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Eight Days of Luke
244 Plays7 days ago
"Wouldn't you say it was worth it to be really happy for a while, even if you knew you were going to end up sad ever after?
Loki, Brunhilde, and the archetypal Diana Wynne Jones Cricket Boy.
Transcript
Introduction to Diana Wynne Jones Celebration
00:00:00
Speaker
Okay, hello and welcome to 8 Days of Diana Wynne Jones. I'm Emily Tesh. And I'm Rebecca Framel. And we are very excited ah to explain what we're doing here. So Diana Wynne Jones was an English author born in 1934, died in 2011, noted for writing more than 30 works of mostly children's fantasy. So why Diana Wynne Jones? What's so special about this author?
Personal Influences of Diana Wynne Jones
00:00:27
Speaker
So I'm going to go back to Diana Wynne Jones' own words to describe this for me. This is from her book, Reflections, ah which is a collection of her essays on writing. And in that book, she says, if you inquire further about children's literature, you will find nine adults admitting that they acquired many of the rules they live by from this children's book that so impressed them. ah Most adults, in fact, if you question them, will admit that there was this marvelous book they read when they were eight or 10 or maybe 15 that has lived in their minds ever since.
00:00:56
Speaker
And for me, that's 100% true for Diana Wynne Jones. I acquired a number, I believe everything that she told me without question. I didn't drink beer until I was about 21 because she told me in a book that it tasted bad. And I was like, well, Diana Wynne Jones wouldn't lie to me. And so I just drank wine exclusively until someone convinced me to change my mind.
00:01:17
Speaker
No, she's right. It tastes bad. I think for me, Diana Wynne Jones is what you might call a writer's writer in that I've never come across a writer familiar with her work who didn't then go, wow. And I think she's been a huge influence on a generation of speculative fiction writers, which is fascinating. Which does include us. Which does certainly include us. We should mention we are both writers. Yes.
00:01:45
Speaker
So I am the author of the Hugo Award-winning Some Desperate Glory. And I am the author of Lady Eve's Last Con. um Both of us have written other things as well, but those are the most recent ones. And I think both of us, if you track back, have Diana Win Jones pretty clearly visible in the DNA of our works. I don't know if you want to talk about, ah to go back to Some Desperate Glory, which Diana Win Jones book do you think is kind of written into that one? It's just Hexwood. It's just Hexwood. If you've read Hexwood, you know it's there. um Hopefully we'll get there.
Diana Wynne Jones' Legacy in Speculative Fiction
00:02:20
Speaker
In terms of like Jones's, ah she had a very long career. She started publishing in 1972, 73 and was still publishing up to her death. But I was looking earlier at sort of the list of awards she was winning during her career and it's ah noticeable that if you like the the establishment especially sort of american sff doesn't really seem to notice her she picks up one hugo award nomination ever in 1997 it's for tough guide to fantasy land of all the books of all the books that she wrote no shade to tough guide but yeah it's great fun but like right there is so much more um but in a way that's not surprising because she was an author of mostly children's books and children's books
00:03:06
Speaker
will shape you forever at the age of 10, but it takes you a few decades to get to the place where you are then expressing that influence in your adult work. um And Jones herself in that same essay and reflections talked about the responsibility she felt as a children's author. So this is just, I think, a hugely influential writer, certainly for me personally, and I think for a lot of people.
00:03:28
Speaker
one hundred percent 100%. Yes, the project. And where we're starting with the project. But I think it was your idea to start by breaking this down, breaking her work down into decades, if you want to talk
Approach to Exploring Jones' Novels
00:03:41
Speaker
a bit about that. So um thinking, the thing is, when you're looking at a list of, i I first had to cut out all the other stuff. So the short story collections, the nonfiction, the plays, ah the single work of adult contemporary fiction that wasn't very good. And like, yeah, let's ignore that.
00:03:58
Speaker
yes the stuff that's genuinely for younger readers. And you're left with like a list of books, which ah would now be variously middle grade, YA and adult books. 33, 33 novels spread over four decades. And you're like, whoa, how do you even get into a body of work like that? And chronological seemed like a way to do it. As the more we started talking about this, and the more excited we got to do this project, the more we could see these connections spreading through these books in a way that seemed really fruitful and interesting to talk about chronologically. I think we've set ourselves a strict rule, which is going to be very hard to keep to, that we're going to talk about the books as we hit them. So we're not going to look forward, but we can look backwards to trace the the impact of things as they go on. But you can see, you know, we started to see sort of early patterns changing and getting more complicated through the over. Am I pronouncing that right?
00:04:55
Speaker
I don't even know if I can pronounce it right. Possibly you are. Interesting to look at an author's complete body of work and to look at their development as a creative ah force, as an artist over time. You can see her getting better. She starts pretty good, honestly. yeah you can see You can see her getting more skilled. You can see her ideas developing.
00:05:15
Speaker
Um, you can see ideas coming back and being repeated and we'll get there, but I have things to say about the Crestomancy books, especially on this front.
Plot Overview: 'Eight Days of Luke'
00:05:23
Speaker
Um, but yeah, we, we, so we are going to try and stick to our chronological rule. I don't know if we can, but we will try not to jump too far ahead and go, this reminds me of that time in the 1990s when, uh, and I do think that like the sort of decade by decade approach does give you sort of interesting resonances, not just in terms of like how the books are talking to each other, but also how they're talking to the environment she's writing in. and This is especially true of the 1970s, where I looked at the list and went,
00:05:52
Speaker
that's a lot of books about the troubles. And we will get there. yeah But the other thing about breaking it down into discovering that we had 33 books to talk about, if we're going to go all the way through it, ah and then approximately eight books per decade um meant that eventually we we sort of stumbled into this eight days of Diana Wynne Jones' conceit of eight eight episodes per season, per decade. There's actually, she wrote nine books in the 70s. And the 70s is one where we're doing it sort of out of order, sort of in order. It depends which of her essays you believe because she keeps changing her mind about which one she wrote first.
00:06:33
Speaker
unreliable narration. um In one essay, though, at least, she claims that even though Eight Days of Luke was the third book that she, the third children's book that she published, she claims at least once that it was the first book that she wrote. And she does say that. I think she actually forgot Wilkins tooth existed. I don't blame her. I forget it exists. Yeah, it's not bad. It's just not meaty it's just not it's just it's just not diana win jones in the same way right like you can it's not there yet we'll get we will talk about that one but i think we decided to start with eight days of luke which is a book which feels to me programmatic yes paradigmatic uh like it is sounding the first note um and also it's a great book and also it's if we're talking about the project and why we're doing this project
00:07:22
Speaker
Eight Days of Luke, maybe even more than anything else she wrote, she wrote a lot of things, has had a ripple effect on the field on speculative fiction currently today. It it prefigures a lot of the way that we look at bringing mythology into what we would call urban fantasy, what we would call sort of present day takes on on these mythological figures. And I think that's something that we want to talk about as we dive into this book.
00:07:49
Speaker
Oh, yeah. I mean, she talks about this a lot in reflections in her essays. Let me find the quote in eight days of Luke using the days of the week and the Norse gods they were named after to indicate that the big things, the stirring events, the heroic ideal were as much a part of modern everyday life as Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. Yeah.
00:08:07
Speaker
And I was like, yeah, yeah, she knows what she's doing. She absolutely does. And I think that you pointed out when we were reading through reflections, Eight Days of Luke is one of the books that she goes back to and talks about almost more than any other. I think Fire, we're not talking about Fire and Hemlock yet, but it maybe beats it out. But but other than that, it really, as you said, it's paradigmatic. It really kind of sets forward the kind of storytelling that she wants to do. So it's it's really evocative of the the later books in some ways. In other ways, it's deeply unique. There's stuff she's doing in this book that she doesn't do in any others, I don't think.
