 |
| (Amazon UK link) |
Not that the story was new to me. I don’t know how many times I read these books as a child and teenager. I first read them as adventure stories with interesting characters; gradually I realised the Christian significance, and found more in them each time. They’re intended for older children, but are timeless classics that can be read just as well - and perhaps more meaningfully - by adults too.
It would be possible to read this as a standalone book, but I wouldn’t recommend it. Instead, it stands as the final instalment of the Narnia series, bringing everything to an ultimately satisfying conclusion. It involves a lot of the same characters as can be found in earlier books, and reunions with even more of them towards the end.
But the story starts not in the world we know as the ‘real’ one, but in Narnia, hundreds of years after the last visit by Jill and Eustace (in ‘The silver chair’). And for the first couple of chapters, it all seems rather depressing. There aren’t many talking animals left, we learn, and the two who are introduced are not particularly likeable.
Shift the ape is manipulative and sly, and Puzzle the donkey is timid and does whatever Shift tells him to do. When Shift spots an old lion skin floating in the river, he coerces Puzzle into rescuing it, and then wearing it. Shift decides that if he can pretend that Aslan has returned, he can get Narnians to do anything he wants…
Meanwhile the young King of Narnia, Tirian, is happily spending time with his friend Jewel the unicorn when they get some terrible news from Farsight the eagle. They are determined to find out what is going on…
Back on Earth, seven ‘friends of Narnia’ are meeting, having a friendly reunion when they see a vision of Tirian, and realise that Jill and Eustace are needed again. They wonder if they can travel using the magic rings that were used in ‘The magician’s nephew’, since they’re not finding any other way to get to Narnia. But, on a train journey to meet the others, they are suddenly jolted and pulled into Narnia, and meet King Tirian.
There are some battles, as in most of the other books, but this is more sombre than any of the others. Many of the Narnians are taken in by the false Aslan, and some terrible things have been happening. Perhaps more than in any of the other books, Lewis uses analogies from the Bible, looking towards the ‘end times’, albeit set in an imaginary world.
There are a lot of important questions raised - does Aslan exist? Is he really the same as the Calormene god Tash, who seems (at least, to the Narnians) to be evil? Is Aslan angry, and if so, why? Are the old stories true, or are they just myths? Who can be trusted…?
I wasn’t all that keen on this book when I was a child. I didn’t like the way that it was so final, and I didn’t understand the implications of the ending. Now, I like it very much. I think it’s the perfect ending to the series, and almost prophetic in some of the scenes. Some might object to the implied theology of the final chapters, but I find it encouraging and inspiring.
Very highly recommended if you have read the other books in the series. And if you haven’t, this is probably the best reading sequence of the first six, in the order in which they were originally published:
Since I’m familiar with them, I prefer to read them in roughly the chronological order, Narnia-wise. They’re ideal for children aged about eight or nine and upwards, and are excellent as read-alouds.
No comments:
Post a Comment