The Shadow in the North/Brand on the Brain

Pretty in a strange way, half English—the blond hair, the trim figure, the neat, practical clothes—and half not: the dark brown eyes, the air of decision and intelligence and boldness. The Americans had girls like this.

I had forgotten how much I had enjoyed the first book in this series by Philip Pullman, The Ruby in the Smoke. Pullman’s name is much in the news now for the His Dark Materials series, but I doubt those books could be better than the Sally Lockhart trilogy.

In the intervening six years since The Ruby in the Smoke, the impressively mature and resourceful sixteen-year-old Sally Lockhart has grown up to run her own financial consultant business—unlikely but possible in 1878 (so Inventing the Victorians would seem to suggest). Many of the characters from the first book are back, including photographer Fred Garland and jack-of-all trades Jim Taylor, but Fred’s sister Rosa was sorely missed. The crush between Sally and Fred from the first book has bloomed into all-out love on Fred’s part, though Sally spends most of the book acting like a total bitch. In everything else I can sympathize with her, but her attitude toward Fred seems inexcusable. (Perhaps because I’ve always been on the unrequited side of these things.) Or perhaps I’m a bit too hard on Sally; maybe it’s a case like that of Jo March and “Laurie” Lawrence in Little Women. Still, I think Fred’s hit the nail on the head here: “You think I’m no different from anyone, man or woman. There’s you and there’s the rest of us, and we’re all inferior—”

The plot is every bit as intriguing and complex as in the first book, both wonderfully old-fashioned and strikingly relevant. There are fake mediums being exposed with photographic techniques (though Pullman doesn’t discount psychometry), intrigues with steam companies, Russian manufacture, Scots law, and some clearly well-thought-out logistics. Sally and her friends must unravel the connections between Lady Mary Wytham, her marriage, her bankrupt father, a medium called Nellie Budd and her music hall performer sister, the sinking of the Ingrid Linge and a mysterious firm called North Star. I thought myself most clever when I anticipated one plot twist, only to find it was a red herring anyway. I’ll never be able to write mysteries.

As usual, Pullman has created some really interesting characters. Top of the list is Alistair Mackinnon, a slippery, cowardly, deceitful yet charismatic magician. I felt his character somewhat disappointed toward the end, but in general, he completely defied easy categorization. So, too, did Axel Bellmann, Sally’s arch-nemesis and the mastermind of North Star. An attractive, powerfully-built Swede, intelligent, charismatic, he reminded me a bit of Ellsworth Toohey from The Fountainhead: “Once enough of them have been built, wars will come to an end, and civilization will develop in peace and harmony for the first time in the history of the world.” Isabel Meredith is a bit pitiful in the end, but she, too, as a seamstress with a birthmark suffering from unrequited love, is quite interesting.

I don’t remember The Ruby in the Smoke being especially violent but now I think back on it, it probably was. The sequel certainly is, with two intense, extremely painful deaths I’d better not give away. Both made me extremely angry with Pullman for killing his characters off! I’m a bit disturbed, too, at the way both Jim and Fred launch themselves into fights, getting themselves quite physically beat up, even if it is in the name of justice. (The Doctor would not have approved.) Perhaps even worse than Jim and Fred’s fights is a scene of complete devastation enacted against Isabel Meredith; this is almost physically painful to read.

It goes without saying, I guess, that despite the snipping back and forth, Sally and Fred get back together. What is surprising, however, is amount of sensuality Pullman is able to pull off in a young adult book—“He seized her in the doorway and crushed her to him, and she came without hesitation, and they kissed more passionately now than they’d done earlier; but it could only last a second or two.” Parts of the book were intensely dreamlike, especially the end sequence, and Jim’s almost unbelievable, but brief, liaison with Lady Mary.

Speaking of the ending, it left me rather floored. It’s hard to describe without giving the plot away, but I feel alternately awed by the author’s skill—a scene between Bellmann and Sally is almost Richard III-like—and a bit unwilling to accept it. There was also an aspect of it that felt too pasted on, but I am certainly going to find the third book in the trilogy and will read more of Pullman’s work. This is more than a mere young adult novel.

***
I saw a very unusual film by Guy Maddin on Sunday called Brand on the Brain. You might think this is a Supersize Me-type film (actually, such a one, called King Corn, was advertised before the film—this is at one of Albuquerque’s art film houses, the Guild) but you couldn’t be more wrong. In fact it was a strange, dream-like evocation of silent films, but subversive, as the best Gothic horror is. My dad took me to it, claiming it was like Gothic horror—I was afraid it would be like City of the Lost Children, the French film I saw five years ago and did not like at all.

While I think the film could have benefited from judicious pruning (not unlike most every Doctor Who serial made) in techniques it was breathtaking. Filmed in black-and-white, silent (aside from narration by Isabella Rosselini and some interesting sound effects), with weird, grainy views that appeared to be through keyholes, splicing, title cards, (though I didn’t think much of the font used for these) and a division into twelve chapters—with a break for information on the “Aerophone”—it boggles my mind. How did this look on the page? I’ve never seen a script for a silent film (though it occurs to me the 1927 Phantom script should be in one of my books). How did Maddin manage to cram all these visions for angles, cuts, setting up of shots, superimposition of images, in his head?

The story, while not uniformly as breathtaking as the technical side, was still fairy-tale-wonderful and certainly appealed both to the 1920s fan and the Gothic horror fan in me. Half-fable, half-horror, with enough psychological subtext of violence and sexuality to entertain Jerrold Hogle for hours, there was a grim kind of humor in its weirdness—at least I thought so, sometimes I was the only one in the theatre laughing. Set on an isolated island in a lighthouse, the story is told in flashback from the adult hero, also named Guy Maddin, when he returns. The lighthouse housed an orphanage run by Guy’s parents, his overly-affectionate but strangely excessive Mother, and his inventor father, who works in a basement lab and looks like Viktor Frankenstein. Guy’s sister, Sis, is styled after the 1920s girl-next-door; she has a knack for getting undressed. Visiting the island is one half of a detective pair, I suppose like the Hardy Boys or Nancy Drew, or later, the Boxcar Children: Wendy Hale.

The actress playing Wendy gives a tour-de-force as, not only does she vamp it up as the object of Guy’s affections, she also cross-dresses to seduce Sis, disguised as her brother Chance Hale, and looks androgynously attractive as both (a bit like Cillian Murphy in Breakfast on Pluto!). The cross-dressing thing alludes back to The Picture of Dorian Gray and Shakespeare, of course, though by the end I suspect it’s just an excuse to get two women to kiss repeatedly (and they do a bit more than that). However, the two women look so striking on celluloid, this heterosexual female can mostly deal with the lesbian overkill on the part of the director. But the film doesn’t shirk at the idea of getting men naked, too—the eldest of the orphans, Savage Tom, seems to indulge in some sort of Lord of the Flies fantasy. And don’t even ask about the father.

The mother we are never sure is entirely evil, despite her implication in the twisted mystery of how the orphans get holes in their heads (very Gothic). The images of her in the lighthouse, spying on her children and the orphans, seem very primal. The Aerophone, by the way, is an invention of Guy’s father, which acts like a radio except it only works if the broadcaster is in a state of high passion. This produces many instances of Guy being called to dinner by his mother’s angry, screaming voice. The film is so strange and melancholy, it draws a thousand comparisons in my mind of things I’ve seen before. This may seem like a bad thing, but in fact the references are so disparate, the film actually stands out quite a bit.