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.