The Golden Compass by Philip Pullman

The Golden Compass by Philip Pullman | 1995 | Knopf | Paperback $ 8.99

Lyra Belacqua is content to run wild among the scholars of Jodan College, with her daemon familiar always by her side. But the arrival of her fearsome uncle, Lord Asriel, draws her to the heart of a terrible struggle — a struggle born of Gobblers and stolen children, witch clans and armored bears. And as she hurtles toward danger in the cold far North, Lyra never suspects the shocking truth: she alone is destined to win, or to lose, this more-than-mortal battle.

I aimed to have several fantasy genre novels and several children’s or teen books on my list for Classics Club; this one fit the bill for both. Believe it or not this isn’t a re-read for me, like much of the juvenile lit on my list; I would have been roughly the right age for its target audience when it was published, but had never read it until now.

I wanted to read this one not just because it’s a modern “classic”, but because of some vague childhood recollections about this series not being considered suitable for kids by the churchy crowd. I have no direct memory of being told not to read it, or really it ever being specifically discussed with me in any way at all, and to be absolutely clear my family was not restrictive about books. But in that way that children have of absorbing random information from overheard conversations or snippets of background television news, I somehow got the idea that a lot of grownups thought that this was a bad book, perhaps even anti-Christian. I was still at an age when adult disapproval could make me scared of something rather than intrigued by it, especially on religious grounds, so I passed up The Golden Compass. 

The Golden Compass was originally published under the title Northern Lights in the UK; it was published with the title used here in the states a year later. Title changes like this are a little unusual but really not all that rare, even between countries which ostensibly speak the same language; perhaps the most well-known example is the switch from Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone (UK) to Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone (US). I only bring it up because the reason behind this title change was interesting to me. Apparently in its manuscript stage the series as a whole was referred to as The Golden Compasses, plural, which was a reference to a line about a drafting compass from John Milton’s Paradise Lost. In the states, the publisher mistakenly thought this referred to an important fictional object featured in this first book, an “alethiometer”, which is described as vaguely resembling a navigational compass — a fair assumption, I think, because I also thought that’s what the title meant! So, even though the series eventually became known as His Dark Materials, the publisher insisted on keeping that working title for this first book.

I can see now why certain conservative religious folks would form the opinion that this series was unsuitable for the impressionable little lambs of their flock. The Church is treated as something like an enemy, or at the very least like a definitely-not-benevolent, overreaching bureaucratic powerhouse; also, the human soul and the concept of sin are treated as a kind of external, independent entities. I haven’t completed the series yet, but I understand that some semi-biblical characters also have unflattering appearances later in the story, and one of the major themes is a sort of humanist rejection of certain dogma. 

His Dark Materials seems to me almost like an inversion of C.S. Lewis’s The Chronicles of Narnia — it’s about kids having fantastical religious-flavored adventures, yes, except instead of being pro-God this story is pro-human. Narnia was a childhood favorite of mine and will always have a place in my heart, but The Golden Compass is altogether more interesting and thought-provoking for me as an adult.

I wish that I had read it when I was of the target age group, though. It was certainly fun to read, but after a while the idea of a literal child experiencing all these adventures more or less independently, even leading teams of grown-ups around by the nose, began to grate on my crotchety old lady sensibilities — yes, even in a fantasy world populated by talking polar bears and shape-shifting external representations of human souls, I have to admit that it was the over-competency of the plucky protagonist that began to destabilize my suspension of disbelief. And yet, I’m also sure that I wouldn’t have blinked at any of it as a preteen myself.

I never saw the movie version of this book that came out in 2007, but I did catch the first season of the version made for TV, 2019–2022. At the time, the later seasons that finish the story of the trilogy hadn’t been released yet. Having read The Golden Compass, I may now want to revisit the small screen version of it and finish the remainder of the series in that medium, rather than reading the rest of the books.

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Links:

• Official website of Philip Pullman
• Review at Kirkus
• Review at Publisher’s Weekly
• “25 years of His Dark Materials: Philip Pullman on the journey of a lifetime” article at The Guardian

Publication information: Pullman, Philip. The golden compass. New York, NY: Alfred A. Knopf, 1996. Print.
Source: Personal library.
Disclaimer: I am not compensated, monetarily or otherwise, for reviews of books or other products.