I thought we could start by talking about when you first came to the book
when did you when did you first read it? - So the first time I read the Northern
Lights I think I was 10 and I actually stole my copy from, I was around a family
friend's house and we and I just saw it this picture of this girl with something
shining in her hands with a bear standing behind her and I thought that
looks good so I literally just stole it from their house and it's not left my house since
Excellent, first stolen book!
I remember when I first came to it that one of the things that surprised me most was the bit
about the daemons and coming back to it that first scene I'd forgotten just how
strange it was, because it's really eerie and uncanny and I don't know did
you find the same thing?
I sort of had the opposite reaction to me it made
total sense and you know immediately started planning what my daemon would be
What would your daemon be?
See I'd love to say something cool like a snow leopard
or something but I think it's probably like either really clumsy
kitten that sort of never grows up or maybe an otter I'm actually out here
in the water and they look cute but they're actually quite fierce
Yeah, I think mine would probably be a fox - because I am I think
quite a scruffy person - No! - No, I am, I really am
So I think it would need to be something that
was a little- and I prefer being out in the countryside I'm not a city dweller
I think I would need to be something a little bit wild and scruffy
I think what surprised me about it though first coming to it was that the
something I think he does that's so clever is having a world that is so nearly our
own and isn't and I think it was one of those books that really struck me how
people think of fantasy as being far away fantasy and I know something that I
noticed in your books as well of having the fantasy sit so near to the reality
was is it something you feel with an influence when you were writing?
Oh hugely I mean the Northern Lights are probably the single biggest influence and
inspiration for my writing and I and yes that idea of fantasy not having to be
dragons and sort of these far-flung places, but actually places that we inhabit
but just tilted slightly to let that magic in something that really
appealed to me as a reader and continues to appeal to me as a reader as well as a writer
Yeah it definitely appeals to me to you and I think I'm though all these
moments where you just start to get comfortable and you feel as I know where
this world - you get your feet underneath you - and then suddenly something that just would
would throw you instantly and I think and I like the fact that all of the
adults around Lyra don't they respond to her very much
in their own adult world and she's having to enter into that that world
rather than the world seeming to change around here, to alter to her existences
she has to kind of fight her way into that world and I liked that.
Did you have any, which are your favorite scenes in the book, coming back to it?
That's a very hard question I know.
So, possibly my favorite scene
it is where it's a very final the very final pages possibly my favorite scene
of the whole series I mean that every time I read that final line my heart
just lifts and I'm just desperate to read the next book but before that I love Iorek
when they first meet him - yeah he's an amazing character - he's such an
amazing character and just the sadness of that scene and the intensity
of that scene and then the way that the connection kind of builds between him
and Lyra was possibly my favorite sort of relationship in the first book but
there are so many good scenes I'm just sort of flicking through them in my head
now and they're just it's impossible really to to narrow it down
they're just scene after scene of brilliance.
Yeah and I think, it's quite
a shocking book as well I mean I think right from that first scene when you
know you've got somebody trying to poison someone right the way through to
going back to the book I'd forgotten just how shocking the scene with the
cutting away the daemons is. The moment when Lyra's caught and you think that
her daemon is about to be torn away from her and it's utterly painful
I think it's that she meets a character called Tony and he's
asking for his Ratter and just reading that just coming to it cold if you sort
of pick up the book and open it on a random page it's just heartbreaking
and as someone who had a cat, a much-loved cat growing up the scenes
with all the daemons separated and when they're sort of ghost-like was just
heartbreaking and yeah incredibly sad.
And I think it's very brave thing to have
those kind of ideas even coming into it into a book like this
for children because that the idea of having a part of your
personality wrenched away from you it's a really bold concept.
It's a difficult concept even for an adult I think, and do you think that it
changed the way that children's writers operated afterwards
Do you think it opened some doors for people in terms of what they felt they could explore?
I mean I'm not kind of up-to-date with what came before
but I mean definitely for me as a writer it gives you permission to go to
those darker places and you do see sort of much darker themes emerging
and that children respond to those themes and that they're able to deal with that and
sort of and the way the Pullman sort of guides you through it, you know
there is always that comfort like she always has Pantalaimon and there with
her sort of comforting her and while they're scared she's never alone
I think it's the loneliness of the children without their demons that is so terrifying as
a child to read about but Lyra who we're seeing the world through always has that
companion so I think there's that comfort so I think yes it gives you
permission to be darker as long as there's hope
As well as that moment where you realize that you're getting to see inside someone's mind and
to see the split in someone's personality, and I think it's such a clever way of
getting to the heart of the fact that you can feel more than one thing at once
and think more than one thing at once and the way that you come
to know Lyra is essentially through one part of her personality talking to
another and I think just just thinking about that as a concept where that comes from...
It's genius as a writer, it's a brilliant device if you're going to
reduce it sort of the technicalities of how he does it, it's a brilliant way to
get into a character's head without sort of huge exposition it's an amazing idea.
And it means that you can have all this questioning of why she's making
decisions and that be completely natural,
you don't have to have her, as you say, explaining everything that she does
because there's someone else there saying 'Are you sure you want to do this
really reckless quite sort of crazy thing?!' And she's going, 'No, yeah, I'm definitely going to do it.'
I thought it was interesting as well, narratively, it struck me not I
don't think the first time I read it overtly but certainly coming back to it,
and I wondered if it did with you as well, that normally for children
if they start off as orphans which is effectively where Lyra starts then
finding their parents would be something that would be - happy!
- this brilliant thing and obviously for Lyra that's not and so she has
this very different arc of going through that stage of feeling that she's
found somewhere and belonging when she's with Mrs. Coulter and then
effectively ending almost an orphan again at the end but through choice -
And what a disappointment her parents turn out to be
for all their surface brilliance and they as individuals might be brilliant
but as parents they utterly bail!
And throughout this first book that she constantly has hope so when she sees
them together for the first time there's this sort of huge lifting and joyous sort of
the way that she sees them is so joyous together and then it's all torn
apart almost instantly and I think it's amazing to see such a flawed
relationship through a child's eyes I think he depicts it so tenderly and
fiercely as well it captures kind of the real opposition in their
relationship and yeah it's one of my favorite things about the book is just
that the way that he shows adults to be so flawed
and for the children to be seeing that clearly.
I think the the fact that he takes takes in so many locations as well on this I mean obviously we're
having this conversation in Oxford and and you live in Oxford so do you
feel as though you see Lyra coming round the corner when you walk around
because I mean Oxford is such a huge part of the book isn't it?
Yes and the college is obviously very evocative,
and yes, 'Lyra's Oxford', I loved that book and I was given a copy when I moved to Oxford and so
it's a very nice sort of guide, way to see the city.
It's great to talk to you about all that today and I can't wait til we meet up again to talk about characters.