts of a much larger world. It’s a tricky age and a difficult transition and, while a standard formulation for a coming of age novel, Cooper does a better job than most of creating that atmosphere where each of us is special enough to become something more than we are today. She shows us some of the struggles and the work, specialness isn’t simply handed out, and that we each have a role to play. Whether we’re descended from Welsh magicians or not.

The Craft of Unfolding

The biggest literary lesson I’m taking away from The Dark is Rising is how Cooper uses Merriman Lyon to teach the reader about the world Will is newly entering. On the surface, Merriman is teaching Will with lines like “Expect nothing and fear nothing, here or anywhere” because the Dark cannot kill an Old One, but these words also tell the reader what to expect. From direct instructions on what will come next to advice on how to cope, Merriman imparts these lessons throughout the book which keeps Will from bumbling through a disorganized quest and also helps us understand the rules of the book we are reading. This is not a tactic I’d actually recommend to most writers because it’s far too easy to end up telling the reader things you want them to experience instead, but Cooper’s allusions are just delicate enough and the rest of the text enthralling enough that it’s the perfect choice here.

About the Magic

I start to crave magical stories at this time of year. Maybe it’s because I’m not religious but would like to be. Maybe because my dad read Lord of the Rings to my brother and me at a very early age. Or maybe it’s because it’s easy to get a little cooped up in a Seattle winter. But I had just finished binge-watching the latest season of The Magicians on Netflix when it was time to read The Dark is Rising and I didn’t see the connection until I read this piece in The Guardian and understood that this is a season when many of us seek wonder. Because virgin births and a man who can fit through every chimney don’t quite do it for me (though my son thinks Santa is the shit), I’m glad for a great series of books that can connect me to a more ancient form of wonder.

I sometimes wish I could write books like these—full of wonder and eschewing the boundaries of our world. I can’t, yet, but I can run back and start this series over again with Over Sea, Under Stone. Maybe we can re-read it together.

Buy The Dark is Rising for a young person, buy it for yourself. If you buy it from Powell’s Books using that link, your purchase keeps indie booksellers in business and I receive a commission.

Mia Couto and The Tuner of Silences

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The Tuner of Silences Mia CoutoI wrote recently about a book so rich with description I didn’t know where to focus. How perfect it was, then, to open The Tuner of Silences by Mia Couto–a book so cleanly written, so tightly edited that every word matters. With this extraordinary concision, Couto leaves room for the reader and I became deeply invested in the story of Mwanito and Ntunzi and their father.

What’s most surprising to me about this book is how it can be so spare and yet so rich. If I said Couto’s language was like poetry, you might misunderstand me and think it is difficult to understand. Instead the language in this book is like looking into a crystal clear lake and being able to see every detail of the fish, vegetation, and geology while at the same time seeing your reflection and that of the sky and the trees behind you. Like the best poetry, Couto has placed on the page the framework of an extraordinary story but it’s in your mind that the full magic of the world comes to life.

Some of my impressions of the book are fragmentary because I’m still mulling it over. Although my writing won’t create the same magic Couto’s does, perhaps these fragments will inspire something in you.

A Life Contained

“I was eleven years old when I saw a woman for the first time, and I was seized by such sudden surprise that I burst into tears” – Mia Couto

From that enticing and strange first sentence, I was hooked on this book. It doesn’t take long to understand that the speaker of that line, Mwanito, has been hustled by his father out to an abandoned game preserve where they have lived with Mwanito’s brother Ntunzi, a soldier named Zachary, and a donkey for eight years–ever since “the world had come to an end and we were the only survivors.” The only contact this odd group has with the outside world is Mwanito’s uncle, Aproximado.

This is not a dystopian novel. Instead it is the story of a man who could not deal with the real world and so he ran away with his children. It is the story of a son who from the age of three was assigned the vocation “to take care of this incurable absence” left by the death of his mother. And it is the story of the other people around them who are trying to cope with the world Mwanito’s father created.

Here Boys Come to Be Made Men

In the past couple of weeks, I’ve found myself reading a lot of coming of age novels about boys. From A Separate Peace to Out Stealing Horses to The Tuner of Silences and The Storyteller, there’s a definite trend. Perhaps the big milestones and emotional growth spurts happening around me, not the least of which is my baby brother’s wedding this coming weekend, are calling me to better understand the men in my life.

“Some people have children in order to get closer to God. He had become God when he became my father.” – Mia Couto

Of all these books, the boys in The Tuner of Silences become men in the least desirable circumstances. Although their father is present physically, Mwanito and Ntunzi have the doubly difficult job of finding their own realities inside (or outside) their father’s delusion. It’s a sad circumstance, but an all-too-common one. Part of the magic of how Couto engaged me with this book was setting me up to think about what these boys would miss along the way to manhood and who they would become. I thought a lot about my childhood and those of the people around me. I thought about the kind of parent I would want to be.

Reality Intrudes

It’s obvious from the first sentence of this book that the outside world will intrude. But I kind of wish it hadn’t. As much as I wanted the boys to escape their father and find control over their own lives, I didn’t love the way it went down. I won’t go into details, but it does involve a woman and the story changes significantly from there.

The Aphorist

“Every silence contains music in a state of gestation.” – Mia Couto

Every sentence in this book sings and I found myself wanting to underline section after section. I also started to wonder about aphorisms in this age where so many of us are seeking wisdom and guidance. The first aphorist who comes to mind, one I see quoted frequently, is Paolo Coelho. But although Coelho’s lines often seem deep at first glance, sentiments like “Stop being who you were and become who you are” quickly start to feel pat and hollow.

Meanwhile, there’s a world of thought contained in Couto’s subtext. One of the pleasures of this book was returning to some of his lines to mull over their full implications. I guess when I look for guidance it will be from someone who teaches me how to think rather than telling me the answers he or she has found.

I loved this book and I will read it again. I have a feeling because so much of the experience of this book is the merging of the text and what I bring to the text that it will never be the same book twice. I will be very interested to see what Couto inspires me to think about next time around.

If you want to make up your own mind about this book, pick up a copy of The Tuner of Silences from Powell’s Books. Your purchase keeps indie booksellers in business and I receive a commission.