She has allowed herself to be argued away from the truth of her senses, away from optimism and from imagination. Where once Lyra’s world was pin sharp, now she is lost in shades of grey. Philip Pullman’s La Belle Sauvage, review: ‘Parents should prepare for some difficult conversations’ A busy street on a warm summer’s night reminds Lyra, and the reader, it’s the sum of our smallest interactions that make life beautiful.
The quieter moments are no less memorable. There’s a mermaid, an army of will-o’-the-wisps and a man who weeps tears of flame. The writing is exquisite every sentence sings. Where its predecessor, La Belle Sauvage, was somewhat muted, lurching through an endless, Biblical flood, The Secret Commonwealth is ablaze with light and life. The first is ‘The Hyperchorasmians’, a publishing phenomenon in which readers are encouraged to discount any emotion beyond pure cold logic, the book’s catchphrase, “It’s nothing more than what it is.” The second, ‘The Constant Deceiver’, is the work of what Pullman terms, “a radical sceptic, to whom truth and even reality were rainbow-like epiphenomena with no ultimate meaning”.Ī murder, and the systematic dismantling of the ancient protections that allowed Lyra to live undisturbed by the all-reaching Magisterium, see her go East, in search of a town that may not exist in search of her true self.
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