I picked up this collected edition of Mary Stewart’s Merlin Trilogy only in part because of the oddly endearing, but perhaps misleading Hildebrandt Bros. cover. The other reason was, I suppose, a form of nostalgia. Allow me to explain.
When I was in sixth grade, both my mother and my step father were working. No one was able to pick me up after school. (I attended small private schools, with a couple of brief interludes in public school, up until college. So, no school bus.) After school, I walked a couple of miles to the nearest public library and stayed there until around six when my mother came to collect me. (This was in the eighties. No one pitched a fit upon seeing an unaccompanied twelve year old. And yes, we did ride in the back of pickup trucks and drink from the garden hose and ride our bikes for miles so long as we were home for supper.) In retrospect, this might have been the happiest year of my life. It was certainly the most formative. I got to spend over two hours every day in the library, reading whatever I wanted, without interruption.
The partial basement level housed the novels:science fiction and fantasy, historical novels, adventure, etc., though the classics were upstairs for some reason. The point is, that eventually I got to Mary Stewart. And I was enthralled, devouring all three as fast as I could, which was pretty fast. (When did I lose that speed?) When I ran across this collection, I had to buy it in order to discover if the magic remained.
I’ve finished the first book, The Crystal Cave. I am fairly certain that much of it flew right over the head of twelve-year old Ken during that initial reading so long ago. I’m not referring only to the more prurient bits (which I did not in the least recall) but which Stewart handled with a certain refined euphemistic artifice. At twelve, I hadn’t yet consumed the sheer volume of books on The Matter of Britain that I have since read. I may have already read Rosemary Sutcliff’s Sword At Sunset, and perhaps Gillian Bradshaw’s Hawk of May. But I hadn’t yet absorbed the sheer mass of Arthurian legend to allow me to grasp the allusions Stewart larded the story with, the seeds of foreshadowing she sowed. I was reading it purely as a novel. This time I read it more like a detective, noting clues.
So, did it hold up? Is the enchantment still in place? Well, I don’t think that is entirely possible. I can’t, at 55, undergo the same experience I enjoyed at 12. Instead I appreciated it on another level, admiring the craft and trying to keep up with the author as she laid the foundation for the advent of Arthur. Telling the story entirely through the first-person viewpoint of Merlin as Stewart does, some of the more exciting aspects that impelled a younger Ken to gravitate toward every piece of Arthurian literature he could find are necessarily absent or elided. But Stewart makes up for that in providing a convincing magician, giving the reader access to his unique perspective; sort of above the fray, possessing a generational outlook rather than concerned solely with the hurly-burly of the day.
I’m eager to get on to the next book.
If you are eager to get straight to some reading, why not something of mine? The four-volume collection of Semi-Autos and Sorcery perhaps. Or maybe you’re in the mood for a sword-and-sorcery/crime mashup such as Thick As Thieves.
By the way, if you happen to be in the Nashville area February 28-March 2, I’ll be a panelist at ConFinement VI. Come by and say hello.
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