BOOK REVIEW: The Golden Compass by Philip Pullman

7:08 AM

Original title: Northern Lights (UK-original) The Golden Compass (US)

Author: Philip Pullman

Year of Publication: 1995

Number of pages: 351 [paperback]

Available in: English, Spanish + 36 other languages

I read it in: English

"There is a correspondence between the microcosm and the macrocosm! The stars are alive, child! Did you know that? Everything out there is alive, and there are grand purpose abroad! The universe is full of intentions, you know. Everything happens for a purpose.”

Lyra Belacqua lives happily in the Jordan College where she's free to run, plan, play and discover, until her friend Roger Parslow is kidnapped by the Gobblers and she promises to rescue him, all these while her enigmatic uncle Lord Asriel embarks on a mission to research "The Dust", a mysterious substance that Lyra has a lot of questions about and always gets very few answers.

Lyra lives in a parallel universe to ours, one whose particularity is that people's souls live outside their bodies in the shape of an animal, called a dæmon. Her world is ruled by "The Church", a theocratic government that accepts no questions about anything they haven't approved and that is very secretive… and amongst the low lines of the citizens of this world, inhabit treacherous creatures whose sole purpose is to kidnap children and make the people fearful, or so has Lyra heard from the gypsies who she plays with. But underneath all the games and parsimony, lies a whole world that Lyra has yet to unravel, with possibilities far ahead of what she can imagine in her wildest dreams.

This book certainly deserves more adjectives than 'beautiful', but that's all I can think of right now, even if it crushed my heart all the way until the end.

It is marketed as a children's book but it deals with complex matters such as politics, religion, science and, above all, human nature, in a way that I personally loved: without metaphors, simple and blunt, because children are able to understand and see too the evils that men do.

The diverse arrange of characters and personalities make this a truly delightful story. Lyra as a character was amazing. She's so complex and smart that is really easy to forget that she's just a kid, even when she shows herself so skillful to lie you start to believe her too, especially as she grows and grows more into the darkness that surrounds her and that she's faited for.

One of my favorite characters was the bear Iorek Byrnison, an armored bear or panserbjørne that was exiled and found armor-less by Lyra. The panserbjørne have opposable thumbs, have dexterity like no other and work with metal that comes from the stars, something that no human can do, as well as having an immense strength, will power and intelligence to build weapons.

A movie was made out of this book and even though it wasn’t very popular amongst the masses, it won an Oscar for special effects. I saw the movie first and loved it for many years until I decided to read the book and so understood why everyone hated it: one big chunk of the book, the most complicated and page-turner part, totally on purpose as it is quite a dense part of the story. Even so, I love the film and the book as two separate entities, as the movie had great actors and great effects, and was great as a stand-alone.

On other news, Philip Pullman didn't have it easy with this book. He's an atheist, an as he said it once, our beliefs, especially when they are strong, can shape the things that we do. So when he wrote this stories, three books in total in the His Dark Materials series, he wasn't trying to impose an argument on people, or allegories or teachings, he was telling a story and people got it mixed up, as they do. So much that in 2002 The Christian Herald called his book worthy of the bonfire (allegedly taken out of context), and in subsequent years many Christian groups opposed the stories and namely accused Pullman of pushing his "agenda" onto children. But there are also people that claim that the book is a Christian book that reinforces all their ideas and beliefs.

One way or another, everybody is wrong and what I'm about to say is on a more personal note:

People tend to read into things the way they want to and as best accommodates them. If I want to read Harry Potter and see there a satanic group of kids telling stories of secularity, that's up to me, as it is if I would decide to read it as a timely story of morality. This way, when a book reaches my hands it is what it is but also what I want to see, and so we begin to unravel this big world of ideas and teachings that might be universal but also open to interpretation. Taking a book and subjecting it to you own passions, like religion or the lack of it, will only cause trouble as it is so completely unnecessary: it's not mandatory to feel a connection with a book to enjoy it, and many people fail there, that's why we have so much stories that were made since day one thinking of a specific audience, with vague descriptions and an uncomplicated story-line: they sell fast and well, giving the masses what they crave for. So the problem is not in whether the story is good or not, or if it's actually Pullman pushing his secret atheist agenda to all who read the book, it's that necessity to make something your own, to identify with it in order to understand it. Because, unless you haven't noticed, we are all too different to be labeled and empathy shouldn't come from the idea that there's something of myself in others, but from the concept that others are valuable, as are their opinions and their diversity, taking away our egocentric mind-set that makes us want to see ourselves in everything.

I highly recommend this book and I'm eager to find out what happens next with Lyra and Pan, her dæmon!