00:08:39
Speaker
That's absolutely true. Let's pause yeah for the benefit of our listeners. What is this book? ah So Eight Days of Luke, boiled down, is about an unhappy orphan boy. He has to stay with miserable relations on his holidays. ah They don't like him. He doesn't like them. ah Stop us if you've heard this one. this This is a concept that actually comes back a fair bit in British children's literature. triia It is a classic. It's it's playing the hits.
00:09:06
Speaker
While he is trying to curse his relations ah for how unhappy they're making him, um he accidentally and instead frees a strange boy called Luke who seems to have unusual powers, ah instantly ah tells David that he is his benefactor and he'll do anything for him, including setting random buildings on fire to make ah David more entertained during a random day. ah Gradually, David begins to realize that ah sorry we're going to be spoiling books here as we talk about them it probably you can't you can't do meaningful analysis of a book without exactly we're here for a non-spoilery review go somewhere right it it's been out for 40 years exactly this book is 50 years old we should say that this came out in 1973
00:09:52
Speaker
I think, which I was looking at it and I was like, this book is only 20 years after Return of the King came out. This book is a lot closer in time to J.R.R. Tolkien than it is to me. It absolutely is. And the fact that these books still feel so modern in a way, like they feel even though they're very much of their time.
00:10:10
Speaker
But they don't they also like they don't feel far away, and to me, maybe that's just because I grew up with them, in the way that Lord of the Rings, for example, feels far away, feels of a different era. I don't know if that's true for you. yeah There is there is a a timelessness about Diana and when Jo is at one point ah reading through Eight Days of Luke, I was actually going, can I tell that it's the 1970s? And there were like there were a couple of things.
00:10:34
Speaker
the rail strikes, yes but we do still have a lot of rail strikes, like that hasn't stopped. The fact that he has to steal the radio to listen to cricket matches, yes that is that is very 70s. That's the one piece of sort of specific 70s technology is that he has to steal the radio and go out in the backyard and listen to cricket matches instead of just being able to get it on his iPhone.
00:10:54
Speaker
yeah Not that his relationship relations might buy him. His relations would never get in an iPhone. Exactly. Anyway, sorry, I got ah to complete the story of Eight Days of Luke. Luke, it turns out, is in fact the god Loki, um his who has escaped from prison. ah Again, we don't find that laid out specifically until the very end.
00:11:12
Speaker
What David knows is that that there are mysterious and powerful people chasing Luke. ah They want David to turn Luke over to them, essentially. ah David gets into a couple of unwise bargains with them while trying to protect Luke and finds at the very end that he has to go on a sort of mythical quest to find a lost, significant mythical object ah in order to get the other mysterious figures who are, of course, the Norse gods of legends off Luke's tail, which he... yeah So we could i can spoil it, I think, that the luke Luke is the god Loki, that the figures that David ends up in a series of conflicts and bargains with are two, and Woden, um and Thor, and the object he has to go on a quest for at the end is Thor's hammer. And he finds himself, if you like, ah in an epilogue, a final act of the story of Seek Freedom Brunhilde.
00:12:04
Speaker
um so he suddenly sort of deeply deeply mixed up in this very mythological world but it's always right next door to the real world um so you step through a door in the house where your cousin is going to rent some rooms and suddenly you're at the feet at foot of the world tree right uh and facing the norms which you can't do that that's without the help of some very ordinary children who happen to have followed you through that door absolutely and there's a goat there yes and lots of things are like it's done with such a light touch, but there's this constant sort of shift from ah the very mythical and extraordinary world of Luke and the Norse gods back through to the very ordinary, like the very humdrum normal, very real nastiness of David's relations. And
Realism and Child Perspective in Jones' Work
00:12:51
Speaker
this is a thing I found really striking in the book, ah Jones's use of character, often when you have like
00:12:57
Speaker
a horrid abusive family in a children's book. They are larger than life comedy figures, they're like role doll evil family. um David's awful relations felt so real. Right. They're never quite over the top. Like the way in which they're mean to him is petty. It's petty meanness. They don't want to buy him new clothes because it's so expensive to keep buying a child new clothes they don't want to they're you know they blame him for having to give up their vacation because he happens to be home from school at an inconvenient time and the thing that's hit over and over again is that despite the constant petty meanness they expect him to be grateful for it which is agony
00:13:36
Speaker
is so effective, though. I think one of the things Diana Windjones is really consistent about is the way she enters into a child's point of view and the injustice yeah of being a child of how much of your life as a child you spend just powerless and having to put up with all sorts of nonsense um And in a way like the the the shift from like David is putting up with the nonsense of his own awful family to now he's putting up with a nonsense of Luke's awful family than all schools. But it's explicitly laid out these these are the same they're different but they're the same. um They're the same kind of pettiness and the same like long standing grudges coming to the surface. And Jones is is really like really respects that David's suffering, right?
00:14:23
Speaker
is a suffering of injustice and unfairness, the the the child's point of view on those things. And something else I think it's important to mention when we're kind of laying out the overall plot summary of this book is that there's a sub-thread that's running through alongside this sort of epic struggle, which is David been discovering that he's not alone in feeling this injustice in his family. He finds one ally among his terrible relations, which is Astrid, his awful cousin's wife, who at first seems just as bad as the rest.
00:14:50
Speaker
Um, and then you sort of discover over the course of this book as they form an alliance, uh, that she, you know, when David's not around, she's the scapegoat. She is sort of suffering under the same level of pettiness and meanness and injustice, and has sort of become as small in her way to trying to defend herself and fight back.
00:15:08
Speaker
And there's this really intro- and at the end of the book, you know, the happy ending is all the awful relations are packed off because it's discovered that they've been doing embezzlement crimes and he gets to go live with Astrid. With David's money. With David's money. Which is, again, very sort of classic children's literature, classic British children's literature, very Dickensian, you know, it it all comes right and the money that he's been deprived of is his now and he gets to go and live with the good relation.
00:15:29
Speaker
But there's this really interesting parallel between the powerlessness of being a child, and the powerlessness of being a young woman who's married into an awful family in the 70s, that I think is yeah really interesting. And the conversation they have about it, where David says, if I could, I'd just go. And Astrid said, I would, but I'm a coward, I haven't any money. um So the sort of the the point is that that the the control of the money is what's controlling really both Astrid and David. It's it's really interesting. What was I going to say I was going to talk about? Oh, yes, this idea of like, Astrid becomes as bad as the rest of them. You can also see David becoming as bad as the rest of them. There's a bit where he's talking to Astrid. And, you know, she said, I get so angry, I have to get at someone. And David, I get at Mrs. Thurst.
00:16:20
Speaker
who is the family's servant, who is also a very nasty piece of work. But also this is David bullying the servants. Right. And then there's, there's the idea that like, one of the ways you react to being treated really badly is to behave really badly because you stop caring. Yeah, because you know that so much of life is unjust. Why should you be any better? There's this great, great quote. So there's this scene where ah David's bored, they're out shopping, they're waiting for Astrid to be done trying on dresses.
00:16:47
Speaker
and And Luke is like, well, you know, he says, Luke says, what can I do to make you you know to entertain you? And David's joking, not thinking that Luke can do anything. He says, set that building on fire. And Luke says, all right. And so then a horrible fire begins.
