Synopsis: Things are not looking up for our heroes. Will has found his father, only to lose him again. Lyra has been captured by Mrs Coulter, her mother, who is determined to stop her achieving her destiny, at any cost. The Magisterium wants to wipe out heresy and Lord Asriel is about to pick a fight with God. 

Review: Philip Pullman has been said to have courted controversy with his treatment of religion and morality in the earlier volumes of the His Dark Materials series. In The Amber Spyglass, he doesn’t so much court controversy as walk right on over and ask if it fancies a snog. To call the book provocative is an epic understatement. 

Okay, so step one: Before talking about the controversy in any more detail, let’s consider whether the book itself is any good. It’s good, it’s definitely good, but at times it feels a little over-complicated. Philip Pullman’s introductions to the first two books make it clear that his plans for the trilogy changed somewhat in the process of writing, and The Amber Spyglass is a bubbling cauldron of ideas, sometimes so many that they almost overwhelm the story. 

 Almost, but not quite. Whatever else may be going on in the book and however many different strands may be woven together, there is still a story at the heart of everything, and Will and Lyra stand tall as sympathetic and deeply individual characters, even as the adults around them are swept into the allegorical conflict. I can’t help feeling that the book might have benefited from a little bit of slimming down, but for me at least it is a minor fault.

And now, controversy: There will be spoilers.

While some people have viewed The Amber Spyglass as more of a manifesto than a novel, it would, I think, be wrong to view it as more than a parable. Yes it has issues to raise and points to make, but this is not in and of itself a bad thing and it is certainly not an anti-Christian rant disguised as a novel. There is a strong humanistic message in the story, but Pullman’s writing must of necessity be informed by his own beliefs. His juxtaposition between a kingdom of Heaven in which an absolute authority dispenses an inflexible code of behaviour and a republic of Heaven based on personal morality is radical and no doubt irreligious – although not intrinsically atheistic; Pullman is far more anti-religion than he is anti-God or anti-faith – but this doesn’t actually make it a bad book, and certainly not an evil book.

The second issue which raises controversy is the relationship between Lyra and Will which, at the end of the book, reaches a passionate intensity which is crucial to the resolution of the trilogy. Many people have objected to what they see as a children’s book which hinges so strongly on a sexual relationship between two children (the characters are both about twelve years old at the end of the novel). Children and sex is and always will be an emotive issue, but it may be that in this case the emotion muddies the issue. 

In their haste to condemn, most critics seem to have overlooked an important point: Nowhere does the book say that Lyra and Will have sex. It could perhaps be inferred and there is definitely something sexual in their final scenes together, but it is not even implied by the text that they actually do it; the use of the word ‘lover’ is provocative, but probably deliberately so. The issue of ‘did they or didn’t they’ is in the eye of the beholder, and either way the real turning point of the story is their awareness of sex, rather than the act itself. Pullman’s thesis is turned not towards the sexualising of the young, a la Brave New World, but against the reverence of innocence which holds that all experience is bad and dirty. Pullman’s argument seems to be that goodness relies on the presence of temptation, in the form of knowledge and understanding and it is the gaining of that understanding that empowers Lyra and Will to go forth and face their respective worlds.

So, The Amber Spyglass is a controversial book, but much of the criticism aimed at it is misplaced, if not actually misguided. It would be fair to suggest that concerned parents read the book themselves before allowing their children to do so, but they should try to read it without prejudice, without looking for offence that may not be there. It is also not a book for younger readers. Simply because it does concern itself with so many issues it should be read with a discerning eye and perhaps one that has begun to shed the scales of innocence and begun to find understanding.

2008-01-05