Review: The Amber Spyglass

The Amber Spyglass by Philip Pullman
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

On December 24, I started The Amber Spyglass like I did its predecessors, as I would read any other fantasy book. I enjoyed it, like I enjoyed the other two, wondering at the differences it had from all other fantasy books I've read, so many written by people of faith.

On December 25 my grandmother died of covid-19, in the hospital, alone and away from all the people who loved her and needed her.

Then Lyra and Will arrived to the Land of the Dead.

I have no idea how to begin to explain how little by little, between the 25th and 30th of this month, these two things, the death of my grandmother and The Amber Spyglass came into my mind, into my soul, and left me cold, shivering, alone and terrified, but in awe of the simple beauty we, human beings, create with our ordinary lives.

During the last nine or so years, from 2011 maybe to the present day, I've struggled with a growing understanding of my fear of death. That no matter how kindly he's portrayed in fiction or how comforting I've tried to be to myself about him, how much I try to remember that death is immaterial, that what matters is, as Philip Pullman said, what we do here, that we build the Republic of Heaven here, where we are, heedless of other worlds and other states of being that have very little to do with our present, brief, messy and wonderful lives... I still fear the end, the finality of it, the loss of consciousness, of everything that makes me who I am.

I read somewhere that Philip Pullman wrote His Dark Materials as a response to the Narnia books. That if the Narnia books were to end in a death that brought Heaven, a death that revealed the truth of the shadows in Plato's cave, a death that loved the spirit more than it loved matter, his books would end in the triumph of matter, in the beauty and pleasure of the material world and our material lives. If there is no God then it doesn't matter because what we do while we live is purpose enough. If upon death we scatter into a million atoms, in a stream of stardust, the only consolation we should need is the thought that we are to go back into the world, to make more beauty and more meaning, regardless of conscioussness. Oblivion is bliss, because we don't need the spirit to connect with the universe and all the matter in it. We are the stuff of creation and we don't need a God to make us cosmic.

I don't know if I believe either Pullman or Lewis. But I know that reading Pullman today I can't stop crying for the poor, crude matter we are made of, the artless brevity of our lives, the loss of consciousness and being, the loss of the perfect individual creature that my grandmother was.

When they are contemplating their separation, Will says to Lyra "memory’s a poor thing to have. It’s your own real hair and mouth and arms and eyes and hands I want." In the end, the real matters, the physical reality of our daily experience, MATTERS.

I wasn't ready for my grandmother to pass away. I don't think any of us were. I take comfort in the fact that she was always strong and aware, never senile or dependent. At the same time, I feel a deep, resentful rage at myself that I let it lull me into a sense of security, an illusion that she still had many years before her. Because memory is a poor thing, but now all I have is memory. I remember her cooking. My maternal grandmother took longer to die. It was a slow goodbye. She went gentle into that good night and I had time, precious time, to ask for all her cherished recipes, so that I could have her with me always, in all her physical materiality.

But now, if the material is all we have, if memory and spirit and the Land of the Dead are all a poor substitute for what is real and physical, what am I to do Mr. Pullman, now that I've been left to stumble? She is gone, into a million atoms, into the stuff of creation and I forgot to ask her how to make cream of beet, its brilliant purple color so magical to me when I was a girl, clotted cream cookies that I remember making with leftovers, with my cousins when I was little more than a baby, chiles en nogada, that she made with goat cheese and in her splendor, in the endless generosity of the Flores family, she fed to the first real boyfriend I ever brought home.

What to do now that all I have are memories, so poor and pitiful, in comparison to the real human being? Am I to tell stories of her? True stories?

These books are written for children, and I started reading them when I was, perhaps not a child, but certainly not an adult. On December 25 the last of my childhood died in a hospital bed, where we could not say goodbye. Today I finish His Dark Materials, all grown-up, unable to tell what lies ahead for me, or how to build the Republic of Heaven here. The material matters, and my cousins and uncles and father are far from my arms. I cannot hold them or comfort them or kiss them, but I can take care of them, because our lives here matter, what we do matters.

Take care of each other. Be glad that you are alive. 

Olimpia Ortiz Brugada