This is one of my absolute favourite things to read. I’ve been trying to hold off on re-reading until the sequel comes out, but I couldn’t make it any longer, I was overwhelmed with longing for them and picked them up. The Secret Country and The Hidden Land are one book in two volumes. The Whim of the Dragon is the conclusion, but it is slightly more separate—there is a natural break there. I recommend getting hold of all three and reading them together, as if they were all bound together. At that, they’d be shorter than many fat fantasy single volumes.
You know how children in children’s books find their way into a magic kingdom? You know how you read stories like that when you were a kid and loved them? Then when you re-read them as an adult they’re much shorter than you remembered and all the colour has drained out of them? The Secret Country books are that kind of book but written for adults, jewel bright, with all the depth and resonance and layering that anyone could want. There are five American children who have made up an elaborate game about a secret and magical country, largely based on their reading of Shakespeare. Then they find themselves there, and it both is and isn’t the way they expect, they have to negotiate the shoals of the story they made up, because once they’re there they really don’t want it to happen any more.
My posts here are always about the books I feel like reading, I don’t have an agenda, but I do read them differently knowing I’m going to write about them. I observe my reactions to share with you. As I started reading The Secret Country the bit of me that observes my reactions felt very aware of just how much I was enjoying it. There are books I sink into so much that there’s really no me left, no awareness of separate consciousness. And there are books where I have a kind of doubled consciousness, inside and outside, observing, paying attention. Reading this, I kept thinking “Gosh, I love this!” Then I’d read another couple of lines and think “Gosh, I really do love this so much!” I was so delighted to be re-reading it that I almost couldn’t concentrate on actually reading it.
I’ve re-read these books countless times, which is unusual for something I didn’t read at all until the late nineties. These books have got into my heart in a way that was quite normal when I was a child but which has become increasingly less so since I’ve grown up. I do sometimes still want to hug a book, but I’m not so open to them getting in so deep. There’s something about these that really encourages that. I’ve also written quite a lot about them, and the details of the world, a long time ago on rec.arts.sf.written. I don’t want to repeat that here, not that it’s really possible. (It’s still findable via Google Groupe if you want a very long, very detailed discussion with spoilers.) So, they’re books I’ve read a lot and thought about a lot and talked about a lot.
What makes them outstanding isn’t the world, though it’s very good. The world is something that’s been made up and which is getting more baroque in the corners where they haven’t been paying attention. They started with all sorts of “because that’s what imaginary medieval kingdoms are like” and then it got more convoluted and interesting from there. It isn’t the language, though the language is wonderful, both the use of “high” language and the way that combines with the way kids talk naturally when they’re excited. There’s a lot of Shakespeare in both language and world, and that’s just lovely. But what makes them truly great is the way they’re about the difference between reality and story, that tightrope of responsibility.
Laura is eleven and her brother Ted is fifteen, and it is through their eyes that we see the Secret Country for the first two volumes. They are quiet bookish kids and a lot of the fun is watching them walk the tightrope of knowing too much and not enough. They, their cousins Ruth, Ellen and the fiercely atheist Patrick, are masquerading as the Royal Children of the Secret Country. They are surrounded by parents and teachers and wizards and nurses, all of whom expect incomprehensible things of them. There’s a way in which Dean captures the state of being a child very well with this—they’re surrounded by people who are bigger and more powerful and who have their own agendas and who won’t take the children seriously. It’s not all that different for Laura treading carefully in the High Castle from doing the same in her aunt’s house in Illinois. Yet it’s infinitely more interesting, and there’s a lot more at stake. The scale has changed.
The actual revelatory end is a little disappointing, and there are some questions left unanswerable. It doesn’t matter, because the rest of it is so good and the expository end is so very satisfying.
If you like books and have always secretly wished you might step into one and have an adventure, do try these.
Jo Walton is a science fiction and fantasy writer. She’s published eight novels, most recently Half a Crown and Lifelode, and two poetry collections. She reads a lot, and blogs about it here regularly. She comes from Wales but lives in Montreal where the food and books are more varied.
I’ve picked the first book up a half a dozen times or so and seriously considered buying it. Heck, I may have actually done just that at some point. But I’ve always been afraid to read it because I do remember reading these kinds of stories as a child and always being a little disappointed with them even then.
Based on this post, the next time I see it I’ll definitely take it home.
I’m happy to read this post! I do love those books. Have you read the short story “Owlswater”? It was in one of the Xanadu anthologies Jane Yolen edited. I had a burst of glee when I realized just whose story was being told there (I say no more in hopes of not spoiling someone else’s burst of glee).
Aedifica: I have read it, and I am very fond of it. I also like The Dubious Hills but I usually want to read both of those in a different mood from the mood I’m in when I’ve just finished these.
The sequel will be a sequel to tDH also. I have read one draft of it, which only makes me want it to be finished and out there even more.
It took a few years for me to like TDH; now I like it too, though not as well as the Secret Country books. I’m looking forward to the joint sequel! I envy you for having had a chance to read a version already.
The “glory” vs. “length of days” choice always seems backward to me, but in a good way–it seems authentic to that culture, which has a history and assumptions I don’t share.
