Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
The Lives of Christopher Chant
0 Plays2 seconds ago
Nobody should be losing lives at this rate. What is wrong, Christopher?
In our first episode of Season Three, the brilliant Iona Datt Sharma joins us for a discussion of bureaucracy, cricket boys, Burton and Kipling, and the limitations of escape into fantasy,
Transcript available here, and we'll be back next time with Castle in the Air!
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction of Hosts and Guest
00:00:00
Speaker
Hello and welcome to the first episode of our third season of Eight Days of Diana Wynne Jotes. I'm Rebecca Framo.
00:00:21
Speaker
to the first at the so of our third season of eight days of diana win um rebecca framo Tesh I'm Emily Tesh and today we're very happy to have with us our guest, Iona Datshama.
00:00:36
Speaker
Hello, thank you so much for joining us. I'm so excited to have you here. You are one of the first people when i first started like idly, idly pondering in a way that I never thought would happen having a Diana Wood Jones podcast.
Exploring 'The Lives of Christopher Chant'
00:00:49
Speaker
You immediately said, if you do this, can I come on and complain about lives of Christopher Chet? I did do that. That is correct. you want to about it? The promise been kept, the vow has been fulfilled, now is your chance to complain about the Lives of Christopher Chan.
00:01:05
Speaker
But before we get started on the Lives of Christopher Chan, which I think is a fascinating, and really interesting place to start the third season of this podcast, it's a weird one, a flawed book.
00:01:18
Speaker
I think we we agree as as ah as a trio, but with a lot in it. It was my childhood favorite. um I mean, I would say honestly that it's maybe kind of a representative of some of the best that she can do and some of the worst that she can do.
00:01:35
Speaker
But before we do that, Iona, I wanted to ask you about your experience as a reader of Diana Wynne-Jones. Well, I think one way in which I probably differ from the average reader is that I read her for the first time as an adult.
00:01:49
Speaker
As a child, I was aware of her existence because simply because she has so many books, you know, so for every school library there's going to be a couple. And I think I have a memory of trying and bouncing off which week, because certainly when I listened to your episodes on that the other day, I was thinking, yeah, I remember all these people.
00:02:07
Speaker
and ah But and i I actually had a very warped memory of who the main character was. I did not think it was Charles on that. And I thought it was Neopam, the little Indian kid. And from that, I think you can learn a lot.
00:02:18
Speaker
and yeah But but some so I moved to the US for a short period quite a few years ago. and This was before I knew you, Becca. So yeah, a long time ago.
00:02:31
Speaker
So and I was there about two years, maybe a bit less. And um my first few weeks there, I was Getting settled in, but I was terribly lonely.
00:02:42
Speaker
And obviously, when you've just moved to the US, the first thing you do to try and like comfort yourself is read classic children's British literature. And the Tompkins County Public Library had everything
Loneliness and Connection in Literature
00:02:54
Speaker
she'd ever written. And I don't know why I started with the Lives of Christopher Chance.
00:02:58
Speaker
And I remember Loving it. Really just loving it. um I think I had many fewer criticisms of it then than i but I might have now. But I read it and then I read Charmed Life. ah ah I read it first. So I didn't read anything like the publication order. So I read just Christopher Chant first, then Charmed Life. So I had the lovely experience of seeing Crestomancy grow up very fast.
00:03:20
Speaker
And then i think then Caprona. All of the books of hers I've read are all Crestomancy except Deep Secret, which is actually my favourite book of hers. But I understand we haven't got got to that yet.
00:03:31
Speaker
not We're not allowed. allowed and i We can't mention It's not a book. So, um but Christopher Chan, I have come back to over and over for for various reasons. like I think it's just because it's so...
00:03:45
Speaker
It's such a like what the book is actually about a child disappearing into a fantasy world. and And, you know, I wasn't a child. I was 24 when I read it for the first time. But it was at a time where a little bit of fantasy went a long way.
00:03:58
Speaker
So for all it is a flawed book. I'm very fond of it. Like I have ah i have a all nice memories attached to it. And i also have a lot of nice memories attached to the library it came from. So, so it's kind of a reinforcing circle, i think.
00:04:12
Speaker
Oh, I forgot. I've also read a tale of Time City, which I'm also very fond of. and i think for that one, the only thing I can really remember is the food. Everybody's always eating like amazingly well. So, ah but yeah, I think of all of her books, this is the one that stayed with me the longest.
00:04:27
Speaker
hi And I do think, I think all of us kind of, when we were pre-chatting to prep for this episode, Talk about the experience of reading Christopher Chant as lonely kids and resonating, or lonely adults, lonely people who in some ways are never not children, right? Right.
00:04:46
Speaker
And like profoundly resonating with Christopher's loneliness because like fundamentally, this is a book about a miserably lonely little boy. right And the various circumstances that go to create that loneliness and the various consequences of that loneliness.
Christopher's Isolation and Family Dynamics
00:05:04
Speaker
I think it's one of her most strongly metaphoric books in that you almost have to read Christopher's experience as a metaphor, as a symbol.
00:05:14
Speaker
The basic setup of Lives of Christopher Chant is there is a lonely little boy ah living in the nursery of his very wealthy upper class family. Victorian parents house raised by servants his parents don't get on with each other and they seem to see him as a pawn in their arguments with each other ah he doesn't know them and they don't know him but he has this strange ability to go almost anywhere which is how he describes it to begin with and it starts it when he is a very small child you can get to almost anywhere from the place between
00:05:49
Speaker
So in his dreams, as he understands it, he goes to place between, which he thinks is the bit of the world left over, when they finished making all the worlds. And it's described as this formless void with lots of rock and no sky, which you, Becca, pointed out is in Homeward Bounders as well.
00:06:10
Speaker
um But Christopher travels through the place between and finds himself in other worlds where he has a perfectly wonderful time and everyone likes him.
00:06:21
Speaker
And the other worlds of the the anywheres, as he calls them, are a source of spiritual balm for Christopher. They are where his happiness comes from. They're the closest place he gets to having anything experiencing parents.
00:06:35
Speaker
ah When he digs in the sand on the beach in a nice anywhere where a lot of people he called silly ladies with strong fishy tails are very sweet to him and give him presents. And it's almost, it's it's an idyllic description, these early childhood descriptions of Christopher's journeys in imagination.
00:06:54
Speaker
And I think Oh, no, go for it. and but I was just going to say that the metaphoric reading is so strong. This is a child escaping into fantasy because his real life sucks. Yes. And I think something that I think is really significant about the Anywheres is that they are all based on quite clearly based on fictions.
00:07:13
Speaker
Like, that we are you know, within the context of the story, they are real places that Christopher visits. But there's an anywhere that's full of mermaids. There's an anywhere that's full of, you know, that sort of clearly seems to be a sort of Dracula place where everyone smells very strongly of garlic and, you know, is loading and unloading secret package packages.
00:07:30
Speaker
And significantly, there are several anywheres that seem to be based really and entirely on Richard Burton's Arabian Nights, which is one of two sets of real world books she name checks in this text.
00:07:44
Speaker
One of them is the Angela Brazil school books and one is the Arabian Nights. So it's he's he's disappearing into fiction, even though within the context of the world, it's it's not fiction, but it is. where We read it as fiction.
00:07:56
Speaker
Yeah. So like i think the the strength of the book lies in like the the in the loneliness of Christopher and the the strong identification of the reader with Christopher.
00:08:08
Speaker
This is a book for a lonely little child reader. I really feel like it must be, which is why it got all of us. Mm-hmm. But something that I think is really but like from the first chapter, something that it actually really struck me about how much time she's spending on describing different things is that even though the, the ostensible plot of the book is Christopher visiting these anywheres and what happens when he visits these anywheres, most of the actual first chapter is spent on describing the terribleness of his parents and the terribleness of his home life.
00:08:41
Speaker
His parents, the specific ways in which Christopher's parents are terrible. is they don't speak to each other. He actually has no real idea what his father looks like. He's upset because he's he's a bit worried that he wouldn't recognize his father if he met him in the street because his mother is always blocking him on the staircase with her big skirts.
00:08:56
Speaker
And so he can't get a good look at him. and It's very funny. really That's just it. There's a whole lot that's really horrifying in Christopher's life, but it's described with such humor and such lightness um with like that, that,
00:09:11
Speaker
That Jonesian hallmark is that sensitivity to a child's point of view, right? From Christopher's point of view, all of this is normal. So there's no sense ever that this is a completely horrible thing. He's just Christopher being like, well, my parents just like this. This is how it is.
00:09:24
Speaker
Right. And Christopher's mother often kind of takes him into her room and tells him what he's going to be. This is another kind of Jonesian theme, but I think it really comes to a peak in this book.
00:09:35
Speaker
The parents and the father figures who tell you what you're going to be and don't ask you what you're going to be. ah So Christopher's mother says, you are to grow up with Papa's good family and my money, she said.
00:09:46
Speaker
I want you to promise me now that you will take your place in society alongside the very best people. Mamba intends you to be a great man. Christopher, are you listening? I think it's worth saying at this point that society always has a capital S. It's always society. Yes.
00:10:03
Speaker
but And Christopher does not understand what society is, because at this point he's, what, five? But also he has no society. like He has no friends, he has no social circle, he has no connections, he has nothing. He lives in a little room looked after by a nursery maid.
00:10:20
Speaker
How on earth is he going to know what she means? Right. His only interactions are with Mama. I'm sorry, I have to pronounce it Mama and Papa. They're very clearly Mama and Papa.
00:10:31
Speaker
There's no doubt about it. um With the servants who read the horrible letters that Mama and Papa send to each other in front of him are like, oh my God, you're awful parents.
00:10:43
Speaker
The servants like him. But eventually he's sort of cut off from the servants because he starts getting governesses. And at the point that he gets governesses, he's not allowed to associate with the servants anymore. I think it's really clear that at this point, Christopher is a very likable child, which is important because that will not always
Uncle Rafe's Influence and Societal Themes
00:11:02
Speaker
be true.
00:11:03
Speaker
But kind of a hallmark of Christopher's life and his identity at this point is that when he meets people, they like him. They give him things. they're They're so sweet and friendly to him, and he's never sort of gone anywhere in these anywheres that he didn't have a wonderful time and find himself feeling instantly at home.
00:11:23
Speaker
Yeah. To Christopher, the world is full of nice and charming people, and he is one of the nice and charming people, and the only mystery is why his mother... keeps in talking about society whatever that is but I do think even at this early stage you do get little hints that ah Christopher's self-understanding or self-perception is perhaps not entirely accurate there's a point where he's stuck in a conversation with his mother and he really wants to get out and he picks up part of a wig that she's got on the table and he says what's this she says it's for patting out my hair Christopher now pay attention he says oh I thought it might be a dead rat ah dead and And very clearly what's happened is that Christopher has magically transformed it into a rat in order to get out of the conversation.
00:12:08
Speaker
Similarly, another time he's brought down the stairs to, in fact, be integrated into society. His mother's throwing a party and and Lady Badgett, the guest of honour, wants to see the but little boy. So Christopher comes downstairs, but he's just been to the Anywheres with the Mermaids.
00:12:23
Speaker
And he's curious to find out how on earth women walk about when they've got those big fishy tails under their skirts. He's rolling about on the floor trying to look up everyone's skirt. and This is normal five-year-old behavior, right?
00:12:35
Speaker
But it's also very, very funny. He's clearly a little menace. He summons rats. He looks up your guest's skirt. He does whatever he wants and he doesn't understand why he shouldn't because nobody ever talks to him or tells him anything.
00:12:49
Speaker
And Christopher's like, likeable, charming, cheerful childhood amorality will come back to bite him. Right.
00:12:59
Speaker
The other, the only real objective view we get of Christopher at this early age is one of the governesses who, when she's quitting, says, you're a nice little boy, even if you are a bit remote, but the atmosphere in this house um So there's something about Christopher that he doesn't, he's always a bit distant.
00:13:16
Speaker
He has removed himself from this horrible house that everyone around him keeps removing themselves from because everybody in the house quits after a couple of months because the atmosphere is so bad.
00:13:27
Speaker
Christopher can't quit. He is locked into the job of child at this point. And it is Apparently a lifetime position. um So the only way that he can leave is by escaping into these anywheres.
00:13:38
Speaker
I think it might also, it's probably also important to talk about what Christopher thinks society is because it also ah does somewhat set a tone for this book. So I, what quite like about this, this joke is that it also comes up in kind of Green Gables of all things.
00:13:54
Speaker
But, um, It's the idea that so society, the only society Christopher has ever heard of is the church society, which is, i can't what it is exactly, it's sending aid to the heathens.
