The griffin and the carpet

‘The Griffin’: engraving by Martin Schongauer (d 1491).

Awkward Magic
by Elisabeth Beresford,
illustrated by Judith Valpy.
US title: The Magic World (1965).
Target Books, 1973 (1964).

Before ever she sent out the Wombles of Wimbledon Common into the world to work their eco-inspired charm Elisabeth Beresford published Awkward Magic, the first of what was to become a sequence of eight books with ‘magic’ in the title.

But first we find ourselves in 1960s Brighton, the seaside town and resort where Beresford grew up and went to school, and are introduced to young Joe who’s about to start his school summer holidays. On his way home he interrupts two older boys throwing stones at what appears to be a bedraggled dog. It’s soon made clear this isn’t a pooch but a griffin, that fantastical creature out of Mesopotamian and medieval myth, a composite beast with the rear parts of a lion and the fore parts of an eagle.

And Joe soon discovers what he’s let himself in for when he takes what seems to be a mistreated dog to the boarding house where, while his father’s in the army, he’s looked after by kind landlady Mrs Chatter: for this curious animal has wings; it talks at length, and with a great deal of sarcasm; and it’s pursuing its ancient function, which is to seek out treasure and guard it.

Bookwise 2025/4

‘Decadent Youth’ (1899) by Ramon Casas.

This month my post ‘Why do I read?’ stimulated some fascinating discussion, though luckily nobody saw it indulgent or even, as in the painting by Ramon Casas, decadent.  But if reading is indeed a decadent activity then I admit to being dissipated, dissolute and degenerate, and therefore beyond redemption! Still, I’m not in the habit of rushing through the kinds of racy yellow paperbacks Victorians thought were beyond the pale so perhaps I may be saved from perdition after all—phew!

In fact April has been an interesting month, bookwise at least (let’s not talk geopolitically). Lory’s Reading the Theatre led me to 1. learning about the worries of a child actor in Noel Streatfeild’s Gemma (1968), 2. about the worries of a cursed child in the 2016 playscript for the eighth instalment in the Harry Potter series, and 3. about the worries of an aspiring young ballet dancer in Eva Ibbotson’s A Company of Swans (1985).¹ Who’d be a child again?

Finally finishing Peter Beagle’s The Last Unicorn was an excuse to mark (Inter)national Unicorn Day. Then Brona’s Reading Austen 2025 encouraged me to reread Pride and Prejudice (1813) and also comment on the possible significance of the title, while Kaggsy and Simon’s 1952 Club gave me the chance to finally get a review written after revisiting The Borrowers by Mary Norton. (Daphne du Maurier’s varied 1952 collection The Birds and Other Stories, which I’ve just now come to the end of, will now be reviewed in May).

Destroying an empire: #ReadingMajipoor

Created using text-generated imaging © C A Lovegrove.

Sorcerers of Majipoor
by Robert Silverberg.
Volume 1 of The Prestimion Trilogy.
HarperPrism, 1998 (1996).

Is it true, as is often said, that there are no new plots in literature? That every story we hear or read or imagine has appeared countless times before? Whether there is just one basic plot or seven or whatever number one can conjure up — and the numbers do vary, despite one theory that there are only seven — it can be argued that pretty much every narrative conforms to an ur-pattern. One might think that there is no need to create new tales when they already exist in one form or another.

Well, of course there are infinite reasons why we continue to invest in narratives, many of them explicable in psychological terms. It’s maybe worth looking in detail at our need for novelty: if there are indeed no ‘new’ plots it’s how we dress them up that creates originality, as when mannequins are arrayed in different clothes and accessories.

In any given narrative it’s the combination of elements, often reminiscent of other narratives, that gives it distinction, and this is certainly true for Robert Silverberg’s Sorcerers of Majipoor.

Hibernating ideas

© C A Lovegrove.

The Wood at Midwinter
by Susanna Clarke.
Illustrated by Victoria Sawdon.
Bloomsbury Circus, 2024.

It was winter, just a few days before Christmas. A few flakes of snow fell on the quiet fields. Along the lane that led to the wood came a carriage, driven by a young woman. Her name was Ysolde Scot and her sister, Merowdis, sat at her side.

How to describe this short but disconcerting offering from the author of Piranesi and Jonathan Strange and Mr Norell? A modern fairytale? Yes, it is this, though just occasionally the whimsy slightly defuses the uncanny feel of magic. A beast fable perhaps? There are indeed talking animals, even trees, but there’s no moral implied. A Christmas ghost story? True, it’s set at midwinter in Victorian times, but there’s no male antiquarian dabbling with supernatural matters to be seen, nor any decaying mansion with dark corridors.

No, what this dreamlike tale most reminds me of are the Breton lais of Marie de France, with natural magic invading the liminal space separating it from the everyday human world. As the author writes in an Afterword, she’s fascinated by characters “who are bridges between different worlds, between different states of being, characters who feel compelled to try and reconcile the irreconcilable.”

This liminality is, I feel, what links the approach of Susanna Clarke and her medieval counterpart, cemented I believe by her use of Anglo-Norman names and Arthurian motifs.