Northern Lights

Title: Northern lights
Author: Phillip Pullman
Publisher: Point
Price: £5.99
Pages: 399

Pullman is a prominent children’s writer but do not be fooled. ‘Northern Lights’ is not a light hearted skip-through-fields-of-sunflowers tale. Death, pain and misery are all dealt with here but you won’t feel like your drowning in it; the moments are few and far between, enough to feel poignant without going into melodrama.
‘Northern Lights’ is the beautifully told story of Lyra and her dæmon, Pantalaimon. Their adventures take them from the safety of Oxford to the frozen lands of Svalbard, following the trail of stolen children. With a cast of truly amazing and unique characters, the plot is unpredictable but not too complicated.
Pullman’s other works include the ‘Sally Lockheart’ quartet, two ‘New Cut Gang’ books and various other contemporary novels like ‘The Butterfly Tattoo’ and ‘The Broken Bridge’. Closest to ‘Northern Lights’ is the ‘Sally Lockheart’ stories which can be read by practically any age group from eleven upwards. They are books for children that don’t patronise, adult books that loose nothing from being able to include the kids and they’re full of fresh, new ideas.
The driving factor in ‘Northern Lights’ is the dæmons. Think pets who talk and you aren’t far wrong. What makes this idea truly special is that a dæmon is a person’s soul, a visible animal who takes the shape most like their person. Lyra questions a sailor about this and he replies: ‘She’s a seagull and that means I’m a kind of seagull too. I’m not grand and splendid nor beautiful but I’m a tough old thing and I can survive anywhere and always find a bit of food and company.’ Pullman deftly feeds you information like this all the way though, allowing you to understand Lyra’s world and he does it so well, you rarely notice.
The other prominent feature of ‘Northern Lights’ is the alethiometer (a measure of truth) which is give to Lyra and, though it only plays a small (albeit significant) part, it seems so real you’ll be wondering where you left yours.
Despite being classed as a children’s book, parents will love it as much as their kids and I certainly wouldn’t feel embarrassed to read this on the train but beware, you’re likely to loose yourself in the tale and miss your stop.
Here comes the part where I tell you its faults, having spent the last five paragraphs praising it. Towards the end, Pullman seems to almost run out of steam. His well paced narrative throughout the previous twenty-one chapters (of twenty-three) is seemingly thrown out the window. The last two chapters include so much action that it feels rushed rather than fast paced. Kids will get lost, particularly with the last chapter and not everything is explained satisfactorily. The flip side of this is that I was immediately searching for my copy of the next book to find out what happens next. But as a stand alone book, ‘Northern Lights’ could (and should) have finished with a much bigger bang.
Despite all this, ‘Northern Lights’ does make you think. It throws up a lot of questions about religion. The book is, and was intended to be, anti-Christian: the church is portrayed as oppressive and controlling, the main villain acts in the name of Christianity and the end goal in subsequent books is to kill God. Don’t dismiss ‘Northern Lights’ as an anti-religious sermon, though. The Church remains very much distant through out the entire novel; only the main villain ever comes into view, so we get the impression he (or she; I’m not giving anything away) is almost separate from the establishment.
It’s difficult to recommend ‘Northern Lights’ on the basis of ‘if you liked -insert name of book- you’ll love this’ because I’m not entirely sure there’s a relevant book to put in that phrase. Instead, let me put it like this; in years to come, ‘Northern Lights’ will be on every school reading list, in every library and on every home bookshelf. It’s the sort of book that becomes a classic without really trying and if that doesn’t get you interested, I’m not sure what will.
So, a recommendation? Yes. It’s a great book which you can really get your teeth into. I suggest, however, that you don’t read it at bedtime because you’ll still be there at 3am, telling yourself you’ll stop after the next chapter.