00:14:07
Speaker
oh the i I mean, first of all, that is hilarious. But... there is a sense through this book that Jones doesn't know why it's hilarious. Like in Anne of Green Gables, it's just, it's funny because it's 1895 Canada.
00:14:21
Speaker
But in in this book, it's sort of like, we the reader may think that it's hilarious because Christopher just doesn't know what a society is or a group of people is really, because, you know, as Em says, like he has no, he has he has never been talked to or interacted with by people in a, like a normal, non horribly dysfunctional way.
00:14:43
Speaker
So he, obviously he but gloms onto this thing, but I don't think Jones understands that heathen is a bad word. back but because Like it is heathen,
00:14:55
Speaker
The word, think, is meant to mean non-Christian, which obviously brings in most of the world's population. But it the idea is that you're supposed to, if you're Christopher and you believe this slightly odd thing, you're supposed to go and like bring enlightenment to the to the the poor downtrodden savages.
00:15:18
Speaker
And it's supposed to be funny because you think, well, you know, Christopher's got the wrong end of the stick. But it's not quite funny because you're not quite
Fantasy, Exploitation, and Loss of Innocence
00:15:25
Speaker
sure that Jones knows that calling people heathens is really racist.
00:15:29
Speaker
I mean, this is to come up later in the book because there's a lot of things that would be... They would be like funny and arch from a brown author because you'd know that they were things that that person wasn't quite saying wholly sincerely.
00:15:42
Speaker
But in Jones, it's not quite clear. I mean, I'm not going to anticipate on that. I think there's quite a lot of stuff to be said about that. But this is the first... the first sign of it because this is in chapter one isn't it this is and it's a shame because it is actually very funny then Christopher becomes completely um convinced for the next few chapters that he's going to grow up to be a missionary right grow up to be a missionary and go mission to heathens which he doesn't know what they are and eventually has to be sort of told what they are in context but we'll get there right christopher's eventual shock that the vast majority of the people he likes and has been interacting with the whole time in the anywheres were heathens according to his mother's world is funny it's a good punch line but as as iona says there's like we don't quite trust jones with this joke i think right
00:16:36
Speaker
And there is sort of, I'm anticipating, I'm sorry, there is, I think, when Christopher sort of makes this discovery, it goes along with a sort of loss of the way that he's been interacting with the Anywheres in a couple of dramatic ways, and I think this is one of the most important ones.
00:16:53
Speaker
But the the actual inciting incident that changes the way that he interacts with with the Anywheres is he discovers he's got an uncle. And he loves this uncle. Ah, the introduction of Uncle Rafe.
00:17:07
Speaker
Spelt Ralph, which is very posh. Very posh uncle. ah But actually, no, ah Uncle Rafe is tweedy, foxy. Have we got the initial description? do. I've got it here. Hang on.
00:17:22
Speaker
Uncle Rafe took his fancy completely. To begin with, he was smoking a cigar. The scents of the dressing room were changed and mixed with the rich incense-like smoke, and Mama was not protesting by even so much as sniffing.
00:17:34
Speaker
That alone was enough to show that Uncle Rafe was in a class by himself. Then he was wearing tweeds, strong and tangy and almost fox-colored, which were a little baggy here and there, but blended beautifully with the darker foxiness.
00:17:45
Speaker
of Uncle Rafe's hair and the redder foxings of his mustache. Christopher had seldom seen a man in tweeds or without whiskers. This did even more to assure him that Uncle Rafe was someone special.
00:17:56
Speaker
As a final touch, Uncle Rafe smiled at him like sunlight on an autumn forest. It was such an engaging smile that Christopher's face broke into a return smile almost of its own accord.
00:18:07
Speaker
I think this description is just so striking. So Uncle Rafe is autumnal, which of course, he like he represents winter coming into Christopher's world. Christopher doesn't know that yet, but that is very much what is happening here.
00:18:23
Speaker
a coldness and an end of a summer of joy I suppose in his imagination in his anywheres but Uncle Rafe smiled at him like sunlight on an autumn forest is such a beautiful image just a gorgeous moment of light and warmth and you can feel how strongly Christopher responds and in that response how lonely he's always been This is the first adult in his own world who's taken any interest in who Christopher is and what he can do in what he has to say for himself.
00:18:58
Speaker
This is that the first person who's ever seemed to like Christopher from his own actual life. And Christopher adores him immediately.
00:19:09
Speaker
And Christopher, i think it's clear that Uncle Rafe and his brother, accomplice, the last governess, accomplice, later quite clearly lover, are sort of substitute figures for Christopher's own parents.
00:19:23
Speaker
This is a father figure and a mother figure and what they do to Christopher is an echo of what Christopher's parents have done. And I don't think it's obvious from this description that Uncle Rafe is evil because I think we can look ahead enough to say that Uncle Rafe is evil.
00:19:39
Speaker
And we can also look back enough to say that Uncle Rafe is evil because Uncle Rafe follows really clearly in a pattern of older masculine relatives who present a model of masculinity for a child that turns out to be false, shoddy, kind of a lie. The things that masculinity presents itself as that that do not actually have any of the virtues that they claim to have. It's Cousin Ronald.
00:20:02
Speaker
It's Cousin Ronaldo. Yes. there ah There's another note to it, I think, which is is very clever that, um you know, if you've never read this book and you've never read any other books by her, so you're just you're just meeting this guy afresh.
00:20:16
Speaker
What you might think is we have all known a child who's just super in love with the aunt or the uncle or the visiting family friend. and And, you know, that's a sweet thing. It's like that kind of...
00:20:28
Speaker
one of those first affections that out that's outside the immediate family circle. And I think there's ah there's ah there's a taste of that in this slightly odd description that he's wearing tangy tweeds. It's a little bit funny. it's It's a very child's description of like, yes, they were tangy because that's the word I have to hand because I've never had this experience before.
00:20:50
Speaker
And i I think that makes it all the sadder, doesn't it? Chris, if Uncle Rafe hadn't been evil, this would be the sweetest relationship in the book. Right. And it would be so important. It is so important. This is so exactly what Christopher needs, ah is what he's desperate for. that It's heartbreaking that Uncle Rafe is not someone he should ever have trusted.
00:21:10
Speaker
Though, of course, how could he possibly know? The other thing that really strikes me in this initial meeting is he's got this huge engaging smile and Christopher's face breaks into return smile almost of its own accord. And it's the first sort of moment of the mirroring, the echoing. This is someone who is instantly likable and Christopher instantly likes him. And of course, that's also how Christopher sees himself.
00:21:33
Speaker
Right. Uncle Rafe is his model, I think, immediately in a lot of ways. He wants to be like Uncle Rafe. And he is like Uncle Rafe. And ah the other thing that Uncle Rafe is, is he comes in to be his mother's savior, which is a hero.
00:21:51
Speaker
Yeah, he's a hero, which is, of course, something that a small boy always wants to be. And something that Christopher has been told he's going to be. His mother has told him again and again, you're going to be the making of this family.
00:22:03
Speaker
You're going to have all the gifts that we give you, and then you are going to be exactly what I want you to be that will save me. So pretty soon, Uncle Rafe discovers about Christopher's Anywhere's.
00:22:17
Speaker
And I think it it's sort of interesting that this introduction and this smile and this instant charming of Christopher comes before he knows exactly the ways in which he can make use of Christopher. But he does discover pretty quickly when the governess that he's installed, the last governess, who's a very, very dry, drab, bland person who has a kind of hidden prettiness that Christopher only sees when his mother isn't around.
00:22:42
Speaker
find some of Christopher's weird toys that he's brought back from other places. And it's like, ah what's this? how do How do you have it? You must have stolen it. And Christopher says, no, people just gave it to me.
00:22:55
Speaker
I think it's it's a really striking scene, actually, because I think it's pretty clear that the last governess is winding him up on purpose to get as much information as possible out of him. So Christopher is like, it's a really...
00:23:09
Speaker
convincing description of a child having a tantrum because they've been unjustly accused of something. But because of it, Christopher pours out everything about his secret inner life, this other what these other worlds he escapes to, and this turns out to be a terrible mistake.
00:23:25
Speaker
But he has no way to know that. This also is an echo, actually, because Christopher has been trying to make her angry. He's been trying to wind the last governess up, hoping she would turn more interesting when she shouted. And she immediately, because she's an adult, turns around and does the same thing to him better and more effectively.
00:23:40
Speaker
But yeah, so so the secret of the Anywheres comes out and Uncle Rafe says, all right, ah let's try some experiments. Let's see if next time you go to an Anywhere, you can meet somebody.
00:23:55
Speaker
And that's when Takroy enters the book, who I think is probably after Christopher, the most important person in the book. There's sort of a central, I think, triangle around Christopher. It's Christopher and Takroy and the goddess, at least the three figures who are the center of the question of the book.
00:24:18
Speaker
So let's talk about Takroy. The first thing we learned about Takroy is that Takroy is a person of color. the I'm also going to read out the description of Takroy because it is also very striking. Tachroy was as strong and young as his voice, rather squarely and sturdily built, with a roundish brown face and merry-looking hazel eyes.
00:24:36
Speaker
Christopher liked him at once, partly because Tachroy was the first grown man he had met who had curly hair like his own. It was not quite like, where Christopher's hair made loose black rounds, Tachroy's hair coiled tight like a mass of little pale brown springs.
00:24:48
Speaker
Christopher thought Tachroy's hair must hurt when a governess or someone made him comb it. So there's two immediate things from this passage. One, again, Tachroy is a brown person. Two, Christopher looks at Takaroy and thinks you're like me and you must be having the same experiences that I
Christopher's Magical Abilities and Identity
00:25:04
Speaker
have had. You probably have a governess who makes you comb your hair, um which is like mine. so i look at you and see. most funny ah It makes you wonder if Christopher believes that all grown men have governesses following them around doing their hair.
00:25:21
Speaker
He probably does because he doesn't understand. I mean, this is part of the thing about the fact that he doesn't know he never meets his father he doesn't know how his father lives right what does he know about what how grown men live they probably do have governesses following them around but this is the same thing almost the same thing as Christopher's instant response to Uncle Rafe is like he is someone I instantly like and instantly admire ah but I think he does always see Tachroy as another child Even though he's very clearly an adult man, ah Christopher always sees him as like me.
00:25:55
Speaker
Maybe he has a governess too, because he's clearly just like me. Both of us are working for Uncle Rafe doing experiments. We're the same. There's a point later on where Christopher like screws up all his courage to tell his father something and says it was the first time he told an adult this. And I'm looking at this like, no, you told Tachroy this last chapter.
00:26:12
Speaker
But Tachroy doesn't quite count as an adult man to Christopher somehow. And Takray and Christopher go into an anywhere. And I think this, this little, this little expedition is sort of a microcosm of everything that's about to happen to Christopher, because they go into an anywhere that Christopher remembers as quite hot and really beautiful. It's covered in these like vividly colored fungi. And he's really excited. He wants to show them to Takray.
00:26:37
Speaker
But when he gets there, the everything is colder. Everything seems a bit wilted. All of the colored fungus has turned dry and white. Something has happened to the environment of this place.
00:26:48
Speaker
And he sits down, as he's done before, to have a really nice kind of hot chocolate drink that is traditional there where he goes. um And he has the hot chocolate drink, but there's also a package that's being brought out as well. and The package has a weird smell.
00:27:01
Speaker
It smelled so offensive that it got in the way of the taste, is what the description says. So he's having this experience that he's had before, but something about it has been spoiled by the fact that although he doesn't understand what's happening, there's a transaction going on along with it.
00:27:18
Speaker
They are here to do work. They are here to pick up this mysterious substance. And then he wants to go set off and look more at the fungi and Takara says, no, we can't. The experiment's almost done. We have to leave.
00:27:30
Speaker
Right. And Christopher's previous experience of the enw Anywheres has been one of joyful exploration and generous welcome. like People have constantly been kind to him. They've given him free drinks. They've given him free toys in a way that is actually slightly mysterious enough that the last governess makes a sort of cynical comment about it. When Christopher describes to her, she says, very generous.
00:27:55
Speaker
And I always thought, I'm not sure that this reading is fully supported by the text, but I always thought there's a suggestion that Christopher has in fact been using magic to smooth his way without really thinking about it in the way that Christopher seems to use a lot of magic without thinking about it.
00:28:09
Speaker
But certainly once they have this business experience, this business transaction where they pick up What it is eventually really revealed to be dragon's blood, which is an expensive and rare and illegal magical ingredient that they are smuggling from one world to another, ah it spoils it.
00:28:30
Speaker
It's not good anymore. And Christopher's escape into other worlds has been turned into something that can be exploited and will be exploited very ruthlessly.
