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The Book of Three by Lloyd Alexander

Feb23

Whenever I am asked for a book suggestion in the vein of or as a follow up to Narnia or Tolkien, my first question is always, “Have you read Lloyd Alexander’s Prydain Chronicles?” And yet, I haven’t read these five books in the Prydain series, beginning with The Book of Three, in many, many years. Since I am working on reading children’s books published in 1964, sixty years ago, it was definitely time for a reread: The Book of Three was first published in 1964.

I love Lloyd Alexander’s quirky, idiosyncratic characters:

  • Taran, Assistant Pig-Keeper, is the immature, rash, and bumbling sort-of-hero of the story. Well, if not the hero, at least he’s the main character, and he’s about to go on an epic hero’s journey, even if he is only an Assistant Pig-Keeper.
  • Hen Wen, the oracular pig is lost. Can the rag-tag group that gathers around Taran help him find Hen Wen and warn the good guys of impending danger?
  • Prince Gwydion, the older and true hero, still relies on Taran and his friends to help save the kingdom of Prydain from the evil Arawn and his henchman, the Horned King.
  • Eilonwy, girl child or young woman or enchantress, speaks in metaphors and similes and always keeps Taran humble with her sharp observations.
  • Fflewddur Fflam, the bard who used to be a king. His harp is magical in the music it produces and in its response to the exaggerated stories that Fflewddur tells.
  • Gurgi, beast-man or man-beast, is a brave though smelly companion whose constant talk of “crunchings and munchings” and “walkings and stalkings” and “seekings and peekings” adds a memorable bit of spice and humor to the story.
  • Doli is the irascible dwarf guide who can’t manage to turn himself invisible no matter how long and hard he holds his breath.
  • Dallben, who only enters the story at the beginning and at the end, is Taran’s wizard mentor, three hundred and seventy-nine years old and devoted to the work of meditation, “an occupation so exhausting he could accomplish it only by lying down and closing his eyes” for an hour and a half every morning and evening.

The characters and the setting are drawn from Welsh legend and mythology, just as Tolkien’s Middle Earth was taken somewhat from Norse and Finnish mythology. “Arawn, the dread Lord of Annuvin, comes from the Mabinogion, the classic collection of Welsh legends, though in Prydain he is considerably more villainous.” I think Alexander was also influenced by Tolkien, although he never says so, never even admits to having read LOTR. And the stories of Prydain are deeply influenced by the existentialism of Jean Paul Sartre; Lloyd Alexander was the first person to translate Sartre’s novel Nausea into English.

Actually, the plot is somewhat predictable: Young Taran goes on a journey with a mission to save the land of Prydain from the forces of evil. On the way he meets many obstacles and dangers but also finds unexpected helpers and friends.The evil is defeated, temporarily, but of course not conclusively, since there are four more books to come in the series. In some series this ending-not-ending would be irritating, but this story is more about the characters and their growth and the humor and the serious philosophical and even religious journey that each of them is taking. (But there is really no religion in these books. They are more existentialist, about finding out the depths of your own character and identity, but not in an annoying way?)

Anyway, I’m just now beginning my 1964 journey. I may find other books from that year that equal or even better Mr. Alexander’s first entry into the world of Prydain. But I would guess that The Book of Three will be among the top ten books of 1964, at the very least. Highly recommended.

“Most of us are called on to perform tasks far beyond what we can do. Our capabilities seldom match our aspirations, and we are often woefully unprepared. To this extent, we are all Assistant Pig-Keepers at heart.”

~Lloyd Alexander, Author’s Note at the beginning of The Book of Three

A String in the Harp by Nancy Bond

Apr5

A String in the Harp was a Newbery Honor book in 1977. (Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry was the Newbery Award winner in 1977.) A String in the Harp is a long book, with lots of descriptive passages that evoke a sense of setting in the Welsh countryside. Mrs. Bond, an American, wrote her novel after spending two years going to library school in Wales. In fact, Wales itself, its scenery and its history, is almost the central character in the book. One critic said, “Without the traditional Welsh materials, A String in the Harp would be just another adolescent problem novel.” Well, without the entire setting in Wales, there would actually be no novel at all. It made me want to visit Wales, in spite of the cold and the incessant rain that are emphasized in the book.

The story is about the Morgan family: an American professor and his three children, Jennifer, Peter, and Becky. The story is written in third person, but mostly told from the point of view of Jennifer, age 15, and Peter, age 12. The Morgan family has moved to Aberstwyth, Wales for a year for Professor Morgan to teach and pursue research at a university there, leaving Jennifer behind with her aunt so that she can continue high school. As the story opens, Jennifer is coming to join her family in Wales for the winter/Christmas holidays.

There are, of course, problems to be overcome. Peter hates Wales and everything about it. Becky, age 10, just wants the family to be happy. Professor Morgan is distant and impatient with Peter’s inability to adjust to living in Wales. Jennifer is unsure of what her new role in the family is since they are all trying desperately to learn to be a family without their mother who died in a car accident just before the Morgans moved to Wales. All of the problems in the novel have a lot to do with the grief process that each of the Morgans is going through, but the mother is only mentioned a few times in the course of this long novel. We never get to know her, really, and you get the sense that grief is about forgetting and moving on somehow.

Into all of this rather chaotic family emotion and misunderstanding comes a magic artifact, a harp key. Peter finds the key and becomes attached to it, wearing it around his neck on a string as a sort of talisman. He believes that the key is showing him, even taking him into, the past and the life of the sixth century bard and poet, Taliesin. The novel borrows from C.S. Lewis’s with the children, especially Peter, moving into and out of another time and place. At one point a Welsh professor friend is talking to Jen and Becky about whether or not Peter has imagined all of his stories about Taliesin, and he says to them, “What do they teach in your American schools?” The entire conversation is quite reminiscent of the Professor and the children, Peter, Susan, and Edmund, when the professor asks, “Why don’t they teach logic at these schools?” and later, “I wonder what they do teach them in these schools.” Only the Welsh professor is asking more, “Why don’t they teach wonder or magic at these (American) schools?”

There are a couple of minor elements to the story that didn’t bother me, but someone else may find them problematic. The characters curse sometimes, even the children, mild curses, mostly damn and hell. I wouldn’t have expected to find cursing in a children’s book published in 1976, but there it is. And Jen at about the halfway point in the novel offers to stay on in Wales and take charge of the household, cooking and cleaning and mothering her siblings. It’s taken for granted that someone (some female?) has to be at least a parttime caretaker and homemaker for the Morgans, and for the first semester of the school year they’ve had a local woman paid to clean house and cook meals for them. One critic called this minor plot element “sexist.”

There’s usually a place in any good book where I “fall into” the story, so to speak. I am immersed and intrigued to find out how the story will play out and how it will end and what truths and affinities I will find along the way. For A String in the Harp, it took a while for me to fall in, but eventually, I did. I suppose it’s a matter of wanting to know how the story and the relationships of the various characters will finally be resolved. I think this story of family disorder turning to order, and coming of age, and magical occurrences without clear boundaries or explanations, would be a hard sell to twenty-first century readers who are used to more action and less atmosphere. But anyone who loves Narnia or Tolkien or Welsh mythology or Arthurian legend might really appreciate this small gem of a book.