00:17:01
Speaker
And, you know, he's feeling bad about the fire and about the the damage that it's causing. But then it says, the trouble was that David, particularly in the holidays, was so used to feeling guilty that he'd come to ignore it whenever he could. He found himself pretending that the fire was nothing to do with him. It was probably nothing to do with Luke either. And that anyway, he had no influence over Luke. And he's watching this building
David's Moral Journey with Loki
00:17:23
Speaker
go up in flames and thinking, well, why should I care about this? It's not my fault because everything's my fault.
00:17:29
Speaker
absolutely and it it's almost as if right that sort of constant punishment he's received in the form of why aren't you grateful why won't you be grateful why won't you say sorry why won't you say thank you as just sort of kind of turned off his moral sense if you like because it's so warped the way he's treated that it's warping him in turn you can see it happening and actually going back to like the original release of Luke of the Loki It's because David thinks to himself, I wish I could get the law on my family, but I can't because they've not actually done anything wrong. This turns out to be false. They have done things that they could be punished legally for. But right, it isn't actually a crime to be a dick to a kid. ah It is a crime to be actively abusive to a kid.
00:18:11
Speaker
But it's quite hard to prove when the abuse is. Emotional. Neglect. David is mostly sent away to boarding school. um It's emotional abuse, right? And it's also the 1970s. But David's anger, ah something he sees is they haven't actually done anything wrong. like I can't get them for anything, but I want to get them anyway. And his decision to curse his family and to come up with some sort of evil curse on them. ah He sees it as an amoral decision.
00:18:41
Speaker
as something he's doing that yeah they deserve but they don't deserve. keep that the but There's a quote later on in the book where Jones says there's a difference between bad things you do because you just do them and bad things you do because you have to. And then when he releases Loki, Donovan Jones says in her essays, he's he's symbolically he's amoral violence. That is what David has unleashed. it's so And it's so appealing, like instantly it improves David's life so much. He likes Luke so much and he likes this feeling of freedom that running around with Luke gives him so much.
00:19:21
Speaker
Yes. Freedom and laughter. Yes. Suddenly things are funny. Like he's having this completely miserable time. But once Luke turns up and he's laughing about everything, including like Luke's immediately making jokes about all my prison was much worse than this. Right. Like as heavy as a bowl of venom. And obviously he's being completely literal. He's been through. He's been through hell. But the jokes and the camaraderie, the friendship yeah makes it stop hurting. He actually, when he releases Luke, they're attacked by snakes. Like snakes rise out of the ground and attempt to attack both of them and the whole garden falls down. And everything's on fire. Everything's on fire. And they have to rebuild it all. And David is so happy about it.
00:20:02
Speaker
uh you know there's the i put down this quote said rebuilding the wall had wiped away all his misery and also the horror of the way the curse had worked he thought of the flames and the snakes but all they did was to remind him of luke's joke about kindling a flame and so now it's funny and it's about this relationship that he has with luke and it improves like the horrors are not horrors because he's got this bond with luke right it's it's such a joyful moment Should we talk about the queer regions? Yeah, let's talk about it. I feel like it's kind of hard not to talk about the queer regions. We have to. I do have, like, I literally typed out every time that David is describing Luke, because it's very striking. He's looking at him all the time and just, like, happy to be looking at him. There are, I mean, there are some really lovely descriptions of Luke, but right, the, um, where is it? He has a sharp and freckly face under the dirt and a burn or something on one cheek. His hair seemed to be red.
00:20:56
Speaker
At any rate, he had those kind of red-brown eyes that only go with red hair. David rather took to him. And David is constantly going back to Luke's beautiful eyes. Yes. he's also like there's a So Luke comes and hangs out in David's room at night and makes magic shows for him, essentially. He he does these beautiful sort of shadow plays. ah and then falls asleep in David's room and David, you know, spends some time looking at his sleeping face and ah wondering who and what Luke really was. He was very freckly, which doesn't really answer who or what he is, but it's something that David thinks is worth noticing. And it's also impossible to tell how old or young he is, which is something that really strikes David because Luke is, is and isn't a peer, isn't isn't someone who's his same age, and is also, of course, someone who's infinitely old because he's the god Loki.
00:21:44
Speaker
Yeah, it's interesting when Luke first appears and David can't quite see him, he thinks, oh, it must be Cousin Ronald. So at first he thinks an adult man, then he thinks it must be Aunt Dot, so he thinks an old woman. And it's then only when Luke actually gets a good look at David, the sunday suddenly we have ah 13 or 14 year old boy. yep And you you get the very clear sense throughout that the low key is shaping himself to David's perceptions to what David needs him to be. Right. He wants to be, you know, he's grateful to David and then, but he also, you know, he identifies really quickly. ah Once people start chasing Luke,
00:22:19
Speaker
Then, all right, all right, so he's talking about Chiu, who is one of the people chasing Luke. And Luke says, ah know David says, I don't think he's stupid. And Luke says, yes, he is. Anyone else would have seen it was no good trying to frighten you. And David says, I was frightened. And Luke says, what if you were, it wouldn't make you say anything important. The way to get you talking is to be friendly. And I just hope none of them realize that. Because David is so starved for affection. And Luke immediately sees that and gives him that affection in spades.
00:22:47
Speaker
And David can see them doing this to other people. He does it to Astrid too. He can, you know, he pours on the charm. And people want to do what Luke wants. Merle Right, he is capable of instantly giving anyone what they want to see. And David's not an exception, especially to begin with, David is just getting what he needs. And he's very, very happy.
00:23:10
Speaker
ah But I think as a reader, you do have some doubts about Luke. Yes. um Especially once you hit, I always come back to the moment when Luke sets the building on fire. And it's not so like a little fire. This is a gigantic ah fire in an office block in a crowded street. There are fire engines there. There are people running and screaming. There are you two young women trapped on the roof who who Luke just says, ah They sort of come there. Luke was staring intently at the building with a gentle coaxing smile on his mouth. His red brown eyes were smiling in a different vivid way and moving up slowly over the building as he relishes the chaos and the destruction. and Oh yeah, and that it's honestly, the description keeps going. It's honestly quite sexy. Oh yes.
00:23:54
Speaker
You can tell that Luke is very, very into this fire and this horrible destruction. And David ah does slowly have the moral awakening where he realizes he is responsible here. He does have to get Luke to stop because no one else is going to.
00:24:08
Speaker
yes um and i think like it to pull in
Exploration of Masculinity and Gender
00:24:12
Speaker
a little bit of the the queer reading and the gender note here because i think that gender is something you absolutely have to talk about in this book the first thing i think both of us like immediately highlighted the line when david comes home and his relatives start going on and him about his long hair which makes him look unmanly But they're on the, you know, they're watching the girls on the roof, trapped on the roof. And Luke is like, oh, they're just silly girls. They were in the mirror making, you know, making their face up. And that's why they didn't manage to get out in time. They don't matter. And David's like, yes, they're just stupid girls. I still don't want them to die. ah And then he manages to snap Luke out of it by saying, Luke, you can't bring the dead back to life. And that does, you know, it makes makes a change. Somehow that seemed to be the right thing to say.
00:24:57
Speaker
ah which I think both emphasizes the connection that David and Luke have. You know, David understands Luke out of this sort of kinship that they have and and the way to make him pull back from the brink. But it's also in the way that David who is, you know, older than 10, we know, probably 13 or 14. I think, I mean, Diamond Jones does say in her essay, she resists giving specific ages to the children. But I think David does feel quite specifically to me like he's in his final year of prep school, ye which would be like coming up to a senior boarding school. So he'll be 13.