00:28:43
Speaker
So the other thing that happened at the end of this section that I didn't realize was foreshadowing until I was looking at my notes just now, actually, is as they're coming out, Takroy is starting to fade.
00:28:56
Speaker
He's, his so you know, he's he's kind of, he can't travel as comprehensively as Christopher can. And when we learn what Takroy's doing is something called spirit traveling. And so he's not really there in the same way that Christopher is.
00:29:08
Speaker
But Christopher puts a hand on him and is somehow able to sort of firm him up What Taquroy says is, I do believe, he said as if he did not believe it at all, that you've done something to fix me.
00:29:19
Speaker
And Taquroy becomes sort of more present and more locked into the place where Christopher is. And I think that's foreshadowing too. Yeah, it is. But it is also related to what might be my favourite joke in the whole book, which is the lady with the harp in Takkoy's Roots. I love the lady with the harp joke.
00:29:41
Speaker
It's basically that if you want to spirit travel and you're not Christopher and you don't have this natural talent for it, you need to be held sort of spiritually in place by something usually music. So he has a lady with a harp employed to stand by his bed in his room in London and and play enticingly so his entire spirit does not leave.
00:30:00
Speaker
And he has a sequence of employees or co-employees of this type through the book and and they get increasingly bad. There's the very atonal sweet.
00:30:11
Speaker
There's the one that screams and howls because Christopher has flamed him up in the spirit world. So in the the real world, he's turning into a wisp and and a bit of gossamer, but she doesn't want to do it for ghosts.
00:30:22
Speaker
I don't think this joke serves any purpose except just to be funny. I think he ends up with a mean grandmother with a violin. hey Yes, and then they all get arrested and the mean grandmother with the violin beats the policeman over the head with a violin.
00:30:36
Speaker
My favorite two-sentence character in this book is the mean criminal grandmother with a violin. But the fact that Takroy is a music guy, that's one of the first things that we know about him, also does set up kind of who Takroy is in this mirror set of mirror reflections of diana when jones characters he's the strange magical man who has something to do with music he's tanamel and takroy or of course torquil and tom from fire and hemlock so i think tom is a really productive reading because this is
00:31:14
Speaker
the adult-child relationship where the adult is not behaving as an adult should and the child sees him as a friend and as a dear and beloved friend as well as a mentor as well as the only person who understands.
00:31:27
Speaker
As well as kind of a peer in a way that's not entirely appropriate. Right. And what it turns out of course is that the child is wrong but also right to see this person as a peer because this person has experienced the kind of abuse, the kind of you utility being made of them by adults that our point of view child is experiencing now.
00:31:50
Speaker
yeah And is also so sort of ah and and ah instrumental in reflecting that abuse and that utility onto the new child. Yeah, and um I think that flows straight into the fact that Christopher, the morning after this first adventure, gets a box of chocolates in the post from Uncle Rafe.
00:32:08
Speaker
And he loves it. It's a huge box of chocolates. It's not what he's used to, and it lasts the whole household for a week. But And, you know, you read it and in your mind you're thinking, child trafficking, child trafficking, because he's been given lovely present.
00:32:22
Speaker
He thinks everything's lovely. he wants to work for the people who have him under this way because they treat him nicely. And, of course, the relationship with Takroy is pretty clear because Takroy has also been through a thing that's very like this, even though he's not a child, which is like you say, Becca, that's one of the reasons...
00:32:42
Speaker
Christopher sees him as a child as somebody you know ah somebody who gets a treat because they were good. Yeah. And note all the chocolate also come, I believe, with a note that says, don't tell your mama about this.
00:32:53
Speaker
Oh God, yeah. This is like, mean, you read Christopher's story as an adult and you're like, oh God, oh God, oh God, oh no. ah But the one that really jumped out at me as like meticulously true was Uncle Rafe's strong insistence on secrecy.
00:33:09
Speaker
Don't tell mama. Don't tell anyone. This is just you between you and me. And he makes it sound like a wonderful secret that they're sharing. But of course, that's the worst possible thing that you could do to a child is give them this like criminal, illegal secret that they have to keep for you.
00:33:26
Speaker
But what's really sad about it is that Christopher's like, well, that's easy. There's no one to tell. and Christopher is so isolated that he is an ideal victim for his uncle's exploitation.
00:33:38
Speaker
he has He has no community. He has no context. He has no one to go to to say, hey, this sounds off. The only person around who could actually say that is Takaroy.
Navigating Societal Expectations and Personal Identity
00:33:48
Speaker
And the fact that Takroy doesn't, despite clearly knowing, ah is sort of the great big, as an adult, a side eye to the whole character. You're like, what?
00:33:58
Speaker
What the fuck, dude? Especially after what happens next. So the next time Takroy and Christopher has got this plan, they're like, I wonder if I could bring ah lot like an animal out. And they're sort of, you know, i think that describes Takroy's excitement about this as like a naughty child. like They're like, oh, be it would be fun to test this.
00:34:18
Speaker
So the next place they go is a place called the Temple of Ashes to try and steal an Ashes temple cat, which is where Christopher meets the goddess, who I think is the other most important person in this book and the other most important reflection of Christopher.
00:34:33
Speaker
Yeah. So Christopher sneaks into the temple, tries to steal a cat, but you know the difficulty with stealing cats? They don't want to be stolen. They really don't.
00:34:45
Speaker
So he gets caught by, he thinks, a little girl. Just... An ordinary little girl. he has a In fact, he describes her as ordinary, doesn't he? he got the description? ah The goddess was a girl with a round, ordinary face and long mouse-coloured hair.
00:35:00
Speaker
She was wearing a sleeveless rust-brown robe and rather a lot of turquoise jewellery, including at least 20 bracelets and a little turquoise studded coronet. She looked a bit younger than he was, much too young to be able to fasten someone's feet to the floor.
00:35:11
Speaker
Now, one thing that I think is really important about this, actually, is that we've got this whole long description that i'm not going to read out because it's really long, that's straight out of the Arabian Nights. of Christopher coming up to the temple and there's snake charmers and bizarre stalls and goats and chickens and strange clinking music, etc, etc, etc.
00:35:29
Speaker
This is set up as a place where brown people live. But Millie is clearly white. Millie has, like, I've seen a lot of fan art of Millie that draws her as brown, which I think is appropriate and good, but she's very clearly not described that way.
00:35:43
Speaker
She's described as a little wanker. No, she's not. I mean, and like you said, when we were discussing this beforehand, we know from Charmed Life that she's not, she's that she's white. But the, I mean, I think it's worth taking a second to look at all the little details about the world that she lives in.
00:36:02
Speaker
I mean, I think in a minute or two, it might be worth talking about exactly how the Anywheres or the Other Worlds are structured, because I think it's really fun and clever. But the So she's the but living Ashef.
00:36:14
Speaker
ah And Ashef is the goddess. There's a goddess in the temple that seems to be made of gold. Although it's interesting that Jones takes, I don't know if it's this encounter or later, where she takes time to tell us that the goddess, the kind of sculptural one, is kind of shoddy.
00:36:35
Speaker
Gold in the front and wood on the back. Which I think shoddy is the word that she also uses for Uncle Rafe and for the glacier that everybody is compared to. and This idea of splendid in front and rather ugly around the back is yeah important, but the choice of but doing it here specifically...
00:36:53
Speaker
is fantastically misplaced but if you've got and so the idea of course is that the goddess is the living goddess she's the embodiment of the goddess I think it's the same idea as in Earthsea the tombs of Atuan where the it's a little girl a nameless little girl who is the ah the embodiment of the goddess and And the snake charmers and the the little roadside shrines with flowers and fruit as offerings.
00:37:21
Speaker
And the goddess, incidentally, has has four arms. It is very unclear to me if she physically has four arms, although whether you just feel like she has four arms, whether you see the other two shadows, which...
00:37:32
Speaker
and which ah Incidentally, I think is super, super cute. Because she's a little girl. With four arms. She makes them appear, right? Because Christopher doesn't notice them at first. And then i think it's the second visit. She's like, I'm going to reward you for bringing me these books that I've asked for her by showing you me and my real aspect.
00:37:53
Speaker
And she brings him around the statue and then stands there. And he's like, well, it doesn't look like you. It's got four arms. She's like, no, I've also got four arms. It's just so cute. But there's a very, very famous and substantial piece of Hindu iconography that looks like this.
00:38:11
Speaker
You've got the the Kalima and Durgama. I had a nice time going through, you know, the the gods of our pantheon trying to find out which one... mean and well, she's merely the goddesses meant to be.
00:38:24
Speaker
um And I thought Kali was too scary because she's little girl. And then I thought Saraswati is it either just right or not at all because she's the goddess of learning. So, and Millie has no books.
00:38:36
Speaker
Lakshmi doesn't sound right, but she could be because she gives Christopher a lot of gifts. And then you've got Durga, who was my eventual choice because Durga isn't the goddess of anything in particular and she gives no gifts.
00:38:49
Speaker
i It is striking the way that Asheth doesn't really seem to do anything or be anything. no she's just like, generally, because she is That's what you want out of a god, really. You know one thing about Asheth, which is when Christopher sees the statue, he's struck by the fact that she's she's got this very stupid expression on her face.
00:39:09
Speaker
And Lily says, yes, she does that so people won't ask things of her. She's really very clever, but she's mastered this very stupid expression, which I've also mastered. And Christopher's really impressed. He's like, wow, what a useful expression.
00:39:22
Speaker
I would love to look incredibly stupid so people don't things of her. It's this figure of power who is also a figure of powerless, helpless child who is constantly being asked for things they don't really want to do and has to passive-aggressively figure their way out of it.
00:39:39
Speaker
by pretending to be an idiot or to be looking out the window, which is Christopher's version. I love you, Christopher. I really do. But then you've got all of this um this iconography, these details.
00:39:52
Speaker
Snake chalmers in baskets, less common in India than they used to be, for obvious reasons. but um But again, there's religious iconography, the Nag figure, which is very interesting.
00:40:02
Speaker
very prominent in Hinduism. And Nag is a cobra and not a snake, but it's very much the same idea. And, you know, what you come what you come back to is, of course, that this is hideously inappropriate. the This little plot line is cute. It is funny and it is fundamental to the book, but it doesn't have to look like this. Like, I mean...
00:40:23
Speaker
If she wanted to do goddess figure, she could have done it with a culture that's not currently in existence. like She could do fair that have gone Roman. wanted It would be so easy to go Roman with this ship. I do think it's quite plausible, as you said, that she's drawing on Earthsea for this. And Earthsea avoids this very handily.
00:40:39
Speaker
Oh, yeah. No, Earthsea is great. I think if Earthsea, if it had gone and done something like this, it would be less effective because it wouldn't be scary if... if If your iconography is completely unfamiliar, it's scary.
00:40:52
Speaker
Whereas with this, you know, these are all things that, you know, we're very familiar with. And then, you know, tie that back to the idea of the goddess, the actual physical sculpture of the goddess being shoddy looking.
00:41:05
Speaker
Now, I will be the first to say the Murthyya and Hindu temples are not maintained particularly well. mainly because people like bash them around all day. But we know that that's not what Jones is going for. Like it's, it's not, that's not a done in a clear understanding of a real religious tradition. And that is very much, you know, this is funny. Also it's shoddy. Also I picked some details out of books that I liked.
00:41:29
Speaker
And she's doing it as a metaphor, I think for the way that Millie echoes Christopher, right? Which is that she's Millie, nerve the goddess has been, she's the goddess at this point, but we know that she'll be Millie later.
00:41:40
Speaker
ah We don't know yet, I think, at this point, reading this book as a first reader. um Not yet. I remember the first time I read it because I had read Charmed Life first, so I knew that Christopher eventually married someone called Millie.
00:41:51
Speaker
But i realized the goddess was Millie, it blew my mind. It's Millie! But the point of immediate similarity between the goddess and Christopher is that both of them are have been sort of put into a role and are being formed into that role and don't really have a future for themselves beyond that role.
00:42:13
Speaker
Anytime Christopher meets the goddess, they immediately have this interchange that is very strongly like, oh, we're basically the same. It's really striking. there There are a couple of really funny bits where like Christopher will think something and then the goddess will say the exact same thing about him a couple of pages later.
00:42:28
Speaker
So I think that the point of the Shadi statue is to compare Asheth to a Gauri. But it's done in this way that is just... yeah why why Why are you using real world religious iconography to make this point?
00:42:42
Speaker
um This is a bad me but ah um I should point out, by the way, that we are 45 minutes into recording and about four chapters into the book. ah well but like There's a lot to say about Lives of Christopher Chan.
