Thanks to a recent bout of sickness, which had me confined to bed for three days, I recently had the time to re-read this childhood favourite, the ‘Chronicles of Prydain’ series by Lloyd Alexander.
It’s many years since I last read the books, but I must have read them multiple times, as so much of the narrative and dialogue was familiar to me. That said, I’m happy to report that some of the plot denouements were so lost in the mists of time that they felt freshly unexpected and extra enjoyable.
Coming to the novels anew after so long, I was surprised at how affected I was, as an adult, by the incredible storytelling. The books are short (I read The Black Cauldron and The Castle of Llyr in a single day) – no unwieldy Goblet of Fire-style doorstops here – and thus they are by necessity quite tightly, and expertly, plotted. For example, on several occasions when a character turns up to help the heroes out of a tight spot, it could easily feel like a ‘deus ex machina’, but it doesn’t, as you only then remember an earlier scene in which that forthcoming help was seeded – and then promptly forgot about due to the rest of the plot grabbing you and running away with you. Everything falls into place, and nothing feels crowbarred in.
The characterisation likewise does much with little. You know you are in the hands of a skilled writer when you can identify a character by their dialogue, without it feeling heavy-handed. Probably the classic example of this is Terry Pratchett’s Death, who can be recognised by a single word (who would have thought that typesetting could carry so much weight?) – but Alexander’s Gurgi (“crunchings and munchings”), Eilonwy (“It’s like putting your fingers in your ears and jumping down a well”), and many others, are quickly, astutely and affectionately drawn.
The Chronicles feature characters and places bearing names originating from Welsh mythology, but in Alexander’s books, the personalities and stories are quite different. Rather than seek to create a retelling of Welsh myth, he has taken elements of it as inspiration for his own wholly invented stories. This is absolutely fascinating to me as an artist, as I am in the throes of embracing something very similar with regard to my visual work, and am wrangling with questions of respect towards original myths/folktales – not to mention landscape – and how far we can bend them into new forms for our own purposes. Is it disrespect, or merely the natural way of things, when we seek to make new stories of old? A complex question, and one I will undoubtedly be returning to.
If I have a criticism of the Chronicles, it is (perhaps unsurprisingly) the paucity of female characters. The Princess Eilonwy more than holds her own, as do Orddu, Orwen & Orgoch, Alexander’s version of the Norns, and Queen Achren. While these characters are stronger and more deeply drawn than many of the male characters, it is a shame there are not more of them. (To be fair, a similar observation could be made of Shakespeare; I’d love to see a two-hander between Queen Achren and Lady Macbeth…) The denouement of the final book, The High King, in particular, is frustrating in what it requires Eilonwy to sacrifice – but then, it could be argued that Taran too has made what he believes to be an even greater sacrifice, so perhaps I am being churlish.
To conclude: the only good thing about being ill is that it grants you the time to (re-)read books it might otherwise seem an indulgence to entertain. So I am enormously grateful to whoever passed on their germs to me, as it allowed me to revisit this treasure from my younger years. Not only was it a refreshingly delightful read in its own right, I find myself newly enthused about questions relating to my own art – and what better compliment can there be for an artist (of whatever variety) than to have inspired the work of a new ‘storyteller’?