00:25:32
Speaker
So just like he's just at the point where he's starting to get really tall, really fast, which is why his relatives are complaining about his long hair and his clothes not fitting and his unmanly appearance. yep ah That really did strike me that jumps out immediately the question of masculinity is raised. Something's not right about David, according to his nasty relations.
00:25:51
Speaker
And as a 13-year-old, the way he thinks about girls consistently through this book, with the exception of, you know, as he sort of starts to form this bond with Astrid, is they're sort of silly and sort of irrelevant. um He's got no interest in them. He doesn't want them to die. ah Sometimes it's, you know, he had a nice conversation with an adult woman, um but girls his own age and younger, nothing. Yeah.
00:26:16
Speaker
There's a moment that's really striking to me is on the Friday of the week, the the titular eight days, right? The book is very, very tightly structured ah by the days of the week, which are, of course, the Norse gods. So ah Chew, Mr. c Chew turns up on Tuesday and there's a joke about it. David goes, oh, it's funny that Mr. c Chew turned up on Tuesday. And it was like funnier still if he turned up on Monday. um And Dave doesn't get it then. He doesn't get it at that point. Mr Wedding, who is Woden, turns up on Wednesday. The Ginger Man, who is never named, but who is Thaw, shows up on Thursday. And on Friday, ah two figures appear, ah the Fries, who are of course Frey and Freya, the fertility gods. And Mrs Fry ah comes up to David
00:27:02
Speaker
and is extremely friendly to him and David's reaction is really equivocal. yeah yeah He meets the ultimate sort of incarnation of female beauty and sexuality and he's like, I don't know. Feels like she's coming on a bit strong.
00:27:18
Speaker
Yeah, no, I've got the quote somewhere. Yeah. Mrs Fry came on to David, David backed away. She gave him the most peculiar feeling. It was not unpleasant, but it felt too strong for him. Hello, youngster. She said gladly, I like you. and ah This is the point at which David starts to turn against her. By the end of that scene, he is really not happy with the Fries. And Mrs Fry actually comes out as the villain of the sequence where she is the person who is most aggressively anti-Luke and most unfair to Luke. Yep. So when he meets Woden when he meets Thor. both of them like there oh there's the this When he meets Woden, he has almost the same reaction as to when he meets Luke. He sees Mr. Wedding's face, he was taken aback to find that it was the face he could not help liking. It was an agreeable, firm face, not young and not old, like Luke's face, and rather aligned. And the most perplexing thing was the way David found himself wanting to go with Mr. Wedding and very pleased to be asked. He struggled for a moment and then found he had to give in.
00:28:16
Speaker
So he meets these gods, he has, you know, they all have this way of getting around a person and this way of sort of making themselves liked. And he has this reaction to Loki, he has this reaction to Mr. Wedding, he has this reaction to Thor. um And, you know, Mr. Wedding and Thor are are the ones who are sort of most sympathetic to Luke in a way, and obviously David's sympathies are already engaged. But the fries, absolutely not. Like they can't, they can't, they have no way inroads to him. They're sort of, the the way that they come on just makes him uncomfortable.
00:28:46
Speaker
Right. And similarly, he he sort of more or less ignores the Valkyrie who is chauffeuring Mr. Woden around the large white car. yep ah He does have a very strong reaction when he finally encounters ah the sleeping Brunhilde. But it's about Luke. It's actually about Luke. So I've lost track of what I was saying. All right. So here's my question. Do we want to talk about the ending yet or do we want to save it?
00:29:13
Speaker
Let's save the ending. Let's save the ending. But while we're talking about queer readings, I'm going to jump in and say, uh, so one of the things that Diana wind Jones always does, and she talks about all through reflections is how she's weaving different stories in to her books. And unfortunately, this means that now I've discovered that having reread reflections and then jumping into a read of ah Diana wind Jones right after that means that I'm always looking for those echoes now. Uh, so reading, rereading eight days of Luke right after that, I'm like, why is he named David? Well, it's because of, you know,
00:29:43
Speaker
looking at this romantic friendship. I think it's safe to say that it's romantic friendship between David and Luke. It's a romantic friendship. Yeah, I think that's true. Regardless of how else you read it like this, it's an intense emotional connection, which excludes everyone else of all genders, to be clear, like David makes another friend at one point, Alan, and I was quite annoyed with Luke for apparently not knowing that Alan exists. Right. But Luke is only interested in David. ah So at first I thought, you know, King David, and then especially when I hit the name Alan. So David and David Balfour and Alan Brekstor are the protagonists of Robert Louis Stevenson's Kidnapped, which is another very classic work of romantic friendship about a young orphan boy with horrible relations who saves a dangerous red-headed older man named Alan who's on the run from the law and then spends the entire book
00:30:33
Speaker
trekking through the Scottish countryside with him uh going well I don't know that I agree with the strong stance that you have this you know in this case it's you know it's obviously about the Jacobite rebellion uh I'm on the opposite side of this morally I disagree with much of what you're doing but we have this strong kinship and bond and I'm bound to help you and assist you no matter what and I was like okay yeah no that that that's there isn't it that sort of that intense romantic friendship on that. I mean, some of what David is searching for, I think, in the book is sort of masculine role models, masculine places to belong is noticeable in the opening chapter that the relation we think is going to be the most sympathetic.
00:31:13
Speaker
his cousin Ronald yep ah because David wants so much for Ronald to give him something so he's daydreaming about telling Ronald about his cricket successes at school because David is classic Diana Wynne Jones cricket ball. We will come back to this archetype. ah count in know And you have to imagine Diane Owen Jones having had, she had what, ah three sons I believe? She had three sons? Having had Cricket explain to her on innumerable occasions by her three sons going, what do boys like to talk about?
00:31:45
Speaker
I think she must have been a fan herself because I come from a family of cricket boys. I have had cricket explained to me. It does not stick. And this might be a personal failing. Like there's a comes a point after 30 years when you think maybe I should be able to remember what happens. passionate about this shit. Nope.
00:32:03
Speaker
No. Well, Diana, she understands her point of view. We'll get to that later with some other archetypal cricket boys. They do come back. um But yeah, as many of like David's like happiest moments in the book are about playing cricket, ah which is interesting because those are moments of like team and belonging in a group.
00:32:24
Speaker
And he does not have that with loke Luke. Luke sort of condescends to play cricket. Right. He makes the god Loki play cricket to him and Loki is like, fine. and I don't understand why there are seven other people here, but sure. But yes, what I was saying, ah David is looking for masculine connections. he He wants Ronald to like him, to respect him in that moment when he realizes he's as tall as cousin Ronald, like he's even a little bit taller.
00:32:52
Speaker
Yeah. And it comes increasingly clear actually, ah that Ronald is probably the worst of the lot in terms of the awful relations. um And you feel more and more sorry for Astrid, as you learn about him. But then later, like David instant sort of attraction to Mr. Wedding, his instant attraction to Thor, I'm not talking necessarily in terms of like a romantic attraction, but in terms of ah wanting their attention, their approval of wanting to belong here. Yes. And then finally, when they visit the ah the fairground at Wolsey, which is simultaneously like a pretty rough country fairground, and ah the Heroes Hall of Valhalla, and Dunowin Jones is always doing things with names, Wolsey, Valhalla. Yes. oh
00:33:41
Speaker
which is reached which is on an island in the middle of the lake reached across an iron bridge which when the light strikes it ah gives rainbow reflections. Let's see what you did there. Gorgeous. one of I mean, she keep just has these most exquisite descriptions when she goes into the mythic mode.