00:43:00
Speaker
hasn't even lost his first life yet, but he's about to. He's about to. Christopher and the goddess come to an agreement. They'll do a swap. She will give him her least favorite cat, who is the big, rude ginger tom who bullies all the others and is horrible. And his name is Throgmorton.
00:43:18
Speaker
This is the best cat that Diana McJones has ever written. I love him so much. He's so awful. And in return, Christopher has to big bring her some books because she's bored. And Christopher agrees the swap, not very seriously, takes the cat and then has to make a run for it back out of the temple to get to Takroy.
00:43:34
Speaker
And he gets caught by the guards, who are these terrifying masked figures dressed all in silver. And one of them throws a spear and it goes right through Christopher. yeah oh um so and And the last thing he sees is Takroy's horrified face.
00:43:51
Speaker
Because Tuckroy just saw like a six-year-old get speared right in front of him. Yep. How old is Christopher? Maybe more like eight or nine at this point? think eight or nine because time starts moving pretty quickly from this point. And by the end of the book, I think he must be 12 or 13. Well, it's weird because he's only at the school for about a term, but I think he's about eight when he goes to school and 13 when he leaves. Yeah, so well.
00:44:14
Speaker
Jones is like, whatever. Jones is very consistently against giving specific ages to her characters. Yeah. and occasionally, but also I do think school does it to to Christopher in a specific way because Christopher goes into school like a very young child with no experience of the rest of the world, of the rest of his own world.
00:44:32
Speaker
And he leaves school as someone who is thoroughly socialized. Yeah, and he leaves school as a stroppy 13 year old on the cusp of puberty and you can tell. i love Christopher's school life. It's just so charming.
00:44:44
Speaker
They all stay up late at night reading the Arabian Nights with the dirty bits left in. Which is a really, it's a useful clue. I think we we talked in one of the earlier episodes about like, I've been reading bits of the Arabian Nights to prepare for this and prepare for the next step, which is Castle in the Air.
00:44:59
Speaker
um And I was like, which Arabian nights? There's were a couple extant translations. And as soon as Christopher's like, oh, it's the unexpurgated. I'm like, all right, it's Burton. but um But it is like when Christopher goes to school, it's the only, I think, happy school experience that Diana Wynne Jones ever wrote. Christopher loves school.
00:45:20
Speaker
He was so lonely and then he has like a completely unironic British school story experience and he loves every second of it. But we're stepping ahead because we haven't dealt with Throgmorton.
00:45:33
Speaker
right's right Christopher dies, right? Christopher very clearly just died. He got stabbed through the chest. um Wakes up back in his own bed with a cat. And the cat is furious. and this is This is standard Throgmorton. Throgmorton is always furious. Yeah.
00:45:48
Speaker
ah and Christopher lets Throgmorton out and Throgmorton goes for a little explore around Christopher's room and jumps up onto the frame of the four poster bed that Christopher unhooked earlier in order to get a pole to open the cat basket because he knows how dangerous Throgmorton is and there's an accident and the pole comes crashing down straight through the middle of Christopher's chest and he dies in the bed but he's fine but he's fine Probably he didn't die. Probably it was all confusion. Like in these early incidents where Christopher dies, it's really not quite clear what happened because he wakes up afterwards and he's fine.
00:46:25
Speaker
And it's not until quite late in the book we're told, yeah, that was death. He died. Well, he wakes up afterwards and Uncle Rafe is there talking to the last governess. Uncle Rafe doesn't come to see Christopher.
00:46:36
Speaker
Uncle Rafe wants to know about the cat. Uncle Ray specifically wants the last governess to catch the cat because wizards will pay 500 pounds just for an inch of its guts or one of its claws. This cat is has been brought back for the slaughter.
00:46:48
Speaker
yeah um And so despite the fact that this cat has more or less just killed him, Throgmorton comes and sort of wails appealingly at Christopher. And Christopher's like, yes, all right, fine, and lets him out.
00:46:59
Speaker
Christopher Throgmorton, unlike Christopher, gets to escape at this point. And it seems like that's the last we're going to see of Throgmorton. It is not. Luckily, I love Throgmorton. But there is, I think, there this is, I think, if Christopher was willing to see it, this is his first sign that Uncle Ralph is bad news.
00:47:17
Speaker
It's the fact that he wants to dismember the cat. Yes.
00:47:22
Speaker
and is ah horror talking about it in this very brutal but also very unconcerned way and it's all about the money and Throgmorton is Christopher like in sort of a system of mirrorings of character echoing through this book it's really click clear that Throgmorton and Christopher are echoes of each other both of them have this Anger, actually.
00:47:45
Speaker
And Christopher's anger is not very clear yet, but he will get more and more and more angry as the book goes on. And he will lash out more and more. And both of them desperately want out. They want to escape.
00:47:57
Speaker
yeah Christopher does not get to escape. Christopher goes to a bunch more anywheres with Tachroy. He learns a bit more about Tachroy. Tachroy reveals that he was a foundling child.
00:48:08
Speaker
Christopher asks what a foundling child is, and Tachroy says... It means someone found me, but someone in my case was a very agreeable and very devout sea captain who picked me up as a baby on an island somewhere.
00:48:19
Speaker
He said the Lord had sent me. I don't know why my who my parents were. Christopher was impressed. Is that why you're always so cheerful? Because you don't have parents.
00:48:30
Speaker
Oh, I didn't notice that when I read it. Yeah, that's why he would be cheerful, because he doesn't have any parents. Another way in which Christopher looks at Takara and is like, oh, you're you're like me. You're alone.
00:48:41
Speaker
Except alone in a better way than I am. And this is also where he finds out from Takroy that the anywhere in which he met the goddess and got speared and lost his first life is in fact a quote-unquote Ketan anywhere.
00:48:55
Speaker
um Which I think is like... If you read the Christopher losing his life as sort of losing bits of himself or losing potential futures or ways that he could be, I think this is this is a kind of really significant paired moment.
00:49:10
Speaker
You know, he goes once once Uncle Rafe has kind of sent him to start taking things from these worlds where he's just kind of wander around happily and meet people and be given things. he loses his life in a place where he expected to feel perfectly safe.
00:49:24
Speaker
And then he's told that this is a place where he should never have felt safe, that this is a place that actually forms his childhood fears and he never knew it. That's very powerful, isn't it? When you really think about it, it's it's very much a...
00:49:41
Speaker
Because it's a retrospective um piece of damage for him. like he yeah He's having his present but also his past taken from him. that yeah Yeah, he's losing his, not just the happiness he's what he feels ah exploring the Anywheres, but all the happiness he ever felt. It turns out it was always a dangerous place and he should never have been happy.
00:50:08
Speaker
I don't know if you want to talk about Kipling now or save it for later, but I want you to talk about Kipling really badly. think this might be a good point for it, actually, because I was just thinking about it, too. So this reading of mine pairs up Millie and Christopher in two different but complementary ways. I think we have to we have to skip ahead a little bit and...
00:50:30
Speaker
ah drop the extremely shocking news that eventually Millie comes to be with Christopher in his home world. it's and We will get to it, but that is eventually what happens to her. Yes, lucky Millie eventually gets to live in Victorian England, which is what she's always wanted. For some reason, she's told Millie.
00:50:49
Speaker
Oh, bless her. So let's start with Millie, in fact. So we've got some the books that Christopher eventually brings to her are all from a ah series of school stories called Millie and something.
00:51:02
Speaker
They're all like Millie wins the trick or, you know. at Lowood House, head girl Millie. Sorry, Lowood House is just the Jane Eyre school. I can't believe she just put the Jane Eyre school again into Millie books.
00:51:16
Speaker
LAUGHTER
00:51:19
Speaker
It's perhaps a hint, goddess, that maybe you don't want to go to Victorian British boarding school.
00:51:28
Speaker
And funnier still for the fact these books are supposed to be like cool and aspirational when Millie is really... Actually, we don't know that. We know that Millie thinks they are cool and aspirational. We don't know if they actually are. They're described as another moral and uplifting story about your favourite schoolgirl.
00:51:43
Speaker
You will weep with Millie, rejoice with Millie and meet all your friends from Lawwood House School again. You know what, maybe you'll weep with her because Helen Burns just died. I feel like Tenorin Jones wrote an unironic happy boarding school experience for Christopher and then was like, i can't I can't let that stand. No, the joke has to go somewhere.
00:52:05
Speaker
Oh, Millie. So she comes from the land that she comes from, which is the Ashes land with the goddess and the iconography and the snakes and all the rest of it. And she comes to Victorian England.
00:52:17
Speaker
And this is... is better it's it's where she's supposed to be we get the sense like i'm um like again I'm anticipating because this hasn't happened at this point in the book but but we've been through charmed life we can see that Millie's eventual adulthood turned into being an English school girl and then you know an English woman in ah an English government department for some reason but um But then you've got and you've got this trope that sits in children's literature in this space, which is, i mean, the classic example is The Secret Garden, um which is by Frances Hodgson Burnett. And it's about a child called Mary Lennox.
00:52:56
Speaker
Mary is Anglo-Indian. When she's very young, her parents die of cholera. It's not a terrible book by any means. Like the the first chapter in which, like,
00:53:09
Speaker
four-year-old Mary walks through a compound that has been devastated by cholera. So there's one living child among all of the dead. And it's it's really and really a terrifying opening for the book. I remember it being harrowing when I read it as a child.
00:53:23
Speaker
But the unfortunate thing that follows is that Mary comes to England, to the Yorkshire Dales, and is transformed away from that terrible climate, away from that terrible country.
00:53:36
Speaker
away from that place that isn't suitable for children. um The climate is in fact described as not suitable for children. And if you read it, you think to yourself a little confusedly, but what about the Indian children?
00:53:50
Speaker
um In like, In broad strokes, the point of that book is that the the British child comes safely home to England, away from India, the land of horrors, not suitable for children.
00:54:03
Speaker
And, you know, just in case we thought she didn't mean it, she does it again in A Little Princess. Even more so. that book, and the problem with both of those books is that they are very well written. So you can see that she really meant it.
00:54:17
Speaker
and And the the Millie story is very, I mean, you can very much locate that in that trope. It's very much the same idea. Millie from, you know, wacky, shot shoddy goddess land, you know, snakes, Prashad, Durga Ma, all the stuff.
00:54:34
Speaker
And then she comes to England where she never goes back. She never in her adulthood, I know part of that is because Tram Life comes first, but she never in her adulthood thinks to herself, well, actually I'm from somewhere else.
00:54:47
Speaker
Now, there is a weird ah underlayer to that in the fact that Millie is white. And there's a kind of ah an odd joke. Joke? I don't know what she means it as.
00:54:57
Speaker
That um this kind of Arabian Nights setting, as you say, Becca, is um the kind of person Arabian Nights... is being occupied by this, you know, this very pragmatic white girl who wants to go away to school.
00:55:10
Speaker
But it doesn't help. like it's not it's right It's not a great look. and And then you contrast that to, this is the thing we were discussing beforehand, is so so Kipling, Rudyard Kipling, Nobel Laureate in Literature,
00:55:23
Speaker
Very, very contested legacy, both in the UK and in India. So Kipling, certainly not without his problems. He wrote a poem called The White Man's Burden. Oh, God, yes.
00:55:33
Speaker
But Kipling is a complicated character because Kipling was also Anglo-Indian. He was born and raised in Bombay. And in his writings, it is so clear that Kipling really was Indian.
00:55:47
Speaker
Like there is a story of his called Baba Black Sheep, which is very interesting. But if you do read it, it's about child abuse. It's very, very strongly about child abuse. It is, he said his whole life that wasn't brought to biographies.
00:56:01
Speaker
It wasn't autobiographical, but he didn't let his publisher publish it until the year after his parents died. And it's about these two little Indian children who are sent home to England to stay with distant relatives um until their parents can take them back to India.
00:56:17
Speaker
And oh, it is bleak and it's awful. This poor little kid, lonely boy like Christopher, who is, they are really trying to get India out of him, get the language out of him, get the culture out of him. He's a first language Hindi speaker, like as many Anglo-Indian children were at the time.
00:56:35
Speaker
but it's not, you know, that part of his identity, his inner life is not respected. And putting that story with against Christopher's story is very interesting to me.
00:56:46
Speaker
Because if you've got, if you think about Christopher's inner life, his anywheres, you know, where he's happy, where he's at home, where the people, they give him things, they think of him as one of them.
00:56:59
Speaker
And then he has all of that taken away from him by the distant relative, Uncle Rafe, and it's all tainted. And his past, he's told, as many Anglo-Indian children were, that they should forget that. That was an accident of where they their parents happened to be living when they were born.
00:57:15
Speaker
You know, they are not part of the Indian project. and Now, you know, they like even in modern India, the Anglo-Indians have a strange place. You know, they're not one thing or another. Although there's not very many of them left now.