I read The Secret Country in the mid-80’s and never realized that there were 2 more books. Of course it is possible that there weren’t more books when I read it :) I don’t know why I never looked for more, because I remember liking it a lot, probably because I was about 14 :)
I need to revisit this and continue the series. Thanks for the memory.
What really surprised me when I picked this book up was that – after all the excellent recommendations I had for it from folks who usually read me right, and despite the fact that:
describes, for me, not only a mode of daydream but a frequent actual dream occurrence –
– I hated this. It made my skin crawl at a very low level that crept up on me cumulatively. There seemed no sensible reason. I didn’t consciously notice what was happening until a few chapters in, and then I put it down and never did get round to trying it again.
Now you bring the yarn up, I think I’d forgotten quite how much I hated childhood for its powerlessness, its discount, and above all its pervading sense of being both essentially and unjustly in the wrong. That, combined with a set-up which had already raised all my this is so going to go wronger than a nine-bob note in Don Silvio’s casino! hackles to the max, could easily have made subliminally un-fun the sort of thing I’d have expected to love.
I wonder if Dean irritated me through artistic success, rather than failure?
– ‘Tis soon told: stories that mank me about through the slight flaw in my character can’t do that once I’ve seen them do it, and started playing right back. So if my speculation is right, I should probably enjoy it as much as I expected initially, having now my eye on it. I wonder where in tumpty crates of books it is?
Pamela once explained that her goal in writing those books was to write a childrens’ book that didn’t disappoint you when you came back to it as an adult. I’d say she nailed it exactly.
I love these books passionately, and the only thing that annoys me is that there aren’t more people who know about them.
Thank you for reviewing these.
SKZB: I love them so much that it’s hard to talk about them in a way that does them justice.
I’ve read the Secret Country trilogy quite a few times, and _The Dubious Hills_ at least four or five times, and I always wonder: am I the only one who, while enjoying the reading as a process, never really gets what is actually going on in any of these books? “It’s this obsession you have with [verb + -ing] [adjective] [adjective] [plural noun],” says one of the characters sarcastically, and there’s me panting along behind saying plaintively, “Well, that makes as much sense as anything.”
HelenS, could you give an example from one of the books? I haven’t noticed that, and I’m curious whether it’s because I’m oblivious or because it makes sense to me.
Oh, gee, where to start? I simply can’t follow the plot at all. If anyone asked me to give an outline of the story, I couldn’t do it. I could talk about the settings and the set-up and go on and on about the atmosphere, but that’s it. I basically have no idea why any of the Secret Country people do what they do. It’s like being color-blind or something — a whole dimension is missing.
This happens to me with things I read every so often, and I don’t know what the works have in common. Oddly enough, another such work was Julius Caesar, usually regarded as a relatively simple play, I believe (though there I also found the play boring and didn’t *want* to know what it was about), and Pamela Dean’s reading of it in _Juniper, Gentian and Rosemary_ struck me as pure wizard’s work — how did she KNOW this stuff? Whereas if she’d been talking about Macbeth, or Romeo and Juliet, or The Tempest, or any other Shakespeare play that I “get,” I could probably have understood much more fully what she was saying, and would be quite likely to have thought *some* of the same things before.
HelenS–sorry for the very delayed reply (I hope you’re still checking this thread).
I misunderstood your previous comment, I thought you were seeing that particular sentence form frequently in these books. There is one thing I have a similar problem understanding in these (and I think her other books too), which is the use of metaphorical connections to events I haven’t experienced. For a made-up example, since I don’t have the books with me: “Shawn looked the way Thomas’ mother had looked the time the neighbor’s dog ate the dahlias.” Each time I come to one of those I have to stop and try to figure out just what that means–was Thomas’ mother furious that the neighbors let their dog out again? Pleased the dahlias she never liked were finally gone and she had an excuse to stop tending them? Sad because she planted the dahlias herself on the day she moved in to her first house? Gleeful that she now has the upper hand in the ongoing war with the neighbors? Etc. But despite my occasional puzzlement I enjoy the books greatly.
Aedifica: Oh, but I love that. There’s one where Ted says “I’m sorry to have subjected you to all this,” which his mother had said when Laura had fallen in someone’s flowerbed, and one where someone says “Carrion comfort” as if they’re identifying it and she often uses it to take the language and make a parallel and… I just love them. It’s as if she’s invented a new form of metaphor.
Oh, I’m not saying I dislike it, just that it throws me out of the story for a few moments while I try to figure it out. (I do really like all the glimpses we get of Ted and Laura’s mother through their memories and comparisons–she’s become my favorite character in the series, and I want to be like her “when I grow up.”)
Aedifica: Me too. As a mother, she’s my role model.
I’ve said in the past I want to me Gentian’s father when I grow up. Dean writes these fantastic geek-parents.
I need to finally get around to reading the Secret Country.
have you ever done one of these rereads for _tam lin_? or does that one not grab you as much?
Elsiekate: here you go. You can generally find old posts by using the search box.
“I’ve also written quite a lot about them, and the details of the world, a long time ago on rec.arts.sf.written”
I dont suppose anyone has a link? My googling skills have deserted me.