00:33:57
Speaker
But then, again, when he reaches Wolsey and it's this all-male environment, Astrid is explicitly told not to come because they won't let her in. yep ah And and luke Luke goes, yeah, they blackballed me years ago in his little boys' club. ah So people who end up going to Valhalla are David, his new friend, Alan, and the the awful cousin, Ronald. Alan, who was just there to be a sort of ah a boy ally, they need three people. And so he picks up this friend who David is like, I don't think he's very bright, but he's a very good sidekick.
00:34:26
Speaker
um That's great for Alan. Right, right but but the but David's reaction to Valhalla is that there's this hall of like noisy young men having fun. Okay, yeah, the heroes of Valhalla, and they're imagined as 70s working class lads having fun at the fairgrounds.
00:34:43
Speaker
um So a lot of the young men had jackets with emblems or pictures on the backs. Deaths, heads, arrows, tigers, streaks of lightning. David saw badges, flowing ties, bands, round hair, and patterns on shirts. They were a very dressy lot and very happy too. David was discouraged. There were no girls or women in the groups, just noisy young men enjoying life and cheating the Kimball machines. And this is this is the warrior heaven, as imagined, for 1970s England. And it fits perfectly. like it it yeah It flows seamlessly.
00:35:13
Speaker
it's exquisite is that that that move from mythic to everyday and back again is so Diana wind jones it's one of the reasons that this book feels paradigmatic but i've got off my point what i wanted to say was David wants to belong in this all male club he wants to be like Siegfried is Woden's favorite uh he wants to have this connection with Woden he wants to be with Thor he wants to be with Luke he wants He wants men, yeah he he wants male company, he wants male belonging. And he's so ashamed of, when we come back to this idea of masculinity, he's so ashamed of Cousin Ronald, all through this sequence, even when it's just him and Alan, and Cousin Ronald is being cheap, he won't buy them things, he's, you know, being kind of stingy, and David is like, I'm so- Again, David's money. With David's money. It's gonna be here later, it's David's money.
Parallels with Classic Romantic Friendships
00:35:58
Speaker
uh and he's so embarrassed to have this as his sort of older male relation that he's attached to to be seen as sort of part of this unit with uncle ronald and then when they're in wallsy the way to find the information that they need is to go through this sort of classic frat bro hazing uh where they have to run it's it's it is simultaneously a frat bro hazing at a classic test of strength in valor in the heroic tradition um but diana when joe says those are the same thing these are not different things exactly uh and they have to run the gauntlet of all of secrets boys punching them as they sort of run down a long tube
00:36:41
Speaker
something too. There's like ah a double double line of young men doing the slow hand clap yep while the three of them taken in turns to run down getting punched yep um and it's very clearly like like Siegfried says I love that she put this line in Siegfried's mouth it's a bit of a giggle really.
00:36:59
Speaker
It's light-hearted they are not actually getting beaten up like they come out of it like fairly bruised drubs around the ribs, ah black eye, but like, they're fine. Right, but it isn't. It's like this idea of light hearted violence is essential for male male connection comes back a bit, in especially in these early Jones books. Oh, yes. But it is like, it's a genuine test of valor for these, you know, kind of skinny scrawny teenage boys running through this, you know, these large heroic muscly biker. Literally, like or he's the worry heroes of legend. Yes, sort of pounding at them as they go. ah And then it's Cousin Ronald's turn, and Cousin Ronald breaks down. He wails, he squalls. He's pathetic. He's deeply pathetic, and he's the adult. And he's the one who, when David comes home initially, is like, well, Cousin Ronald, who's my, you know, not my horrible older relation, but my cool adult relation,
00:37:54
Speaker
is the one I can connect with. And David just stands there feeling so ashamed of Ronald for failing this test of physical courage that is sort of the ultimate barrier to entry into the Hall of Heroes. And it's ah it's another it's another moment actually where Luke is the one who redeems it later when Luke turns around the book and anyone would think you two were twins, you're taking it so seriously. Right. um i don Not those exact words. I haven't got the quote. But it's, again, a moment of like, Luke laughing at David's moments of shame and misery.
00:38:28
Speaker
um and he's able to turn it into some joke about, but also something that David has some distance from. And the mythic world repeatedly is what gives David the distance, the strength to look at his experiences with his awful relations and not let it hurt him anymore. Actually, I want to come back to the midpoint of the book, which I think as I said, the book is so tightly structured and it's all sort of fanning out from this middle moment, Wednesday.
00:38:54
Speaker
Mr Woden, yeah Mr Wedding, turns up and David visits Valhalla for the first time, not as wallsy. The first time he goes it's not the fun fair, it is the genuine mythic world that he's entered. um And they get lunch. They get really good pub lunch. And David is so happy, he loves this lunch.
00:39:13
Speaker
I mean, one thing that feels really true about David actually is he really, really likes food. yeah Because he's 13 and he's growing. He's 13, he loves food, he loves cricket, and he loves blunt honesty. He loves the truth. um Yes. the the The thing about the this central point is Woden gives David a piece of advice. yeah He gives him lunch and he gives him advice. And the advice he gives is, is date David said, like the thing about my relations the reason I don't like them I know that they're they taking care of me and it would be a lot easier if I didn't have to be grateful all the time. And that that core like problem of of the gratitude that he's expected to feel while they treat him badly. And when it goes well you don't, you don't have to feel grateful to these people. Because it is the law that they have to take care of you.
00:40:04
Speaker
They are doing the absolute bare minimum they're legally required to do. And let me get the quote because it's exquisite. Look at it this way. You're still a child and you can't earn your living or look after yourself properly. When you were younger, you could do it even less. All children are the same. So the law says that someone has to look after you until you can do it for yourself, your guardians in your case. And there's another law which says that when you drop a stone, it falls to the ground. Are you grateful to that stone for falling? Or does the stone ask the earth to be grateful?
00:40:35
Speaker
And this kind of breaks open the central problem of David's life in his mind. go I don't have to be grateful. I don't. And it's a moment of amazing freedom for him in the same way that Luke has been giving him these moments of freedom yeah from how miserable he feels with his awful family.
00:40:55
Speaker
and yes and And then he immediately tries to turn it around. Odin, yeah trickster god, ah you know, all father asks David if he's going to turn look over. He puts it very reasonably. He says Luke stole something tremendously important from us ah and we need to have it back. um We just want to ask him where it is.
00:41:19
Speaker
And David thinks about this. he think He thinks it's a reasonable request. He really tries to think about it fairly. um yeah it's It's really well done how Woden sort of leads up to it. He points out that Luke is a bad person, which David already knows, right so this sort of whole the whole office fire and incident, that Luke is capable of terrible things. David knows that. He knows what Luke is like. He knew Luke well enough now to see the way he would have done the terrible thing, with a strange, absent-minded smile because whatever it was had been a clever idea and rather difficult to do.
00:41:50
Speaker
So he thinks about it, ah and then he thinks about the prison that Luke has talked about, and he thinks about his own unhappiness and his relations. He's like, well, i still i I think it would have been fair for Luke to take the revenge. I think I would have taken the revenge in the in his shoes. And I think this is actually a little bit before, but what Mr. Wedding says, can you help me at all? And David says, no, I'm sorry, Mr. Wedding, I can't.