00:57:27
Speaker
But in Victorian England, where we're supposed to see Christopher, there certainly were plenty of them. So if you think about that, you've got Christopher and Millie, who are both sitting in slightly different stories, you know, but they're both stories of displacements.
00:57:41
Speaker
They're both stories of colonialism. like The reason this comparison doesn't quite work as well as you might want it to is, of course, the mini version of it is terribly racist and the Christopher version is not.
00:57:55
Speaker
like the The Christopher version, I think, has a lot of a lot of depth and power and melancholy to it because so much of Christopher's misery comes from not having his own place and not having his own people.
00:58:07
Speaker
And that is the colonisation and decolonisation story in a nutshell. You don't have you don't have who you are or where you are or what you are to rely on. And then.
00:58:18
Speaker
But I think, though, even though you say that Christopher and Millie stories don't quite line up with that because the Millie part is quite racist, the ah seeds of it are there in Jones. the the relationship between Christopher and Millie is really powerful. Like they talk about themselves as the same.
00:58:36
Speaker
i I mean, I would argue that they're not the same, but they're so interestingly different that what the who they are to each other is he productive and meaningful. um And like, I think seeing that story in the heart of this book might be part of why I liked it so much when I was younger, because it's like,
00:58:54
Speaker
colonialism doesn't sit under its own name in much children's literature. But if you talk about if you think about where a lot of children's literature comes from, you know, like the the whole Secret Garden, um adam of Green Gables and the Dominion of Canada, there's a lot to be said about it because it sits under the surface of so much of what we're trying to talk about in children's literature.
00:59:15
Speaker
say and Which comes partly from the sort of the root of British children's literature is this Victorian British idea of the child as a thing that must be shaped for the future of empire. um And then so many of the stories, the the the story shapes, the school story is ah is a story of creating...
00:59:37
Speaker
an imperial officer, a suitable person. um And that's clearly one Jones is drawing on here as well. But yeah, I love that reading, Iona. I think that is so productive and so interesting.
00:59:50
Speaker
You're right, there's almost a slightly better book here. and if if it wasn't so racist well I think the important third angle of the triangle there is Takroy which we'll get to we'll get to Takroy who rhymes very very much with these two stories and then again it sort of collapses into racism but first we have Christopher who is you know I think that the reading we have christopher who is you know i think that the reading of of of him losing pieces of himself as he gets sort of stuffed into these societal boxes versus his mother telling him you're going to go into society.
01:00:24
Speaker
His uncle basically taking this relationship with the Annie Wears and turning it into part of a colonial project. and Now it's for a criminal empire rather than than for a political empire. But nonetheless, and then he goes to school.
01:00:38
Speaker
This story being hard on the heels of ta Tale of Time City, you can sort of see Jones's thinking about colonialism. right Not necessarily very clearly, she's thinking about it. Not necessarily very clearly or And then he goes to school.
01:00:53
Speaker
And school also, he's very happy at school, but school is also shaping him into the outer mold of an appropriate little boy. He learns a code of honor. He learns that he has to bring books to Millie because he said he would because a man does this. A man honors his word. He honors a swap.
01:01:09
Speaker
He learns that women are as strange in different species that men cannot possibly understand. ah To be fair, Christopher already had this idea because he thought that women had tails, but he learned it in a different way at school. There's a point where Millie tries to give him a bracelet to thank him for the books.
01:01:29
Speaker
And Christopher thinks he wondered what he would do with the bracelet, wear it. He knew what school would think of that. He would have worn the bracelet as a child. ah He would have. And he also learned about cricket.
01:01:41
Speaker
He falls in love with cricket. Guys, we've made it one hour to this recording and we've just arrived at Christopher Chant, the cricket boy. is the cricket boy of Diana Wynne-Jones.
01:01:54
Speaker
We've seen him before. ah David, back in Eight Days of Luke, was a cricket boy. ah Actually, David, an interesting comparison because David, too, vastly prefers school to home. ah Jamie, meanwhile, an anti-cricket boy. Yes, that's right. But kind ah ah Joris is is very good at cricket, naturally.
01:02:15
Speaker
And Christopher and Takroy is very, very good at cricket. This actually is, I think this is really funny because when you think of Takroy in the line of like Tom and Tannamel, who...
01:02:26
Speaker
take these these younger people under their wing and sort of impart to them about creativity and teach them to grow into their gifts. And the form that creativity takes at this sort of passing along of the learning between Tachroy and Christopher is that Tachroy knows everything about cricket. So they spend their entire anywhere wandering around talking about like bad things.
01:02:48
Speaker
it's really cute because it's exactly what Christopher needs right he needs a mentor who cares about the things he cares about and there's this amazing sort of development from Christopher like full of daydreams of someday playing for a a county team and he he gets so good at cricket thanks to Tagore that his daydreams turn into maybe I could play for the school team it becomes real um which is the first time anyone's ever cared enough for Christopher to get Christopher to something he could actually want right oh that really touched me it's he wants to play for the school team oh Christopher we want that for you too
01:03:24
Speaker
And it's such a wholesome passion. Like, he loves it. He gets all his friends into it. Like, they're all Even the one who's no good at cricket. Right! The one who's no good! will stop reading the dirty bits of the Arabian Nights so they can read cricket manuals.
01:03:42
Speaker
And cricket, I think, also relevant to this conversation about colonialism, because cricket is, of course, the British sport export to all the places it goes. And then everyone in all these places gets really good at cricket and then like dramatically and symbolically fights Great Britain on the cricket court.
01:03:59
Speaker
Yes, and comes back to being much, much better at England than cricket. Sorry, at cricket than England. But it's so nicely done. It's so nicely done. And then we've got them, you know, like practicing their batting. And we know on the page that Christopher is a batsman, not a bowler, because, you know, she's not, like, backwards, but giving us all the details about...
01:04:25
Speaker
about Christopher's cricket obsession. like It is the game that we see later where she gives us it step by step so you can picture it in your head properly. Like, you know, you are a spectator.
01:04:36
Speaker
You're ready for this. It's very specific about exactly what the sport involves and what Christopher likes about it and what he's good at. yeah It actually made me think of, she wrote a a lecture actually, not an essay, on heroes ah in which she talked a lot about sports and sporting heroes. And she was focused in particular on tennis.
01:04:56
Speaker
And this is actually the lecture where she she points out the connection between Hal of House Moving Castle and Andre Agassi. but she talks about the sporting figure as a hero who is larger than life, ah who you cheer on, ah who you support, um or who you criticise for things that you actually would do yourself if you were stuck with that prig umpire.
01:05:17
Speaker
But Christopher, as like a a sporting hero, um sort of gives him this kind of heroic aura, almost, this sense of... um of a larger-than-life person.
01:05:30
Speaker
and that He seems to be his best self when he is thinking about cricket.
Transition to Cresomancy Castle
01:05:34
Speaker
Now, unfortunately, this is ruined for him because he has another death. ah He dies on... ah He gets hit by a big hook that seems to be a terrible accident.
01:05:47
Speaker
when he's doing an anywhere mission for Uncle Ralph, which he's almost forgotten about because he's so happy at school and then has to be sort of reminded by these chiding letters that, in fact, he's not a child who's free to be anything he wants to be.
01:05:58
Speaker
He's a child with a job, which is to go smuggle things for this criminal empire. Not that he knows that that's what he's doing yet. And he wakes up after having been hit with this big hook. And in what I think is, it's very funny, but also really cruel.
01:06:11
Speaker
The thing that gets him is he's hit in the head with a cricket bat in a terrible accident by one of his best friends. And he wakes up in the morgue screaming, you know, running around in a white sheet, screaming, I'm missing cricket practice.
01:06:24
Speaker
And again, favourite part actually is when the morgue attendant faints. It's like the first really clear sign that Christopher has been strongly underreacting to a lot of the weird stuff that happens to him.
01:06:37
Speaker
Christopher says, what do you mean by locking this door? Everyone's dead in here. They're not going to run away. before feels over And then could Christopher starts screaming about this in cricket practice.
01:06:49
Speaker
But of course, this is what, you know, this is, again, ah life lost. This is the end of Christopher's dreams of a cricket career, because this is what twigs everyone to the fact that he is, in fact, dying.
01:07:00
Speaker
And that means that he has another fate set out for him. Right. This is when Christopher discovers he has multiple lives or his father thinks he does.
01:07:11
Speaker
And there is a future set out for a person with multiple lives that is something to do with Crestomancy. Now, we as people who read Charmed Life first go, aha, I know all about that.
01:07:22
Speaker
ah But the book actually stays quite vague about it for a bit longer because Christopher doesn't want to know. no ah So instead he goes to Dr. Pawson. This is the halfway mark of the book, guys. We may need to do a second recording.
01:07:37
Speaker
I think we're going to move quickly through the next seven chapters after Dr. Posset, because mostly what it is, is Christopher being really depressed and losing his life as it's increasingly rapidly. That's true. As his future narrows around him.
01:07:49
Speaker
Yeah. But Dr. Poisson I love. ah So Christopher is... um Christopher's father comes to take him away from school and he says, I believe you have a great future, my son, which is the last thing Christopher ever wants to hear.
01:08:04
Speaker
um And it's the first time he's ever had a conversation with his father. yeah ah No, that's not true. His father comes to visit him once after he's died the first time and is like, I thought something terrible had happened to you, but you seem fine. Goodbye.
01:08:18
Speaker
So it... Christopher's father's been in touch with Christomancy. They said there's nothing strange about Christopher. They came and examined him while he was asleep. Of course, when Christopher's asleep, he's usually not there because he's gone almost anywhere.
01:08:31
Speaker
So they missed quite a lot because most of Christopher was away. So Christopher is taken to a Cambridge Don named Dr. Pawson. And this did make me wonder, Diana, who are you parodying here?
01:08:42
Speaker
again i don't think it is, but who the hell is it? Anyway, Dr. Pawson is an amazing, like larger than life figure in the middle of the book. He's only actually there for one chapter.
01:08:53
Speaker
I love him. I thought there was more of him in the book because I remember him hugely. But Dr. Pawson takes a look at Christopher standing there saying, I can't do magic. And he says, don't do some magic and let me see.
01:09:07
Speaker
Christopher says, I can't not do something I can't do, sir. Yes, you can. That's the very magic boy. It's a great scene. It's like i can I can do it from memory just like that because it was really funny.
01:09:19
Speaker
And eventually, after staring at him for a while, Dr. Pawson orders Christopher to empty his pockets and then try a levitation spell. This is what Christopher does. And out of his pockets come the silver sixpence that Uncle Rafe once gave him, along with various other objects. And I think he's got a tooth brace and a tie pin and some other bits of money.
01:09:39
Speaker
The point is, he drops all these in the carpet and he does the levitation spell. And as he lifts his arms for the end of the spell... He feels the roof of the house come off.
01:09:51
Speaker
And suddenly everything goes up. And it's this moment of incredibly comical. It's really funny. It's moment of great release. As it turns out, Christopher does have this extraordinary magical power.
01:10:04
Speaker
which was, it turns out, was being limited, hindered by his like magical allergy to silver. Which it turns out his father tells him is, his father confesses to him ah that it's his fault that silver stops you working magic because his father's magical gift comes in the form of divination, which doesn't seem very good at.
01:10:24
Speaker
So when Christopher was born, he did a bunch of divination spells and they all came back saying silver would be deadly to him. So he cast a lot of spells to make silver neutral to him instead. And then at this point, Papa says, Argent.
01:10:37
Speaker
Argent means Silver, Argent being the last name of Christopher's mama and his uncle. Could I have got it wrong?
01:10:46
Speaker
So now Silver, any contact with Silver seems to transform you at once into an ordinary person without a magic gift at all. So there's a lot of layers here. For one thing, Silver doesn't just transform Christopher into an ordinary person. It forces him to tell the truth.
01:11:00
Speaker
We know that Christopher is actually... both a very untruthful and a very truthful little boy because he's gotten used to not being able to tell a lie. So instead he tells a lot of half truths. He's honest, but not by desire or not on purpose.
01:11:12
Speaker
Silver forces him to be. When he removes the silver that his father has sort of ah forcibly made neutral to him, he can access the full force of his gifts and he can lie and he can you know sort of become the the, he can become Uncle Wraith, in fact, if he wants to.
01:11:31
Speaker
Yeah. But in fact, the first thing that happens is Dr. Pawson makes him fix the house that he levitated. And Christopher has a wonderful time. And you can see that he's having a wonderful time.
01:11:42
Speaker
He's got all this power and he can do something interesting with it. And so much of the book has been about Christopher's powerlessness, his sense that he is trapped and he can't do anything.
