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Jadis' Wild Ride

Tonight I finished The Magician's Nephew, which ends my visit to Narnia for now, and it was a fun ride. This book had Atlanteans, fairy godmothers, Sherlock Holmes, magically growing lampposts, and Jesus Lion. When I started this reading session, Uncle Andrew had gone off to entertain his planet's conqueror, Jadis, Queen of Queens. What it actually leads to is everyone thinking she's a circus act, and her surf-riding on the back of a hansom cab (see photo).

Honestly, I think she had more fun on vacation in London than I've ever had.

THINGS HAPPEN and Jesus Lion creates Narnia, something which fills the children, a cabby, and a horse with awe. It fills Uncle Andrew (who desperately wants a drink by this point) and Jadis with unhappiness.

Then things happen, but what happened to Uncle Andrew was the very best:

There were three things inside[[the tangled up trees]]. One was a young tree that seemed to be made of gold; the second was a young tree that seemed to be made of silver; but the third was a miserable object in muddy clothes, sitting hunched up between them.

"Gosh!" whispered Digory. "Uncle Andrew!"

To explain all this we must go back a bit. The Beasts, you remember, had tried planting and watering him. When the watering brought him to his senses, he found himself soaking wet, buried up to his thighs in earth (which was quickly turning into mud) and surrounded by more wild animals than he had ever dreamed of in his life before. It is perhaps not surprising that he began to scream and howl. This was in a way a good thing, for it at last persuaded everyone (even the Warthog) that he was alive. So they dug him up again (his trousers were in a really shocking state by now). As soon as his legs were free he tried to bolt, but one swift curl of the Elephant's trunk round his waist soon put an end to that. Everyone now thought he must be safely kept somewhere till Aslan had time to come and see him and say what should be done about him. So they made a sort of cage or coop all round him. They then offered him everything they could think of to eat.

The Donkey collected great piles of thistles and threw them in, but Uncle Andrew didn't seem to care about them. The Squirrels bombarded him with volleys of nuts but he only covered his head with his hands and tried to keep out of the way. Several birds flew to and fro diligently dropping worms on him. The Bear was especially kind. During the afternoon he found a wild bees' nest and instead of eating it himself (which he would very much like to have done) this worthy creature brought it back to Uncle Andrew. But this was in fact the worst failure of all. The Bear lobbed the whole sticky mass over the top of the enclosure and unfortunately it hit Uncle Andrew slap in the face (not all the bees were dead). The Bear, who would not at all have minded being hit in the face by a honeycomb himself, could not understand why Uncle Andrew staggered back, slipped, and sat down. And it was sheer bad luck that he sat down on the pile of thistles. "And anyway," as the Warthog said, "quite a lot of honey has got into the creature's mouth and that's bound to have done it some good." They were really getting quite fond of their strange pet and hoped that Aslan would allow them to keep it. The cleverer ones were quite sure by now that at least some of the noises which came out of his mouth had a meaning. They christened him Brandy because he made that noise so often.

-The Magician's Nephew by C.S. Lewis

On the topic of Jesus Lion, I guess it behoves me to talk about the religious aspects of the book since that's what usually gets mentioned and I can't stop calling him Jesus Lion. They were here and there. Some places more obvious than others. The Garden of Eden was a big one.

Okay, got that out of the way.

Other highlights of the book:

• The maid's glee over a superstrong lunatic being loose in her house.


• The cabby thinking they've all died, so he organizes a sing-along


• Polly being braver than Digory about talking to Aslan


• Tapirs, as proven by illustrations, being among Aslan's chosen. Those fine jungle princes.


• There not being any incest. This will make sense and fill you with relief as you near the end of the book, if you decide to pick it up.

Remember when I said that Polly 'well, time to go home!' was the best part of Narnia?

I lied.

The best part is the bolded part above, which gives us this image:



Wait. That's not right.

Revised version:



NEXT UP: I visit Venice in Cornelia Funke's The Thief Lord