2019/112: La Belle Sauvage -- Philip Pullman

'It's really clever for her dæmon to be a mole. How'd they know about moles?'
... 'When I was frightened I used to be a mole.'
'But how did you know about moles?' said Malcolm.
'You just feel moleish,' said Asta. [loc 3272]

Malcolm is eleven, and lives in the Trout pub near Oxford, which his parents run. He's a decent chap, bright and inquisitive: and his curiosity leads him into strange company, including a rebellious group of intellectuals who oppose the Magisterium. He's also a welcome visitor in the priory across the river from the Trout, which is how he comes to meet the baby Lyra, rumoured to be the love child of none other than Lord Asriel. But Malcolm doesn't expect the river to rise, or to be forced to flee in his prized canoe (the eponymous Belle Sauvage) with only Lyra and Alice -- the sullen teenager who washes dishes at the Trout -- for company.

They are fleeing the secret police of the Magisterium, the CCD. There's been a rise in oppressive policies, and some of Malcolm's schoolmates have joined the League of St Alexander, which encourages children to inform on their parents. (Malcolm is not a member.) But hot on their heels, and more viscerally threatening, is the compelling villain Bonneville (whose villainy is signalled early on by his cruelty to his dæmon). Indeed, Alice may have already attracted his interest ...

Pullman's writing draws the reader in: his powers of description, and his knack for characterisation, are better than ever. I wasn't initially enthralled by what seemed to be a small-scale adventure tale, and I took a while to warm to Malcolm. Alice, too, was offputtingly bitter and sullen to start with. But as they became friends, they also seemed to become more likeable and more interesting.

La Belle Sauvage is packed with intriguing hints about the alternate history of this 'Brytain' -- the Swiss War, Oakley Street, Agatha Christie! -- and about the natural history of dæmons. I'm fascinated to learn that dæmons, before they 'settle' at adolescence, can assume the shapes of creatures that don't really exist; that a dæmon can remember things its human has forgotten, and vice versa; that a baby's dæmon will chatter to her in a private language.

I didn't find the introduction of old gods and fae spirits wholly convincing, though perhaps that's obtuse of me, given a world with dæmons and witches and armoured bears. But those all seem natural, rather than supernatural: Malcolm and Alice's sojourn with 'the first inhabitants of Albion' seems somehow out of place, a dream within the wider, more mythic 'dream' of the great flood that wipes away bridges and villages.

It's notable that Malcolm is the one with agency, and perhaps with some channel to the supernatural, while Alice is the one who things happen to. (And after a particular bad thing happens, she seems to lose all agency and be little more than a nursemaid. But that is late in the book.)

A thoroughly captivating read, despite my criticisms: as soon as I'd finished it, I bought and began to read The Secret Commonwealth ...