00:42:14
Speaker
Perhaps you mean you won't, suggested Mr. Wedding. Yes, but I still can't, David said. He can't do it. it It's just not it's not an option. It's not even a choice. Absolutely. And and then Mr. Wedding you is you know quite angry with him and says, the laws of hospitality mean nothing to you. And you can see he is explicitly a Norse god. He has given you food. He has made you a guest in his hall. of How are you repaying him?
00:42:40
Speaker
I've given you some advice which you might have gone through all your life without learning anywhere else, and I've given you a good meal. In return, you treat me as an enemy. You don't appear to understand that the least you can do is help me find Luke." Oh, no, I needn't, said David. How do you make that out? Mr Wedding asked scornfully. I haven't lived with Uncle Bernard all these years without knowing when someone isn't playing fair, said David. I've had a marvellous time and a brilliant lunch, and thank you. The advice was even better. But you can't tell me that the Earth's not grateful to a stone for being dropped on, and then say I owe you for lunch.
00:43:10
Speaker
You did it all for a reason and that's not fair. It's so good. And it's so like, and okay, so it's doing multiple, multiple things. um One is it's dropping into the realm of Norse myth, like explicitly, it's the guest right, it's it's the all father setting you a challenge. And what Dave how David knows to counter it is both sort of just the his innate directness, his sense of justice from being a child.
00:43:35
Speaker
and what he's learned from his horrible relations from watching Uncle Bernard who is a past master at manipulation. um you know One of the things that's set up through this book is Uncle Bernard and Astrid have these contests about who's more self-sacrificing and who's feeling worse. They have these illness contests and David keeps score. It's so funny. It's very funny. I don't know if this book is also very funny.
00:44:00
Speaker
It's brilliant. And eventually he tells Astrid about it. He starts giving her tips. He's like, you have to you have to start saying what you need is what you've got is contagious and that you're afraid of giving everyone else the illness. and That'll get you more points than Uncle Bernard. But by learning, by seeing the pettiness of his human relations and the way in which they sort of are able to use words to wriggle around each other and get what they want,
00:44:22
Speaker
he's able to use that to stand against the king of the Norse gods and say, what you're doing is you're trying to manipulate me. And that is unfair. And it goes against my code of honor. Again, this, you know, this this Norse idea and this heroic idea that I won't do it. It's so this is sort of putting this book in the context of 1970s children's books specifically. There's a rule that children's books were only allowed to deal with problems.
00:44:48
Speaker
And of course, this is the days of Are you there God, it's me Margaret, which to be fair is a great example of the genre. If you want a children's book about problems, there you go. So you took a social problem and you wrote about this problem in stark distressing terms. Then this is the rule, you gave it to the child with that problem to read the child was supposed to delight in the insight. This rule is still enforced today. People truly believe in it. And this despite the obvious question that Jill Patton Walsh once asked, if you were divorcing what would you think of the person who made you read Anna Karenina? But right, this is um Eight Days of Luke is in its way a problem book. David is a child with a problem. His problem is an awful family. And the book is doing the thing that the problem book is supposed to do, which is to help its reader understand how to deal with that problem. But Diana Wynn Jones does it by taking David out of that miserable daily grind of
00:45:44
Speaker
emotional abuse and into this mythic realm where he can then stand in the mythic realm apply the lessons he's learned and say look I know you're not playing fair but she talks elsewhere in the essays about how that's what the mythic realm is almost for the realm of the imagination ah is for giving you the space to think through problems in a way that gives you that distance, that ability to laugh, that ability to be sort of heroic if you like, triumphant, proud. Yes.
00:46:15
Speaker
And that's what Luke really is. It's the ability to laugh at it, it's the ability to be heroic about it. ah David can be heroic in service of Luke. he's He's got this oath friend, if you want to put it that way, and he has to steal it. It's not that he won't, but that he can't. He cannot betray that friendship.
00:46:35
Speaker
absolutely. and And there's the whole bit of gratitude afterwards where actually David is thinking about this whole idea of gratitude. And he goes to Luke and he says, you don't need to be grateful to me for letting you out. I did it by accident. So he right obviously Luke is like the best thing that's ever happened to him at this point. But he tries to break that bond of like, you owe me because it doesn't feel fair to him. for And then comes back and says, you know,
00:47:01
Speaker
you happen to then accidentally stand up to ah stand up for me to chew and then quite by mistake to wedding come off it David and by that point it's clear that the relationship is not just Luke shaping himself to David's needs at that point there is a real connection between the two of them yes because David has made the choice over and over again to defend Luke coming back to the romantic reading um This idea of like, I know he's awful. I know what he is. I know he's a monster and I'm choosing him anyway. yeah And I won't betray him and I won't back down. That is a romantic dynamic. And it is one that Diana Wynn-Jones comes back to. I know we said we weren't jumping forward. I'm breaking the rule already. It's Polly and Tom in Fire and Hemlock. I know what he really is. I'm not backing down. yeah It's Howl and Sophie. I know he's a liar and a monster and he's heartless. I'm not backing down. it's Vieira Anamordian in Hexwood. I know he's an internet, he's a a terrible intergalactic space assassin. Come back, we'll come back to that when we get there. It's Tamlin. If we're going to, yes, to go to the underlying stories, you know, she's, Tamlin is explicitly in Fire and Homelock. We will get there. But Luke, and one of the the things that they, and in the Battle of Tamlin, you hold on to the flame. It's, she turns him into a flame, and Janet has to hold on to him.
00:48:20
Speaker
in order to get to keep him. And we get to the end of this book, and it's David has to go through the fire, but the the the all-consuming fire that that Luke is, and that Luke set to consume all things in order to get the thing. She's also, of course, the challenge that Siegfried had to do in the story of Siegfried and Brunhilde to win love.
00:48:36
Speaker
is to go through the fire, so David explicitly becomes the Siegfried. We have to talk about the ending, but before we talk about the ending, okay i want I want to back away from the the romantic friendship for a second. I think i can we're going to come back there via a roundabout way. I want to talk about Astrid for a second, because again, you know as we as we said a little bit already, but I think One of the things that she talks about, I don't have the exact quote in Reflections, but it's about these rules of children's books that you have an adventure, the children are doing the adventure, the adults are not there.
Astrid's Role and Adult Involvement
00:49:08
Speaker
They're gone. um They're not involved. And immediately, halfway through this book, she breaks that rule by pulling Astrid in, and not just by having David form this bond with Astrid, but Astrid is in on all of it. She meets Thor. She...
00:49:23
Speaker
is the one who figures out first before David what's going on which is something that she knows who Thor is really really quickly um possibly because they're almost immediately banging on the riverbank like that's but I think that's pretty clear like there's a whole sequence on the Thursday where um Thor catches up with Luke and they have this like half antagonistic, half friendly relationship where it's really clear that they're very old friends and they understand each other very well and you almost sort of hovering in the background is the stories of Thor and Loki which are never on the page at all, never ever ever. There's there's no sense that by the way we have a fun cross-dressy episode in our mutual past
00:50:01
Speaker
Absolutely not. but But at the same time, you can tell that Jones knows. And then Thor says, all right, fair enough. Like, I caught you for the day. I am giving you a day off being horrified. Let's just have fun. So they go down to the riverbank and David and Luke play in the river. But I mean, it is playtime. there's is it They're having a blissful, relaxing time. And meanwhile, they can hear Thor and Astrid laughing and talking on the bank. yep And that is about all the hint you get that Thor and Astrid are having an affair.