01:11:53
Speaker
And every moment where he can actually do something and have a meaningful effect, whether it's being in a cricket match or doing some practical mending spells on ah on on a house that he's destroyed, he's so happy.
01:12:06
Speaker
He likes to do stuff. He also, now that he knows he's got magic, he has a lot of ideas for what he could do with magic that read quite a lot like things that Gwendolyn back in Charmed Life did do with her magic.
01:12:17
Speaker
ah He toys with the idea of making the church spire melt like a candle. He lines the trees up along the road in different patterns and pulls them from across the land and then puts them back again.
01:12:28
Speaker
These are Gwendolyn tricks. Right. um And it's also clear that like Christopher has no particular moral code when it comes to using magic. And like the Pawson sequence ends with Christopher's mama attempting to take him away before he gets taken off to Crestomancy Castle, where he's going to be trained as the next Crestomancy because he's a nine-lived enchanter.
01:12:49
Speaker
And she summons a strong wind. And Christopher's like, well, I can cancel winds. And his father says, no, a gentleman never uses magic against a lady and especially not his own mama. Christopher's like, well, gentlemen make things unnecessarily difficult for themselves then.
01:13:05
Speaker
Right. He has no moral code because the only moral codes he's been given are moral codes that make no sense. Right. If there's a swap or a swear involved, if it's the school moral code, he understands that. And he does, in fact, internalize his father's precept that you can't use magic against a lady.
01:13:22
Speaker
And later on, he can't use magic against the goddess because his father told him it was stupid. And Gris was like, well, this is an unreasonable problem, but fine.
01:13:33
Speaker
Yeah. And then after this, so he spends one reasonably happy month, but also very weird month with Dr. Paulson because he knows that his parents are fighting over him and what they want him to be. His father wants him to go be the next Crestomancy, whatever that means.
01:13:46
Speaker
His mama does not want him to grow up to be a boring sort of policeman person. He doesn't quite understand what that's about yet either. And then he gets midway point of the book to Crestomancy Castle.
01:14:00
Speaker
And this is where he becomes unhappier than he has ever been in his life. I love. He gets across to Crestomancy Castle. He looks at the room they've set up for him and they say, we don't have many children here. We tried to make it nice.
01:14:12
Speaker
And Christopher gathers up all the toys they've given him and jumps on them. And that... is Gwendolyn in Charmed Life, exactly what she does on arriving at the castle.
01:14:23
Speaker
And I almost, this is a little bit of a Justice for Gwendolyn book, in that this is a book about a profoundly unhappy child who comes into a situation that's all wrong for them.
01:14:36
Speaker
And Crestomancy Castle very clearly is all wrong for Christopher, and the last thing he needs ah is to be essentially dumped down in the middle of the question mark magic civil service, Right. Yeah, the structure of that is odd to me because we are told across the series that this is a civil service department, that Crestomancy, as in in this book, it's Gabriel DeWitt, is a a civil service employee.
01:15:01
Speaker
They're government enchanters. But then you've got the question of who what government is it? we We never hear. We talk about the ministry, but we don't know what it's the ministry of or for.
01:15:16
Speaker
And the only thing they in fact seem to be doing is, you know, as a ministry department, is policing. The thing that they're really stressed about is this criminal empire that's running around doing magic crime.
01:15:29
Speaker
right Right. It's the Home Office. But then, I mean, having them as a section of the Home Office does actually make sense. They could be a... um Because technically speaking, they're an arm's length body.
01:15:41
Speaker
They have a leader who is a minister, which is Cresta Muncy as a government employee. But it's just not clear. Where does that money come from? That was the other thing that bothers me.
01:15:52
Speaker
Who is funding this? What a great question. Why is it a castle? Why is it a castle? It's very difficult.
01:16:03
Speaker
It seems like it has to on the equivalent of Downing Street or something like that. Or near Downing Street. They just sat there on Horse Guards Parade being a government department. Maybe the only reason I can think of for that is maybe they were moved into the countryside so they would stop exploding things.
01:16:18
Speaker
Right. that oh that There is a magical garden at the castle, though. We know that from Charmed Life. So maybe there's something about like protecting the magic gardens. convenient Although, evil magicians are frequently invading the castle.
01:16:30
Speaker
So I wanted to get that out of London. Right! Just get them out of London. We have serious questions about the use of taxpayer funds here. um Anyway, um Christopher at the castle is, I think, Gwendolyn.
01:16:47
Speaker
Straightwardly. Angry, angry child who hates all these people, but also hates the the respectability of the castle, the establishment nature of the castle, the fact that everyone's at work all the time and is constantly talking about work.
01:17:00
Speaker
And ah over dinner, they constantly talk about the evil gang they're trying to catch, which is the Wraith gang. um And at this point, the reader who's been paying attention will go, wait, as in Uncle Wraith?
01:17:14
Speaker
But you have to be paying attention to catch that.
Challenges and Isolation at the Castle
01:17:17
Speaker
at The darkness of Gabriel's office. So Gabriel DeWitt, the current Crestomancy, has a big office with beautiful windows, and it always seems so dark.
01:17:27
Speaker
And Christopher decides that the reason Gabriel's room always seems so dark in spite of its windows was because it reflected Gabriel's personality. Gabriel never laughed. And Christopher is told, this is who you're going to be.
01:17:38
Speaker
Look at this man. This is your future. And what happens over the next seven chapters, more or less all that happens, is that Christopher begins losing lives at a remarkably rapid rate.
01:17:52
Speaker
and This, I think, is the part of the book which to me reads straightforwardly as ah about suicidality. Christopher is suicidally unhappy and he keeps killing himself.
01:18:04
Speaker
And the deaths are accidents. But when a child has this many fatal accidents in a row, you go, well, honestly, somebody alert child and adolescent mental health services. It's really, really clear ah that Christopher is not okay.
01:18:20
Speaker
ah He goes climbing about the castle until he finds parts of it where the protection spells aren't working because he feels oppressed and crushed by the protection spells. And then he immediately falls out of a window and breaks his neck.
01:18:32
Speaker
And then he tries to escape to ah to an other any but to an almost anywhere. ah He tries to ah go in his dreams, climb through the place between. He falls down a cliff and breaks his neck, comes back to the real world, trips over on his way down the stairs and breaks his neck.
01:18:47
Speaker
He trips over the city. Throgmorton is here and Christopher and Throgmorton are two of a kind and it's very very clear at this point that they are echoes of each other, mirrors of each other but Throgmorton hates everyone and hates everything and will scratch you and Christopher is exactly the same But Throgmorton is always happy to see Christopher at this point. He remembers that Christopher saved his life.
01:19:13
Speaker
Everyone else in the castle is terrified of him and Christopher takes great joy in watching everyone else in the castle run away from Throgmorton. right And I think it is implied that actually the people in the castle are pretty worried about Christopher, not in the sense of he is an unhappy child, but as in he is quite a dangerous child.
01:19:30
Speaker
Like it's noticeable that when Christopher is being taught magic, he still he skips steps. He doesn't care. He's too powerful for the beginner's lessons he's being given that he's supposed to understand in order to have the job he does.
01:19:41
Speaker
ah The things he actually wants to know about are dangerous and amoral things. He wants to know how to stick someone's feet to the floor like the goddess did to him one time. But you can see his tutor giving him a weird look thinking, you know, this is...
01:19:53
Speaker
advanced magic that you use against another person why are you so violent right child and because he's constantly getting punished for losing lives that's what it comes to mean for him there's i think a really sad i think a sad joke when he he gets crisped up by a dragon at one point And the description of this is white-orange prominence sprouted spouted from the sun, one strong, accurate shaft of it strayed to Christopher.
01:20:21
Speaker
Woof! He was in a furnace. He heard his skin fry. During an instant of utter agony, he had time to think. Oh, bother. Another hundred lines. That's what death means to Christopher at this point. It's losing an important part of yourself and having to go and do the ultimate schoolboy punishment about it.
01:20:41
Speaker
Yeah. And it goes beyond schoolboy punishment because it's somewhere in these seven chapters that Gabriel removes one of his lives for safe teaching. And the whole thing reads like, you know, unconsented surgery on a child.
01:20:53
Speaker
Yes. Yeah. They put him down on a table. They put him under. They spin the life away. He wakes up feeling vulnerable and like something has been lost, which of course it has.
01:21:04
Speaker
Experimental surgery as well. Like he realizes afterwards no one's ever done it before and they were worried it wouldn't work. Right. Yeah. Right, exactly. It's a really horrifying little interlude, I think, because it's presented quite low key. mean, it may not even get a whole chapter to itself, but it's really, yeah's really horrific. People are constantly doing things to Christopher that he doesn't want and demanding things from him that he doesn't want to do.
01:21:30
Speaker
And nobody is listening to what he cares about or what he likes or what matters to him. And when he tries, and I think he does still actually think he's trying to connect with others. He makes jokes and that worked at school and it worked with Dr. Pawsome, but nobody at the castle gets his jokes. Nobody ever laughs.
01:21:49
Speaker
ah There's only two people at this point that he's, you know, he's he starts thinking around this time, everybody wants to use me except Takroy and the goddess. Those are the the two people that I can count on.
01:22:01
Speaker
And then he gets crisped up by the dragon. That's another life lost. And Takroy says, finally, this is finally Takroy's breaking point. He says, you are not to do this anymore. You have been losing an appalling number of lives.
01:22:13
Speaker
He loses that outlet. Then he goes to visit the goddess, thinking that she'll understand. um The goddess understands only too well because she is coming up, starting to look down what she's realized might be the end of her own life, her own sort of eventual ah long dark tunnel, I think is what she calls it, of no escape fate.
01:22:32
Speaker
which is of course the realization that the there is no adult living Ashes, there's only a child living Ashes. takes Christopher quite a long time to cotton on to what she's talking about. He's really slow on the uptake here.
01:22:44
Speaker
Christopher is very clearly also only thinking about himself. and he's He's going around to these people going, you know, help me because my life is so hard. And in fact, their lives are all quite hard too. And he doesn't notice and he doesn't care.
01:22:56
Speaker
Right. There's a bit here in the conversation. So he curses himself for thinking the goddess was sympathetic. She was just as selfish and ruthless as everyone else he knew. And then next page over, the goddess screams at him, you're selfish. You're not sympathetic at all. You're just scared, which is true.
01:23:10
Speaker
Yeah. christ Christopher is also selfish and ruthless. You know, who else is selfish and ruthless is Gabriel DeWitt, because he comes back from this encounter and actually is forced to tell Gabriel about the goddess's situation.
01:23:24
Speaker
And Gabriel says, well, That's just something that happens in these other places. Yes. there are What he actually says is there are all over the series of the related worlds, more than a hundred worlds, and in more than half of there are practices which horrify any civilized person.
01:23:38
Speaker
If I were to expend my time and sympathy on these, I would have none left over to do what I am paid to do, which is to present but the misuse of magic here. And there speaks the voice of the British government per this world.
01:23:49
Speaker
Uh-huh. Fine. There's been civilized, I think, carrying quite a lot of weight there. Yep. There speaks the voice of the Victorian
Moral Awakenings and Complex Alliances
01:23:57
Speaker
patriarchy. yes So this all comes to a head in several ways at once.
01:24:02
Speaker
First, the goddess turns up, having figured out a way to come to Christopher's world. And despite everything that's happened, he's really happy to see her. It's so cute because it's an echo, i think, very clearly of Kat and Janet, where suddenly you have someone you have to look after and it's good for you. It's really clear that it's so good for Christopher to actually be needed by someone and to be able to help her.
01:24:28
Speaker
And like he's like, okay, I've got to find somewhere to hide her. And she comes from a hot climate, so she's freezing, so I've got to conjure her all these clothes. And she's to need some food. and she needs and she's brought a kitten with her and the kitten needs stuff the kitten needs milk so I need to get milk and oh i'm going to get her a carpet to make it look nice and a brazier to make it warmer and it's like he's he's clearly like working really hard to make it a lovely like little home for the goddess in this abandoned tower of the castle and she laughs at his jokes they laugh together like They have such a good time. I think that the kitten also is speaking of it being good to care for somebody. The kitten is little microcosm of, you know, the goddess has to hold it together because she has the kitten to care for, which is, of course, the kitten of the cat who died in the portent that the the living Ashet sent her to explain to her that her what her eventual fate was going to be as the young Ashet.
01:25:17
Speaker
This is also, of course, the moment everything starts happening at once. The goddess turns up and at the same moment, the Crestomancy staff managed to arrest a key player of the Wraith gang who is a double agent. the with the violin!
