Particular books seem to find their way to me when it is the right time for them to be read. Sometimes they just spring off a bookshop shelf and I find I have read a good few of the first pages there and then, whilst still in the shop; of course they have to be purchased and brought home for immediate consumption even when I had no intention of buying books that trip . They then demand to be read immediately despite the pile of others patiently waiting their turn to be started. Sometimes a book is recommend by a friend or reviewed somewhere and I know that I just have to track it down and start it at once. Sometimes a book jumps off my own shelves demanding to be read after it has been sitting there quietly for years. Sometimes such a read follows a thread from other books, sometimes it starts a completely new reading journey. But such books always say: you need to read me NOW. And they are almost always right. Conversely I can make my own decision about what to read next only to find a few pages or chapters in that the book is saying: sorry, mate, but I'm not the right one for you to read just now. Maybe some other time, eh?
Of course this may just be a fanciful way of justifying a response to my own mood or whim. But I have known books that I really didn't feel like reading next push themselves to the top of my pile in front of others that I had been waiting ages to read - even newly publish sequels that I have awaited with impatience and acquired with eager anticipation as soon as they came out. Here is just such a book, newly published itself of course, but which queue-jumped most forcefully.
Marcus Sedgwick is actually far from new to me. I have been reading his novels with delight for many years now. He is without question one of the most significant children's/YA writers of recent years, not least because he has not limited himself to one particular genre or style but continually experiments most excitingly with stories and their telling. However I have so far refrained from including his work in this blog. His now considerable oeuvre includes a rich variety of books spanning almost everything from jokey novelettes for quite young children to adult fiction and even a graphic novel. However, those which,in my view, are his most significant work are for a rather older age range (often clearly YA) than was my original self-imposed criterion here. Nor are they always fantasy, at least in the sense of the 'magic fiction' that I started out to explore.
However, now that I have revised and expanded my blogging parameters (see post 'My quest six months in'), I cannot but include the brilliant Marcus Sedgwick. Certainly his latest book's demands to be read were fully justified, despite, or more particularly because of, its defiance of easy classification.
The Ghosts of Heaven pushes to the very boundaries of YA fiction in a whole host of ways. Its readership needs to be well towards the oldest end of that age range - or at least they need to be very experienced, sophisticated readers. The book is a reading and intellectual challenge, and is fully intended to be so. It comprised four separate and disparate novellas related by an enigmatic theme. This is encapsulated in iterative manifestations of a spiral or helix pattern which is often both a physical reality and a metaphysical idea. Interestingly the author invites the reader to access the four sections in their own choice of any of the twenty four possible permutations of their order. He points out in his introduction that different logics and meanings can be discovered for each sequencing. However the most obvious logic is to be found in the printed order which follows the theme through an intermittent chronology stretching from the distant past to an unspecified, but possibly equally distant, future.
The first story, as presented, is of a prehistoric girl who has an unappreciated talent and wants desperately to contribute to the magic of creating cave art, including,of course, spiral patterns. This tale is enriched by being most bravely written in verse. This is actually loose and informal enough to remain reasonably accessible in the reading, which flows fluently enough once the eye and mind adjusts to its form. What it does achieve very effectively however is a wonderful sense of otherness and nice balance of engagement and distance. It is an intriguing though ultimately disturbing tale, which is a good mark setter for those who begin this way, as disturbing is perhaps one of the most apt descriptions of the whole work too.
The next story is the one which I found rather disappointingly unoriginal, although this is only comparative in a work which is startlingly original overall. It is the tale of girl in the seventeenth century accused of witchcraft by a fanatic working in the name of fundamentalist religion and ultimately supported by a gullible populace who quickly turn into a braying mob. The tale is perfectly well written and ultimately moving, as you would expect from such a story. However this is well-trodden ground in fiction and Marcus Sedgwick does not really add much to what has already been effectively said both about this horror in our history or indeed its parallels to equally appalling and terrifying aspects of our own world. This is the section too through which the spiral images themselves seemed most contrived. Yes the spiral maze, or Troy, does indeed feature in our 'magical' past, although I am less sure of its association with witchcraft. However, other instances of the spiral do feel as if they have been rather shoehorned in here. Even so, this story will be new to many of the intended readers, to whom I am sure it will contribute powerfully to the whole.
The third story, as printed, is by far the most intriguing and original; a truly wonderful piece of writing. Set in a mental hospital, it explores the relationship of a would be reforming doctor and his young daughter with a former poet, who is now a (supposed) dangerous patient. I will not say much more, but it is a little masterpiece and a paradigm of great writing from first to last.
The final section is a science fiction tale of an attempted 'escape' mission from Earth that is travelling light years to a supposedly inhabitable new planet in a distant galaxy. It has something of the feel of Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey, although it is this time not derivative and is filled with rich and sometimes terrifying imagination. More than anything though it explores a human beings' journey in search of himself, in one way quite literally. It is here that the significance and importance of the spiral/helix images are most fully and explicitly explored. It is another great piece of writing, quite wonderfully thought provoking around some of life's most profound questions.
I do just wonder whether the spiral images throughout, and the very laudable 'morals' that emerge toward the end of the piece, are just a little over-pointed. But then again perhaps, in the light of the intended YA audience, a little clarity is not out of place after all the ambiguity and questioning of this rich and complex work.
Above everything, however, it is an absolute joy to find a young readership being offered something so uncondescending as is The Ghosts of Heaven. It pushes boundaries in terms of both content and form and if it is a challenging read in many senses then it is all the more wonderful for that. It is a very great book and a massively significant contribution to the canon. For all its complexities it is ultimately also a most rewarding and enjoyable read too.
My impression from periodic and rather haphazard reading of various of his works over recent years has left me with the impression that Marcus Sedgwick has developed most interestingly as a writer, exploring many different forms and approaches on the way. So it is my intention now to go back and reread his early work (which does still fall into the 21st century and therefore the parameters of this blog) in order to trace this extraordinary journey. That is, of course, as long as no other books intrude themselves in the meantime.
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