Charges of Geresy

** This review contains spoilers **

Pullman is back with the second installment of the Book of Dust. The style of writing, and the content, seem very different from the first, and it is perhaps not immediately apparent what the connection between this book and La Belle Sauvage is.

Promptly, however, Pullman reveals (or perhaps reimagines) characters that appeared as early as The Northern Lights.

Alice, or Mrs Lonsdale as she was previously known, a servant of Jordan College who cared for Lyra in her childhood, is revealed to be part of a much more intricate network connected to Lyra’s life. Dr Polstead is Malcolm and he and Lyra’s relationship has taken on a different meaning now that she has grown to become a troubled young lady, no longer the feisty young girl she was before. The events that resulted in the fall of the authority seem long and far forgotten, and it seems that little has changed in religion’s grip of the world and of people’s minds.

The novel deals with several new themes which, as far as I am aware, Pullman hasn’t touched upon in earlier books of the universe of His Dark Materials. Depression, a deep “melancholy” as Pullman has described it, brought about through a kind of existential reevaluation of the world, is the major one. Lyra’s ability to separate from Pan, that was gained at the end of the Amber Spyglass, mirrors experiences in everyday life where we feel disconnected from our identity, where we change or lose touch with what we once thought was important, where we are at war with ourselves. The notion of separation – where children are split from their daemons without, it is assumed, becoming completely severed in the style of a Bolvangar ‘cut’ – is explored in a completely different way, one that doesn’t involve a severance, but something more akin to a gradual distancing, something common and something that affects adults. It seems that it isn’t just Lyra who has experienced this severance, this distancing, but others too – people who form a secret network around the world.

With these new themes, comes a very different – almost existential – style of writing. There are passages where Pullman seems to experiment with freewriting – losing touch with the novel for a moment, perhaps mirroring the character’s loss of touch with reality. There is one passage in particular which basically amounts to a series of scatterbrained thoughts presented in quick succession, flying out of Lyra’s head, which almost breaks the fourth wall. Lyra has clearly grown up and contemplates life a lot more throughout the novel. She has an unwavering focus on certain philosophical ideas that have surged in popularity, seen in the writing of two men known as Simon Talbot and Gottfried Brande, a particularly mysterious figure who seems to be obsessed with the idea that daemons are imaginary, or may as well be. Further revelations hint at the deeper meaning behind his thoughts when Lyra meets the man himself and learns more about him.

The Secret Commonwealth itself is a singularly unclear idea, that plays behind the veil of the pages. It may be the antithesis to the kind of dogmatic logicism that Lyra has become obsessed with, and is a hint that there are extremes to everything. Otherwise, it is an opportunity for two conflicting parts of Lyra’s mind to converse with each other, to grow, and to understand that there is no right answer to everything.

There is also a connection to modern events. Clearly and unabashedly inspired by the refugee crisis of recent years, we see (often in the background, but occasionally at the fore with Aysha) the rumblings of a crisis that has displaced families and children from their homes, and forced them to flee for safety. The dark side of religious bureaucracy and dictatorship rears its ugly face, and there are not-so-subtle hints of corruption behind the scenes, and the ultimate driver of misery in people’s lives: a company that wants exclusive access to a precious commodity.

Pullman’s notion of the democracy of reading has never been put to the test more than in The Secret Commonwealth. There is such a wealth of different themes, with no single, unambiguous meaning or intent. Indeed, in an interview, Pullman has confirmed that certain ideas or subplots, for example, the episode involving the split of a firey man from his watery daemon to power a philosophical machine, have no agenda. To quote Pullman: “I don’t know what it means, that’s for people to think about. I described what I saw in my mind’s eyes. And I was accompanied by the sensation that this means something.”. I think that this sentiment is applicable to many things in the book. Primarily, it seems it is a book about a different stage of life, Pullman has previously explored childhood and now he explores adulthood and reconsideration of the ideas that once grounded us: things that “hit you hard midships”.

If there is anything that I would say I would improve upon, I have to admit that for some of this book, I found what was going on rather surreal, and some of the writing seemed a little too detached and disjoint, perhaps due to too obvious a focus on the meta (perhaps the dark side of leaving things open for interpretation). I think, however, that the culmination of events redeems this to a large extent, things make sense, and makes the book a very worthwhile read. The book picks up the pace towards the end, things become more dangerous and it ends in a singularly dramatic episode. I wonder what is to come, and I am excited about it, as I continue to mull over my own interpretation of the meaning of the events of The Secret Commonwealth.