01:25:30
Speaker
yeah Right, so the lady with the violin and the double agent who's been mentioned several times as a member of the castle staff who's not there. He was missing for a cricket match so Christopher had to take his place ah in like one of Christopher's few happy moments in the castle. man called Mordecai Roberts.
01:25:46
Speaker
And he shows up and it's Takroy. Uh-huh. And this is, I think, actually when Christopher finally cottons on that he's been working for an evil criminal empire. The thing that is so important, like the the sort of emblematic crime that the Empire did, which I think is important to mention, is that they've been butchering mermaids.
01:26:05
Speaker
um and selling them for parts. We know from quite early on that the the Wraith is happy to butcher creatures and sell them for parts because that's what they want to do to Throgmorton. And symbolically, that's what they've been doing to Christopher is he loses his lives one by one.
01:26:16
Speaker
um But the mermaids is the thing that, despite the fact that Christopher has no real moral code, he remembers the mermaids. They were kind to him. They were, i think, and you pointed out in a symbolic way, his mother's.
01:26:27
Speaker
Yeah, that they're the they're the only adult women who ever been nice to him or found him interesting. ah fact, they asked him, unlike everybody else in his life, they asked him what he wanted to be. They said, tell us what makes you a Christopher.
01:26:40
Speaker
And he was responsible for, in in part, responsible for their deaths. yeah And this is the thing that gets through to him and like really horrifies him. Yeah, there's a sort of really striking moment where like in the middle of questioning Mordecai Roberts about his crimes, the castle staff hand around salmon sandwiches and Christopher takes one bite and thinks mermaids and can never eat salmon again.
01:27:03
Speaker
So all of the chickens have come home to roost. Everything that he's been doing and all the people that he's been sort of reflected onto in his other lives are now here.
01:27:15
Speaker
in in this castle. And this is the moment of the point of view shift, which, like, just as Christopher's realizing that Uncle Wraith is the Wraith he's heard so much about, um and the goddess is here and he needs to take care of her, and Tachroy is in prison, and it's awful.
01:27:31
Speaker
And he's also listened to the questioning and realized that the whole time Takroy is being questioned by the police, he is lying because he never mentions Christopher. And the castle staff are trying to find out how the hell did you manage to do this?
01:27:46
Speaker
how and How was it possible for you to bring all this stuff from other worlds? You were their carrier. How is it working? And Christopher knows he was the main carrier. His power, his magic of traveling to anywheres is what made this all possible.
01:28:00
Speaker
but Takroy shields him and lies for him. And then straight after this, he's sent off to lessons because he's a child and he still has to do lessons. So he's with his tutor, Flavian, and behaves just as he always behaves with Flavian.
01:28:15
Speaker
And Flavian suddenly cracks. And it's a great moment when this adult man turns around to him and says, can you stop being so awful all the time? What Flavian says is that's just the kind of damn fool, frivolous, unfeeling remark you would make.
01:28:32
Speaker
Of all the hard-hearted, toffee-nosed, superior little beggars I've ever met, you're the worst. Sometimes I don't think you have a soul, just a bundle of worthless lives instead. You seem to think that those nine lives give you the right to behave like the Lord of Creation, that or there's a stone wall around you.
01:28:48
Speaker
If anyone so much as tries to be friendly, all they get is haughty stares, vague looks, or pure damn rudeness. Goodness knows I've tried, Gabriel's tried, Rosalie's tried, so have all the maids, and they say you don't even notice them.
01:29:00
Speaker
And now you make jokes about poor Mordecai. I've had enough. I'm sick of you. And Christopher thinks he was astounded. What's going wrong with me? I'm nice, really.
01:29:12
Speaker
right This moment stuck with me ever since I first read it at the age of about 12 years. As it's it's a masterpiece of point of view control because Christopher is an immensely sympathetic character for most of the book.
01:29:27
Speaker
We're in his point of view and we understand what's going on with him and we feel sorry for him. He's having a really bad time. He's a lonely little boy escaping into fantasy and there is, I think, a degree of reader identification that is very natural.
01:29:40
Speaker
And then you hit this scene and Flavian is right. Flavian is completely right about Christopher in that the way he has been behaving has been cruel and unkind and unfeeling and he is coming off as a horrible child to everyone around him and he didn't know and it's the sort of the moment of zooming out of point of view where you think just because you seem totally sympathetic to yourself doesn't mean you are in fact totally sympathetic.
01:30:10
Speaker
There are certain elements of what Flavian says that I i mean, I'm with you. I'm with you. It's a really good point of view shift. But I remain sceptical, particularly because of the bit where he says Gabriel's tried.
01:30:23
Speaker
My mind usually went to experimental surgery. and yeah i don't think anyone's tried very well, honestly. don't think any adult in this book has done a good job at all. And that includes the presumably well-intentioned adults of the castle.
01:30:37
Speaker
I think the closest we come to seeing Gabriel trying is where he turns to Christopher before the experimental surgery and says, you must realize I am very concerned about you. He does that. No one should be losing lives at this rate.
01:30:48
Speaker
What is wrong, Christopher? Which is a question someone should have asked 10 years ago. What is wrong, Christopher? Are you okay? Christopher notably doesn't answer.
01:30:59
Speaker
And Gabriel doesn't ask again. he just goes on with the experimental surgery. Right, right. He does ask, though. You're right, he does. There's a line in this paragraph ah where...
01:31:10
Speaker
Christopher says he seemed to have hurt Flavian's feelings badly. He had not thought Flavian had feelings to hurt. And that's true. he Christopher doesn't think anyone in the castle has feelings to hurt. But that's also true of the way people in the castle seem to think about Christopher. They also don't seem to think that this 12 year old or 13 year old child has feelings to hurt.
01:31:28
Speaker
There is that, yeah. Although I like the cricket match scene few chapters before because it's a vision of how they could be if they all were just a little bit different and were able to try in a different way. Because it's a lovely, it's a single Sunday afternoon where things are better.
01:31:43
Speaker
Right, and where Christopher gets to be the hero, which is what he always wants to be. It's what he longs to be. And what he actually gets the chance to be right in this next chapter because Gabriel's gone off after the Wraith and the Wraith has trounced him and now Gabriel's gone.
01:31:58
Speaker
Yeah, they have one Gabriel life lying on the floor and there's nothing to be done. They have no line-lived enchanters and suddenly everyone in the castle, despite knowing the worst about Christopher at this point, has to turn to Christopher and be like,
01:32:12
Speaker
13 year old child, only you can say that.
01:32:18
Speaker
Yeah, a wonderful moment for Christopher. Iona, you have some experience the civil services. Is this how it usually operates? Do we sometimes turn around and look at 13 year old children and say, it's all
Christopher's Autonomy and Empowerment
01:32:32
Speaker
you.
01:32:32
Speaker
don't think so. I mean, we don't. But there are a lot of bits in the scene which are, you know, very nicely observed. All the bureaucracy, all of the form-filling.
01:32:45
Speaker
And I love also that... Yolanda and Beryl are typewriters. Yes. And I love that she takes the time to tell you about the bureaucracy, but even among everything else. Like, they've got to sign letters, and somebody has to sign the letters when Gabriel's not here.
01:32:59
Speaker
has got to. They can't go on to find. They've got to be signed.
01:33:05
Speaker
That's when he develops the signature Crestomancy signature that we're going to see throughout the past Crestomancy books. um In fact, what happens is Uncle Rafe turns up at the castle and says, Christopher, come on off it. Everyone knows you are my main carrier now. You're coming with me. And Christopher says And...
01:33:22
Speaker
and Uncle Rafe is armed with the weapons that Christopher brought him from other worlds and takes threatening advance and Throgmorton attacks.
01:33:34
Speaker
And Uncle Rafe gets strips torn off him by this angry cat. Who is Christopher? Who is Christopher's rage? ah Finally turned in the right direction at Uncle Rafe the monster.
01:33:46
Speaker
And it's after that moment of, I think Christopher's no is really significant. His refusal to go with Rafe at that point is what gives the castle staff a reason to take a chance on him. Well, it's because Christopher finally gets the chance to make a choice, right? Like all this book, he's been having futures and options stripped away from him. It's the long, dark tunnel. It's the narrowing of choices.
01:34:06
Speaker
And then Uncle Rafe turns up and says, You don't have a choice your choice. Your only choice is to come with me. And Christopher says, no, I have got a choice. I am making a choice right now. And he does.
01:34:16
Speaker
And this is really the first significant opportunity that he's had to shape his own future. And from then everything's fine. Yeah, we need discuss the sort of ending sequence. I will say, first of all, obviously the ending is a power fantasy. Christopher has been powerless for so much of the book.
01:34:35
Speaker
The fact that he is then given the chance to play Crestomancy, to do, in fact, the thing that happens at the end of a Crestomancy book, which is that Crestomancy shows up and fixes everything. But this time it was Christopher, age 13. Yeah. Christomancy shows up and tells a child, you're fine the way you are. In fact, exactly the way you are, the thing that everyone's been trying to drive out of you, is the thing that we need from you right at this moment.
01:34:56
Speaker
And the thing that they need from Christopher is to be in charge of everything and enjoying himself enormously. and And that's what he does. There's a paragraph that going to read out because I think it's really important.
01:35:07
Speaker
It says that it occurred to him that he was enjoying himself more than he'd... Sorry, I'm actually going to start with the signature because it's the bureaucracy. You're right. Christopher had great fun developing a dashing style of signature. Sizzling with the enchanter's market kept it safe even from Uncle Ray.
01:35:21
Speaker
It occurred to him then that he was enjoying himself more than he had ever done in his life. Papa had been right. He really was cut out to be the next Crestomancy. But suppose he hadn't been, Christopher thought, making another sizzling signature.
01:35:33
Speaker
It was simply luck that he was. Well then, he thought something could have been done about it. There had been no need at all to feel trapped. Oh, it's all fine, actually. It's all fine, actually.
01:35:44
Speaker
I do think that this is a lie. This is not true. And I do think that Diana and knows that it's not true because of what happens in the next final two chapters.
01:35:54
Speaker
Yeah. So, Christopher and Takaroy and the goddess have to go off to find Gabriel's missing lives.
World Eleven's Dystopian Themes
01:36:04
Speaker
And at this point we learn what Takaroy's real deal is.
01:36:09
Speaker
is Why he looks different from everybody else. It's not great, is it? He's from, I don't know we've actually said up until now that there are 12 related worlds and they've explored all of them except, they have explored ours very briefly. i love this this one paragraph scene in which Christopher lands on Tuffel Park Road, the number four bus looming on him and then disappears again because he just doesn't want any of that.
01:36:39
Speaker
like He nearly gets hit by a bus. doesn't That would be a really good way to lose a life. Never go in there again. Tuffle Park, I'm done.
01:36:51
Speaker
i So series 11, we are told, is not actually a series. It isn't ah a long sequence of worlds. It's just one. And this one is blocked off from access for reasons that we're never clear on until this point.
01:37:04
Speaker
and And this last couple of chapters the book, we discover that it's um but it's run by a figure called the Dright, who is a we're told, some kind of magical totalitarian leader who has everybody in his world like under the iron thumb.
01:37:22
Speaker
um And we're told very little more than that. and We don't know anything about these people other than the and the fact that they live in this vile oppression and it's the Dreitz fault that there's only one world.
01:37:36
Speaker
He hasn't allowed any to split off. and gets another heading We're told that they think they're superior to everybody else. They send people out to observe the other worlds because they want to learn about them. But they think that everyone, all these, you know, here's the these words again.
01:37:50
Speaker
They think that all the other worlds are savages. They don't consider themselves human or no, I suppose they think they're the only real people and study the rest of you like something in a zoo when the Dright happens to feel interested.
01:38:02
Speaker
i do think it's also Tolkien riff. Dright is Old English, Lord. um And these, we are told, these 11 people, this is where the stories of the elves come from. And when you enter into a world, it's full of this beautiful woodland where everything is all always green and they never use fire.
01:38:20
Speaker
um and that you do magic but use magic for everything and it is a little bit Elf-y. It is and it misfires horribly because the Takroy, as we know, is a person of colour.
01:38:34
Speaker
He's a brown man and the way his hair is described suggests he has black origins and and everybody else in World Eleven is just like him. And i feel like Jones is considering something around the idea of wouldn't it be funny if the, you know, the supervening colonialist terrorisers were people of colour and not white.
01:39:00
Speaker
And of course it doesn't work. It's not a thing that a white author can do with great skill and panache in any case. And it is not done with skill and panache here. um You've got this horrendous scene where Christopher has been sent there to get back Gabriel's missing lives because Gabriel has basically been divided into component parts and they've got to go and collect them all.