00:50:28
Speaker
but Thor and Astrid are definitely having an affair. And this is not us speculating Diana does confirm that in Reflections, when she talks about her editor catching on to the fact that Thor and Astrid are having an affair and saying, so does that mean that Luke is gay? ah Does that mean David is gay? Sorry, does that mean that David is gay? Yes. Right, or because Astrid and David are parallel. yeah So while Thor and Astrid are having an affair, is is David having his own romantic encounter with the divine?
00:50:56
Speaker
Obviously he is. obviously um But the connection between Astrid and David I think is so interesting because they are so paralleled. It gives her the chance to tell this story about an adult who has been trapped in this situation via an ill-advised romantic relationship.
00:51:15
Speaker
um and now can't get out in the same way the child is trapped, to say a to say something about what it means to be a woman in a bad marriage in the 1970s. And also, Astrid is a character, she's she's not just a symbol or representative, she's she's fun, she's distinct, she's unique, she's very mean sometimes. She loves spending money, she loves spending money on Luke and David and that's sort of the first way that they get they get at her, is they get her away from the rest of the family and they go out on a shopping trip.
00:51:42
Speaker
And suddenly she's having fun, which she hasn't had for years. And that that gets David actually thinks he can only remember her being this jolly very back at the beginning when he first came to live with his relations. And they are very much in this like same in emotionally abusive life.
00:51:57
Speaker
right And when they go to to the house where Astrid's going to pretend pretend quote unquote to look for rooms to rent, well David goes in through the basement to find the World Tree, um and then they leave and Astrid says, well, I wasn't really pretending. I was thinking that it might be, maybe we could both get out. If we did it together, we could both get out and you could come to live with me. So she says,
00:52:23
Speaker
uh those rooms i saw they're really nice i took a chance and told her we'd take them keeping my fingers crossed and hoping you'd agree because i can't see myself managing alone and i don't want to leave you to your fate with bernard and dot so it's not that she's rescuing david it's that they have this possibility of mutual rescue astra doesn't feel like she can live alone she's a 25 year old woman i think her age is is made explicit at some point No, she is she is she's been telling everyone she's 25 for 16 minutes. Right, you're right. She's 31. She's a 31-year-old woman. And she can't imagine herself living alone. She feels like she needs David, who is a 13-year-old boy, ah to make it a viable proposition, which is so fascinating. to do get Almost to give her a reason to get out, I think. Yes.
00:53:07
Speaker
so someone to do it for. And there's that bit at the end where she's thinking I used to make pretty good money as a typist. So she's not actually helpless. She's not gonna have no money when she's when she's out. um But this's almost this learned helplessness this trapped situation. I think we have to talk about the ending to talk about this because Astrid I think has the last word in the book.
00:53:29
Speaker
Yes. So to get there, shall we talk through David's encounter with Brunnhilde? Yes. But before we talk about David's encounter with Brunnhilde, we have to go back to the tree because when he meet the Norns, they say to him, all right, you faced tomorrow you'll see a face tomorrow that you won't forget in a hurry.
00:53:50
Speaker
We'll go in peace, but don't think the rest of your life's going to be easy." And that's the quote that haunts the end of the book. Right, this book in some ways is like a straightforward, happy ending in that our sad orphan is no longer sad and living with bad relations.
00:54:05
Speaker
And Luke gets away, we can say that that, he gets away from the punishment of the Norse gods. they don't catch they They do catch up with him, but he doesn't get sent back to prison. David saves him from that. And unlike invent cha hammer unlike in many children's books, that explicitly doesn't mean that the adventure is over, that he's going to stop seeing Luke. They're going to see each other on Monday.
00:54:27
Speaker
the next week. Luke is still in David's life. They're going to see each other tomorrow. Yes. Luke has been at this point awake for I think 48 hours, using his powers to prevent the eternal flames on the hillside from burning David alive. And you can see how frightened he is for David. I kept thinking you're only human and how exhausted he is by the time David comes out.
00:54:53
Speaker
yeah but i feel like in in the majority of books like this especially written at this time the adventure ends the magic is over it's not over for david and that is the blessing and the curse absolutely but the the uh yeah the face you won't forget in a hurry and that is the face of brunhilda So let's talk about Siegfried and Brunhilde. So one thing that comes up a lot in Reflections ah is a book that was clearly very important to Diana Wynne Jones, which she said was her grandmother's copy of a book called Epics and Romances of the Middle Ages, which was a school prize for her when she was nine. So I went looking.
00:55:34
Speaker
so and love how you found it on project Gutenberg published 1886 in German and then translated into English the following year um the epics and romances of the Middle Ages I haven't finished reading but I did skip straight to the Nibelungen which is an adaptation of the high medieval Nibelungen lead for Siegfried and Brunhilde and I have to say that like it doesn't read very much like Eight Days of Luke at all like it's clearly down there in the bedrock ah but this is working off there are two traditions of the Siegfried story there's the Germanic Siegfried and there's the Scandinavian Sigurd and Eight Days of Luke is much more Scandinavian tilted the
00:56:19
Speaker
Germanic one is really funny because it's very explicitly set in the medieval period and everyone keeps saying things like, we can't escape the fate of the norms. What our pagan ancestors would have said, not us, we're Christians.
00:56:32
Speaker
Oh my god, i you can nearly see the the sort of the the the difficulty they're having adapting ah two very different world views to each other.
Setting Myths in the Modern World
00:56:41
Speaker
And that's something that she talks about too, that Diana talks about in one of the essays is the the trouble with trying to set a mythic story in your own time and and how everyone does make it in their own time eventually. Yes. Yeah, no, I've got I've actually but I pulled that out because I think that's quite relevant to Wait Days of Luke. Hang on.
00:56:56
Speaker
It's quite obvious that people in the middle ages conceived of this story time as being contemporary with their own. ah That made me very wistful at the time because I couldn't imagine my favourite night, Sir Gowan, in a suit or tweed, so I have a heart, I strain to see it. You know she's right, I still can't quite see it. But she sort of does it.
00:57:14
Speaker
Yeah, she does. We'll get there. She does have to do that. It's a very important idea. If you're going to write for a non-historical, forward-looking audience, i.e. children, you need the story time to be here and now. I took this idea up with enthusiasm. It's why most of what I write is set in the modern age whenever possible. And then she named drops eight days of Lucas an example. Yep, paradigmatic for what she wants to be doing. Yes, exactly. So,
00:57:42
Speaker
going back to the treatment of Brunhilde in Eight Days of Luke. So in the final chapter of this book, and the whole mythic quest section of this like fantasy book is actually very tightly compressed into the last two or three chapters. Yeah, it's only 140 page book. And it's a quest by by Yeah.
00:58:03
Speaker
you can read it quickly and you should like this is not a book recommendations podcast this is a like we are talking about a book we love podcast but you probably should rate this one it's awesome yeah yeah absolutely Although it's it's sort of funny, I'm going to confess that when I was a kid, this was one of my least favorites, because I had not yet learned to read books about boys. And this is such a book about masculinity. It really is. She actually mentions that as well. She talks about how her early books she wrote about boys, because girls were willing to pick up books with boys in them, but not the other way around, at least not in the 1970s. Brunhilde, we keep getting off the topic. So in this version, David, of course, passes through the flames, which
00:58:45
Speaker
are the impossible challenge, the ultimate challenge of heroism, Siegfried's challenge, but also it is the, as you said, the Tamlin challenge, embracing the flame. um And they are Luke's own doing. And Luke has, every time Luke looks at a fire, he goes weird and sexy about it. perception and So Luke is very proud of these these flames at the same time he realizes they're horrifying and could destroy David Utterly. And in the middle, he finds what he thinks is a grave.
