On stepping through the portal
by Charlotte Runcie
As a child, I went through a phase where I struggled to enjoy books that didn’t feel like a world I already knew. I read a lot of Jacqueline Wilson (which were, in hindsight, so realistic that they were also dark as hell) and Enid Blyton books (a fantasy in themselves, even if I didn’t realise it at the time). When I tried reading books full of magic, it felt as if I had to learn a whole set of rules before I would understand what was even happening on page one.
The first time I tried to read Lord of the Rings, when I was eight or nine, I felt as if I’d fallen behind before I’d even started, as if everyone in the world already knew a load of stuff and I’d never catch up.
I’m not unusual in this, which is why a lot of fantasy novels provide a character who is going on a similar journey of discovery to the reader, and has to learn the rules alongside us.
Harry Potter grows up with muggles, and needs Hagrid and Ron to explain the basics of the wizarding world. Lucy Pevensie goes through the wardrobe and Mr Tumnus is the first person she meets, kindly explaining what’s what. In The Subtle Knife, the first of the His Dark Materials books that I read because I didn’t realise it wasn’t the first one, Will is absorbed from the real world into the parallel world that belongs to Lyra and daemons.
Once I knew what I was looking for, I saw it in Lord of the Rings, too. Frodo’s homeland of the Shire is much more familiar than all the places he goes next.
Although I love all those books, I’ve not turned into a lifelong fantasy reader and I mostly naturally pick up non-fantasy novels. I’ve never even dipped a toe into Romantasy, which makes me a total rube. But I’m starting to look to fantasy more now, which is how I came to fall in love with The Book Eaters, as we discuss in this week’s conversation with Sunyi Dean.
Because, embarrassingly, it took me a long time to realise something that fantasy writers have always known: the author of a fantasy world is almost always actually saying something about the world we already know.
And if only I’d had a kindly wizard guide to lead me to that point, I might have got there sooner.
How can fantasy change your reality? with Sunyi Dean