01:39:21
Speaker
and And some of them have ended up here. But while he's there, he wants to get back Tachroy because Tachroy's soul is owned by the Dright. All 11 citizens are and have their souls owned by the dright they belong to him and there's an echo there of you know christopher's uh history of other people claiming ownership of him and his internal life he wants to get takroy back and safe a perfectly noble impulse but then he's going to walk along this long line of souls and pick out the one that belongs to takroy and they're all grossly misshapen and you're reading oh no diana really all the brown and black people have grossly misshapen souls Grotesque and meaningless are the that uses. Except the one who lives in Victorian England.
01:40:07
Speaker
He can be saved. He is susceptible of being saved, much like the white children Frances Hobson Burnett. they He can be taken home and be ah and be made real.
01:40:19
Speaker
Same as Millie, who gets a name, or she names herself after the main character of those books she loves. Once she leaves, we never find out what her own original name is and you nevert you never get the sense that she herself is curious.
01:40:31
Speaker
So this whole scene, which has much of interest, like the stuff you mentioned, Em, about the the you know the old English influence and the idea of it being Elfie, it's just completely like you you're distracted in the entire time you're reading it going, oh, no, no, no, no. Right.
01:40:47
Speaker
Well, and it also, so I do think that the other thing that she's trying to do with this scene, I think she's doing Tamlin again. It's it's Tom, it's the they're the elves, it's you know the the the child who has been sort of ah taken advantage of by this also abused adult has to go and claim him.
01:41:04
Speaker
um But this sequence ends with Christopher successfully picks this Takroy soul out because it says Takroy's is the only nice one. The rest of the souls are like little silver monsters. um So he grabs Takaroy's soul and Takaroy says, now I really am your man, laughing in a way that was rather like sobbing.
01:41:24
Speaker
There's no, when she's done Tan Lin before, there's always this level of sort of complexity, right? There's this, you can't, you know, she's explored in great depth in Fire and Hemlock, how you can't really lay a claim on someone in this way, but she hasn't got time to do it and she hasn't got will to do it here. So it just kind of collapses again into this racist trope of Christopher the little white boy has saved this brown man and now now he's really his man.
01:41:47
Speaker
Yeah, now he owns him. Oh, it's not good. yeah It's not great, is it? It's not good. It's not great. And it's really a shame because, again, the Takroy-Christopher relationship and the Takroy-Christopher parallels are really compelling. And I think are you know there's there's something really strong there that then just like the iconography that she ends up using, it ends up being... So the Dreit claims one of Christopher's lives as a as as payment for this.
01:42:15
Speaker
And Christopher sets the life on fire. And then what you have is a bunch of brown people dressed in furs running away from fire, which is, again, just like it's it's an image out of a bad 1920s pulp novel. Yeah.
Narrative Complexity and Thematic Depth
01:42:29
Speaker
Oh, it's no good at all. It's just it's just dreadful. And it's got this one thing I find really odd about that scene is that, you know, you read it, I read it and we're like, oh, no this is horribly racist.
01:42:41
Speaker
And then he comes home to ah to his home world, back to the castle where there's obviously a great deal still going on. And then she almost adds a grace note to the Asheth story, which has, you know, lot of humour and depth to it.
01:42:58
Speaker
do it right so what went wrong there because you've got mother proudfoot who is the the member of the temple uh that had responsibility nominally for the goddess while she was there and she returns to the castle and you hear from her that it's quite possible that millie was never going to be horribly executed that there was an older woman there looking out for her caring for her And you think to yourself, well, okay, that's a great way to kind of pull it back on how flavourless and racist the Esheth world was, you know, giving people interiority and complexity and the idea that the goddess had a real home there.
01:43:35
Speaker
But it's just a little bit too late, isn't it? It's too late in the story. and it And it's in direct contrast with the draught scene that we've just had with the brown people running away from fire.
01:43:45
Speaker
So you're like, oh, well, clearly we knew that you were an author of complexities and multitudes. But they're all really close together here. Right. Yeah. The other thing about ah Mother Proudfoot turning up to explain that she had an out plan for Millie all along is that, of course, it's this echo to Christopher's realization that there always had been a way out, um that there was never any need to feel trapped.
01:44:08
Speaker
But this isn't actually true, because contrast, I think one of the most heartbreaking things in the book is Gabriel DeWitt gets brought back. Right.
01:44:19
Speaker
Gabriel DeWitt in World Eleven had been turned into a small boy. like when like When the Dreight collected his lives together, he put him into child form as a form that's easy to control. And I did think that was quite a telling moment about, again, the powerlessness of children.
01:44:34
Speaker
Gabriel brought back to ah his own world starts growing up in bursts. ah First he was a young man with a floral silk tie and a keen wistful look.
01:44:45
Speaker
Then he was an older, keener man in a dingy suit. After that, he was middle aged and bleached and somehow hopeless and desperate as if everything he hoped for was gone. The next instant, this man had pulled himself together into a brisk silvery gentleman and then the same gentleman, older and grimmer.
01:45:00
Speaker
Christopher stared, awed and rather touched. He realised that Gabriel had hated being the Crestomancy, and they were seeing the stages by which he had come to terms with it. I'm glad of going to find it easier than that, Christopher thought, as Gabriel finally became the grim old man that Christopher knew.
01:45:15
Speaker
Yeah. This is a much clearer and truer answer to this question of the the tunnel with no way out. It's that, yeah, sometimes your future is a tunnel with no way out.
01:45:27
Speaker
And Christopher's is, as Gabriel's was, a tunnel. And the fact that he's going to have a great time, but he happens to be by pure luck, ideally suited for being Crestomancy, doesn't change the fact that he was trapped all along.
01:45:42
Speaker
And what you become by entering this tunnel is an adult who can't relate to children, an adult who who sees a child in the same situation that you are in and can't pull them out of it. That's the fate that Christopher escapes, because as we know from other Christomancy books, he is in fact going to be going around and pulling lots of other children out of their their terrible holes, but sometimes in a way that doesn't feel quite true.
01:46:07
Speaker
Because he is, this is the the realist book for Christopher, isn't it? In all the others, he's a mythic figure. He's a he's got he's got you know, that nice suits mean I love Christopher's suits don't get me wrong i mean there is Conrad's fate in which we get teenage Christopher which love that is true although I was thinking about Christopher's suits when we hear about Gabriel's floral tie that's so true he seizes on the one bit of personality he can find in Gabriel and then he's like I'm going to it maximally get me all the dressing gowns
01:46:46
Speaker
School can't tell me not to wear fabulous silver bangles now. That's true.
01:46:52
Speaker
I think, is there any any final thoughts? I want to just bring out Jones's own thoughts on Life's Christopher Chan, because she actually wrote about this one at some length in her lecture on Heroes, which she gave in Australia in 1992. And...
01:47:09
Speaker
and This is in the context of a wider discussion of, in fact, tennis and heroes, which I i mentioned earlier. I was rereading it this morning. thinking Gosh, this is a fun, fun essay, fun essay, fun lecture.
01:47:22
Speaker
but She says, Christopher, the future in Chantacrestomancy, has tennis parents in a big way. Both his mother and his father wish to shape him into a different kind of star. But they're each so concerned with their separate ambitions for him that they entirely neglect the welfare of Christopher himself.
01:47:37
Speaker
This much comes from real life. Christopher was based on the son of ambitious parents I know, a poor boy who eventually committed suicide, being unable to stand the pressure they put on him. Christopher's version of suicide is to scramble about in the spirit void of the place between and keep on losing lives.
01:47:53
Speaker
Luckily, he has nine. ah Significantly, was Christopher's father who had caught his incapacity of silver. I made the lifting of this inhibition by Dr. Porson as funny as I could. There seemed no better way to express the sheer joy of release.
01:48:09
Speaker
But before this, Christopher has fallen under the sway of his dreadful uncle and become a deeply flawed hero. It is not just that he has been conned into criminal activity. The uncle and the governess, who is his accomplice, have dug their way into Christopher's private worlds where he travels in spirit.
01:48:24
Speaker
In other words, they have got at the centre of his personality, where Christopher's own imagination had been freely at work, and perverted this for their own ends. In a way, the uncle and governess stand for Christopher's actual parents and what they have done.
01:48:36
Speaker
The governess, in addition, makes sure Christopher has no confidence in himself. For a while, Christopher holds to his central being because he has met the goddess, who is a child and, like himself, dedicated, in this case the to be the personificate of the goddess as an actual temple.
01:48:50
Speaker
Christopher strongly identifies with her, rightly. Not only is she an even more extreme case of tennis child than he is, she is also standing for the powerful submerged female part of himself. Earlier in the essay she talks about this doubled self in terms of of Jungian psychology, actually. Everyone has a second self who is a submerged personal personality of the opposite sex.
01:49:14
Speaker
But there comes a point when even the goddess lets him down. This happens when a person is rendered so unhappy that they lose touch with their inner self. This, I suspect, is the point where the boy Christopher was based on killed himself.
01:49:26
Speaker
So it always really sticks with me that Christopher is in fact one of Jones' many portrait characters and that his origin in the real world is a young man who committed suicide.
01:49:39
Speaker
um And I think it adds an important layer to the reading of the book. that I mean, this is a book about suicidal despair. And as you said, Becca, Christopher's cheering up at the end doesn't quite ring true compared to Gabriel's slow and miserable pulling himself together.
01:49:59
Speaker
Because frankly, I'm not sure that Christopher's suicidal despair is fully cured by one power trip, which is what he's had. That's true. But it makes you wonder about it as a layer in Charmed Life and Caprona and which week...
01:50:14
Speaker
i it they particularly Witch Week actually like a child who has been in despair appears um and recognises these children ah have are trapped in a situation outside of their control and I think that is one of the reasons why I love this book so much because it flavours the others will you know with a depth and interest yeah that they wouldn't otherwise have had Christomancy is not just the deus ex machina who comes and tells children they're alright the way they are he knows, he has reason to know just what it means to be told you're alright the way you are.
01:50:49
Speaker
yeah Yeah, it is. I mean, you can see her writing her way towards this thoroughly real Christopher in all the portraits of Christomancy that come before. yeah Before we wrap, Iona, I'm going to ask you a question we've asked other guests on the show, which is, which of your books do you think one ought to go and read first after listening to this episode?
Conclusion and Next Episode Teaser
01:51:10
Speaker
I have thoughts, but... Oh, I mean, the the the silly answer is Division Bells. I was just thinking that. I was thinking about it too.
01:51:22
Speaker
Civil Service book.
01:51:26
Speaker
Division Bells, for those who never come across it, is a romance, but it's actually a a love letter to public service. And it's about the life of one slightly eccentric civil service department.
01:51:38
Speaker
They can't do magic, but they do love bureaucracy. um I think it would be You Are Here. and That's what I was thinking. so You Are Here is a collection of short stories. It's my second collection. The first one is called Not For Use In Navigation.
01:51:56
Speaker
You Are Here has a whole bundle of my previously published work in it. So it's quite a nice variety. But the story in it, I think that has...
01:52:11
Speaker
a few echoes here is it's a story that's called wish you were here and it's about it's a novella and it's about a young woman who is trapped for reasons outside of her control she's a refugee she's lost her own parents are gone and she meets a friend who has problems of her own m one Chief of witches, she doesn't have a name, and much like the living goddess Ashesh.
01:52:36
Speaker
And how the two of them find connection in unlikely places, I think, is the theme that that story and that book has in common with Christopher Chand.
01:52:47
Speaker
and Although, Becca, I would love to know your thoughts. No, I was about to say Wish You Were Here was the first thing that came to mind as the the thing that I would recommend. Not just because I love it, but also because I think it resonates in very particular ways.
01:53:01
Speaker
And then you should read Division Bells as well. then you should read the Division Bells and learn about bureaucracy. i you are I've told this to you many times, but you are one of the best writers of bureaucracy I've ever known.
01:53:12
Speaker
Division Bells is is the the one I read and I went, wait, you can do that? And then I went and wrote a book about my day job. A
01:53:21
Speaker
fact that truly touches me and it really does. Both of you... profound inspiration well thank you so much for joining us for Christopher to complain about Christopher Chan and to rave about Christopher Chan on what turns out to be a two hour episode we had a lot to say about Christopher Chan I loved every minute of it I especially loved learning about the Kipling resonances I thought that was brilliant thank you for having me both of you it's been a really lovely time I've really enjoyed having this chance to talk at length about a book I love
01:53:56
Speaker
Yes, it's been a delight. And we'll be back next week with Castle in the Air. Castle in the Air. You need to finish reading Arabian Nights and I need to finish reading Orientalism. So we'll have fun with that.
01:54:12
Speaker
Absolutely. All right. Bye, guys. Bye. Bye.
01:54:22
Speaker
Bye.
01:54:27
Speaker
you