Phillip Pullman, The Shadow in the North
This is the second book in the Sally Lockhart trilogy, and it jumps a few years into the future. Sally is in her twenties, living alone and running both Frederick’s photography shop and her own financial consulting business. She and Fred are totes in luuuuuurve, but she’s an utter bitch to him and they haven’t gotten married yet. Blah blah blah, something about female emancipation being used as an excuse to keep Sally from confronting her fear of intimacy–sorry, that subplot was so epically stupid that I fell asleep. Basically, Pullman makes it seem as though Sally has no legitimate reason to fear getting married, because there’s now a law in place that would protect her right to own property as a married woman. But you know what? As late as the 1890s (well over a decade after The Shadow in the North takes place), husbands were still committing their wives to insane asylums for debilitating mental disorders such as, “She’s sort of humiliating me with her talky-talk and her demands for universal suffrage.” So yeah. Sally’s fears? Not unfounded. Read “The Yellow Wallpaper” and get back to me, Pullman.
So yes. Now an unmarried businesswoman, Sally Lockhart is sitting in her office with her very large and intimidating dog when suddenly, an old lady comes in and tells her, “Sally, you suck at your job. I lost all my money based on your advice.” Except she’s more British about it. Her pride stung, Sally sets out to recoup the old bat’s money, and in the process takes on a shipping firm helmed by a malevolent Swede. Yep, that’s right: Pullman continues his reign of error by once again trying to convince his readers that anyone who is not English is automatically suspect. There’s the malevolent Swede, of course, who is described in all kinds of inhuman terms (apparently he’s ageless-looking, and unnaturally smooth); there’s also the feckless, reckless, and cowardly Scotchman, who spends most of the book running away and peeing his pants with fear. On the whole, not a good showing for Pullman, especially when you consider the fact that he also upholds the “sex = death” truism so beloved by moralists everywhere. Still, he’s got a lot of snappy oneliners and I kept right on reading, if that tells you anything. And yes, the third book and the stand-alone are both queued up on my Booksfree account. Because I LOVE THE MOONSTONE, OKAY?
Okay.
Recommended for: Anyone who read the first book and liked it.