00:59:15
Speaker
and when he first looks at him he goes up to it and there's this very beautiful description of the body lying in the midst of fire and all the colours changed by the fire about them. um Then he looked onto the body's face and found it was a lady. Somehow that upset him. It was not simply that she was dead without reason and lying in the middle of timeless flames it was that she had the most beautiful face he had ever seen. Even with her eyes shut and red in the flames she was beautiful.
00:59:40
Speaker
In a way, she reminded David and little of the lady who had driven Mr. Wedding's car. Except that this dead face was full of living feelings. It was a face that had no business to be dead. David gazed at it, and it dawned on him that he had never seen any anyone look so sad. When the lady died, she must have been more unhappy than he had known anyone could be. That's the face that he will not be forgetting. And that is the moment when he realizes who Luke is.
01:00:06
Speaker
right there, like in the next paragraph, that's when he understands it. And then he sees that she's got Thor's hammer. Brunhilde has taken it as vengeance for the way that the whole story of Siegfried and Brunhilde turns out. ah She has decided that ultimately Odin is to blame for their tragedy. And she has a point. ah And David retrieves the hammer. He says the flames blurred a little in front of David as he reached out to pick the hammer up.
01:00:35
Speaker
and that's all the hint you get that he's crying, the blurring of his vision. um Then looking at the lady's unhappy face, he thought he knew a little what she felt like, just a little. But why she should lie here so sad was still a mystery to him. This is right after the trouble was he knew who Luke was too, and he would never be able to think of Luke in the same way again. Yeah. So there I think at that point, we sort of see in this like this world of like parallels of the ordinary and the mythic and the in between, which is the world that children live in, David sort of understanding one of the parallels he's living in, which is this sort of mortal and immortal relationship.
01:01:18
Speaker
um And Oh it hurts. It really hurts. And then we get to Astrid. Who has the last word on this? Because after the success, they come out, they give the the hammer to Odin, they all get back in the car.
01:01:36
Speaker
David climbed over to the front seat while Astrid started the engine. Well, David, she said, that's that. David looked at her to remind her that Luke was still there. There was the same expression on Astrid's face that he had seen on the ladies in the flames. David us was rather surprised that she should be sad. Getting rid of Cousin Ronald seemed to him a thing to rejoice at.
01:01:56
Speaker
He looked away at first because he thought that kind of sadness must be private. Then he thought of that other lady. He had wanted to do something for her because she was sad and he knew he never would be able to, but he might manage to comfort Astrid.
01:02:10
Speaker
What's the matter, he said. Oh, what a comfort you're here again, she said. Nothing you can help about, David. Wouldn't you say it was worth it to be really happy for a while, even if you knew you were going to end up sad ever after? David thought as a lady in the flames, asleep and sad forever, and did not know.
Ambivalent Ending and Relationship Complexities
01:02:29
Speaker
It's that moment of ambivalence. It's that he has no answer for the question of is it worth it to have that little bit of happiness.
01:02:41
Speaker
and the consequences that come after it. I want to pick up, go on. Oh no, go for it. I was just gonna i was just going to say that the the echo of just how happy they can be and how sad they're going to be, you can feel it in the book.
01:02:57
Speaker
Yeah, that's it. That's what it is. And I think it is. um Okay, I do think that actually Astrid is mourning her relationship with Ronald here. Like, like you could argue that it's Thor. She is having an affair with Thor. ah But honestly, she hasn't been she's only known him since Thursday and it's Sunday night. They met twice. They had a lovely day on the riverbank and then they have ice cream together while everyone else was going through having a trial of masculinity.
01:03:23
Speaker
Right, which sounds like great fun. And like the sort of thing that happens when you realize that your old relationship is shit and you meet a handsome fellow. Who is the Norse God of Thunder? Yeah, no, this happens to me all the time. um But I think Astrid is mourning the death of her marriage with Ronald. um Was it worth it to be really happy for a while, even if you knew you were going to end up sad ever after?
01:03:47
Speaker
I think it is clear from the beginning of the book that Ronald can be superficially appealing. Oh yeah, because he he charms David. David has been going to these relatives for years, and it's only now that he's starting to be a threat to Ronald, that he's a little bit taller than Ronald, and a little bit more clearly, you know, more you know younger, taller, and smarter than Ronald, that Ronald's claws really start to come out for David.
01:04:15
Speaker
Absolutely. I think, I mean this is speculation, Astrid is a young woman who was probably 25 when she got married, um who was single, alone, working as a typist, she doesn't seem to have any other family either, she doesn't have anyone to go to, she needs a 13 year old boy to give her the courage to get out, and she marries money.
01:04:35
Speaker
yeah but ah david's money actually yeah doesn't know that She loves spending money and this is not presented as a negative thing, it's quite the opposite act, it's almost a heroic characteristic. She likes to buy more and more ice cream for the boys, she likes more and more dresses, she likes to be big and expansive, rather than this pinched and tiny and unkind and stingy world that Ronald inhabits and Ronald's stinginess is one of the things that's most shameful about him that despite actually being filthy rich on David's money, he's not willing to spend enough to like buy him new clothes that fit. Mm hmm. They want to buy him an ice cream. The only thing, the only time that David's relatives ever admit that it might be worth it to spend money is to get David's haircut. And David said it would be cheaper not to cut my hair.
01:05:22
Speaker
And even though joy is in that unmanly way, it's a question of right and wrong. That's their ethic system. And we're presented with this quite different world of ethics of right and wrong, of what you can and can't do through Loki and through Mr. Wedding that's just orthogonal to what David's relatives... Right, this world of honor and generosity and expansiveness.
01:05:47
Speaker
um And generosity, you're absolutely right that it's, you know, that's one of those sort of heroic virtues. And yes, to to David's relatives, it's a vice. It's it's when Astrid is able to show that generosity, that sort of heroic virtue, that that's when they that's when they're able to bond.
01:06:03
Speaker
Absolutely. So I think actually that moment of wouldn't you say it was worth it to be really happy for a while is Astrid talking about not what her marriage with Ronald was, but what she wanted it to be, which is the escape from drudgery, um the escape from being a single unmarried woman with no family in the 1970s.
01:06:26
Speaker
into something like the the beautiful house in the country, the handsome husband, the dream. And of course she Ronald is superficial, you can see through it and I think it's clear that Astrid saw through it very early.
01:06:39
Speaker
and was sad ever after. Sad and bitter and taking it out on David until they're finally able and he was taking it out on her too you know there's a point where she points out to David you only come and be nice to me when you want something from me and David realizes that's true that they've been you know trying to use each other and manipulate each other the same way as everyone else in that family. Absolutely.
01:07:01
Speaker
So I think it's sort of that final moment of parallels where you have in the sort of the mundane, the petty, the small adult world, you have Ronald and Astrid, and that very ordinary human domestic drama of the end of a bad marriage. In the purely mythic world, you have Siegfried and Brunnhilde and their great tragedy, ah divided forever, ah marked by misunderstanding and by vengeance. And then slipping in between those two worlds.
01:07:31
Speaker
is David and Luke, echoing both. Who are blissfully happy right now, the moment of triumph. But like like in the North story where you have the prophecy that's foretelling you how it's going to end, you can see that that the tragedy sort of barreling down towards them. Absolutely.
01:07:55
Speaker
and David even looks at Luke and Mr. Wedding and thinks when the last battle comes they're going to be on opposite sides because that is the prophecy. That's Ragnarok. Yep. Let's stop there.