The Horse and His Boy by C.S. Lewis

[lightreads]

The Horse and His Boy by C.S. Lewis

My rating: 2 of 5 stars


That's it, I give. C.S. Lewis, you have beaten me, I am done. I have been trying to review this for two months, but every time I open a document, my brain just screams "bacon!"* and runs away.

This whole childhood nostalgia reread project is supposed to be fun! It's supposed to be me bringing the lens of adult readership to the books that shaped the way I think about fantasy and narrative. It's supposed to be self-reflective and, not like this is a surprise, I'm supposed to enjoy rediscovering old loves. It worked great with The Dark Is Rising.

It would probably work better if I'd ever liked Narnia to start with. But I didn't, and still don't, and there's no surprisingly rich treasures to unearth from the bog of nostalgic emotionalism here, because there's no bog, and these books are exactly what I went in assuming them to be.

Instead, there's racism. So much racism. A clamor of racism. Historically contextual racism, of course, but there are times when one can contextualize that sort of thing, and there are times when one is just like, "oh my God, why am I reading this?"

*The bacon. Which is what Narnians eat for breakfast. In the superior country of Narnia. Where they also have superior beds, superior animals, superior political structures, superior women, and most definitely superior breakfasts. Unlike the barbarian darker-skinned southern country. Which doesn't eat bacon.

I just can't, guys. Maybe some other summer that was less annoying, less fretful, less grinding.

Which does raise the question of what nostalgia reread to try next, and I'd better pick more carefully this time. Lloyd Alexander? Harry Potter? Hmm, has it been long enough?




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Comments

[kate_nepveu]

Hmm. _Half Magic_? _The Phantom Tollbooth_? Bellairs, Dahl, Pinkwater? That whole genre of, stuff like _Anna to the Infinite Power_ that I have zero idea how well it would hold up? Tamora Pierce (man, I wish these had been my childhood fantasy reading, but the Kel books and Circle books were my go-to comfort reading during law school)?

And, of course, having done it myself, I am obligated to mention Tolkien.

[jadelennox]

Man, that book. It is so my favorite of the series, and yet every word, every scene, every moment is racist and jingoistic. And Orientalist. And kinda pretty sexist.

But the bolt of tash falls from above.

[cyprinella]

I never did Narnia but I was always a Wrinkle in Time fan. I totally didn't get any of the allegory there when I was a kid and I'm sort of scared to reread them in case it's ridiculous. Everything else from that era was horse books until I discovered Christopher Pike, followed shortly by Mercedes Lacky.

[the_rck]

Have you looked at Ana Mardoll's Narnia deconstructions? (The link format went funny, so that link may not work. A Google search for Ana Mardoll will most likely find her blog.)

She's done The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe and Prince Caspian and is currently working on The Voyage of the Dawn Treader. I find her analysis very interesting. She's pulling out a lot of stuff that I never thought was in there but that I'm enjoying thinking about. I do have a childhood attachment to the books (and I've written fic for them), but that doesn't mean that I'm not interested in seeing the problematic stuff called out.

[jadelennox]

the allegory is more heavy-handed as an adult but not ridiculous, but the gender politics don't age very well.

[lightreads]

I have! She is super interesting on multiple levels.

[lightreads]

I think it was my favorite, too, as much as I liked any of them. Secret royalty, which always got me. Plus, special companion talking horse. But man oh man....