Pratchett for Girls. And boys. And adults.

For decades I have been urging teenage boys to read the late Sir Terry Pratchett’s Disc World novels.   Especially 13 year olds.    These books are funny, and wise.    Funny enough to engage boys in novel length reading, as long as they share Pratchett’s  sense of humour,  apparently light-weight,  gently spoofing fantasy fiction, but  also rather wise as each book has a humane sub-text, smuggling in attitudes that are anti-misogyny, anti-racist, anti-xenophobic, in fact anti anything that smacks of small-minded meanness, prejudice or hate.    

A cast of Wizards, Witches, Trolls, Dwarves, Werewolves, Vampires, Humans and Igors provide plenty of variety and laughter.  Igors, by the way, are Frankensteinian creatures, cobbled together from spare body parts,  who are very skilled in repairing others human’s bodies.    An almost omnipresence is that of Death, usually with his pale horse, Bincky.   Some of the books focus on The Watch, Ankmorporth’s police force,  a force consisting of many different life forms and led by the (eventually) wonderful Commander Sam Vimes.     Other books are about the Wizard’s Unseen University – where a huge library of magic books is overseen by a Librarian who was at some point transformed into an Orangutan when the magic leaking from the books reached critical point.     Some plots involve Rock Music and Opera, racial stereotyping and exploitation,  feminism (including the ordination of women) football, science, the postal service, the banks, Church,  steam trains, the Movies and many other foci.   

And then there are the Witches.     Teenage boys may not be so interested in  the Witches, but girls might well find them engaging.     Pratchett’s publishers list some books for ‘younger’ readers, YAs.   I had never read any of them  until my attention was caught by some later books concerning Tiffany Aching,  a young witch.  I have now read three of them,  Wintersmith (2006), I shall Wear Midnight(2010) and The Shepherd’s Crown(2015) and I recommend them to any girls aged 12 or over.  And  women of any age.   And men. And boys.    

Why? Because they are just as well written, just as funny and just as wise as the rest.   And they address different issues.  Although Tiffany is young, just rising 13 when we first meet her, she has to face issues of domestic violence,  teenage pregnancy (not hers!), emerging sexuality and death, and the consistent YA themes of power and responsibility.     They also bring us Tiffany’s informal guards, the Mac Nac Feegle tribe of diminutive warriors,  otherwise called the  Wee Free Men.

It is good to find books that young people and their parents – or grandparents – can enjoy and talk about together, especially when they touch issues that might be hard to talk about without the focus of a book.   I rank Terry Pratchett’s books alongside the very different offerings of Philip Pullman, Patrick Ness and Malorie Blackman.   I rejoice that Ness’s trilogy ‘Chaos Walking’is finally being filmed by Doug Liman (The Bourne Identityand Edge of Tomorrow)  starring Tom Holland and Daisy Ridley, but will not be released until the spring of 2019.  But you do not have to wit until then to enjoy the discworld.   You will know within a few pages if his style tickles you.   I may take a little longer to see if his satires amuse you, his concerns move you, and your heart warms to his gentle but deep passions.  

A Monster Calls - but dare you answer?

The screenplay for A Monster Calls was adapted by Patrick Ness from his own novel of the same name, but is based on a plot thought up,  but not written,  by the late Siobhan Dowd,  another prize winning ‘Young Adult’ author.    After Dowd died Patrick Ness was invited to develop her idea into a novel and then script.

The film A Monster Calls  was directed by the Spanish Director J.A. Bayone (The Impossible and The Others) and stars Liam Neeson,  Felicity Jones, Sigourney Weaver and the young Lewis MacDougal as Connor.    I urge you to see it.   But I also offer a warning.

In the rather beautiful opening credits water-colours float across the screen.   We will see such images later telling important stories and providing vital clues to guide us through the psychological and emotional thickets of this powerful movie.     But this is about death and facing the dying of a beloved.     

Twelve year old Connor’s mother has cancer.   He knows this and struggles with his fear, rage and shame.     His father is remarried and living in America.    His Grandmother seems to be emotionally distant.     So he is visited by a Yew Tree Monster who seems to wreak destruction but also tells ambiguous stories that confuse Conner.   And the Monster also demands that Connor will eventually tell his own story, the story that terrifies him.   

I read the Patrick Ness book in one sitting and remained determinately dry-eyed, but I knew that the more potent medium of the movie would not let me get away with that again.   It is nearly eleven years since my beloved wife died but it seems I still have tears to let flow.    Anything that helps us take another faltering step along the grieving road has to be good for us.   How often have I assured the bereaved that the tears we shed can help to heal us, but warned that unshed tears turn to acid and burn us from the inside.    Grief can feel like a monster, but it will not harm us if we respond to its call and face it, like brave young Connor, and listen to it.

I love the way today’s movie makers are able to put literally anything they can imagine onto the screen, from the kaleidoscopic  cityscapes of Doctor Strange and the beguilingly human BFG to the Yew Tree ‘ Monster’ voiced by Neeson in this film.   They can do so to thrill and amaze us, and can also do so to touch our hearts and heal us.  Movies can properly and beneficially move us.   Sometimes they address our own personal struggles, sometimes they are - as Saint Roger Ebert once said - ‘machines to produce empathy.’  

Twice in this film adults are faced with the outrageous behaviour of an emotionally  tortured child.    Twice he expects to be properly punished.  And twice he is asked ‘What possible good would that do?’    And so are we.    The late Josephine Hart’s novel Damage (filmed in 1992 by Louis Malle with Juliette Binoche, Jeremy Irons and Miranda Richardson)  made the crucial and succinct point that ‘damaged people damage people.’   That was long before we had to come to terms with the fact that abused people’s behavior so often alienates us from them,  making them –at the least – unsympathetic witnesses, self-harmers or, too often, abusive themselves.  

Empathy is a crucial characteristic of big brained mammals,  and one that needs to be fostered and fed.    Books such as  A Monster Calls may be hard to read, and movies such as this may be hard to watch,  but if they can help in healing our own wounds or feed our understanding of the wounds of others they are good for us.    And often rather beautiful.   I give thanks for those artists who write such books and those make such films.    

Sigourney Weaver must be pretty busy making the fifth Alien and three Avatar sequels.   She certainly does not need to master an impeccable English accent again for this role as she did long ago for The Year of Living Dangerously,  so she obviously wanted to be in this film.   Felicity Jones is at the top of her Theory of Everything and Star Wars acclaim and fame, so this comparatively ‘little film’ must have called to her too.   Liam Neesom can earn squillions making more meretricious Taken style revenge movies, but he also sometimes commits himself to more redemptive roles such as the recovering-alcoholic cop Matt Scudder in A Walk Among the Tombstones,  a brief appearance as God in the BBC’s wonderful Rev and now this.

As I said earlier, I urge you to see this film, but do heed my warning.