Took me a while to get to posting about this book, but its been a busy start to the new year. Nevertheless, here it is, our last book club pick of 2021: The King of Elfland's Daughter by Lord Dunsany.
Published in 1924, Dunsany's fantasy tale was a precursor text to much of the fantasy genre we see today. His works were a key influence to some of the greatest fantasy and science fiction novels ever written by J.R.R. Tolkien, Ursula K. Le Guin and Neil Gaiman.
Despite most of us being on the high end of the rating scale for this book, one of the book club girls was very specifically on the low end. I wish I had asked her permission to quote some of the things she said in her scathing review of the book for this blog, but alas, I did not. I will mention a few things though, one being that she said she was coming around to some of the fantasy stuff we were reading (fantasy is not her go-to genre), but that unfortunately this book set her way back on her kindness scale of what fantasy could be. I feel bad because the rest of us liked it. *sad face*
The other thing from her review that I will note is that she called the book "pretentious". Now, I only mention this because it sparked a REALLY good conversation and thoughts from me about the book being a product of its time. I can agree, that if someone tried to write this book today with the language and structure Dunsany used, I would definitely think: "WTF is this person trying to do? What a pretentious twat for trying to pull this off." The structure and language of novels has significantly changed over time and what worked then would DEFINITELY not work now. The early 1900s were influenced by the Victorian era and the rise of the novel during that time. Writing was still quite lyrical coming out of the 1800s, but personal descriptive writing in letters through the First World War would have given rise to a new edge. Perhaps Dunsany was trying to capture and keep alive some of the magic that was present in writing and novels from the Victorian period?
Moving along... Carmen noted that this is not a book she would recommend to everyone, and I agree. I found the language beautiful, moving and it drew me in as I read. But not everyone would feel the same. It was kind of poetic, and there was repetition of specific lines that cemented certain ideas and ideals, much like poetry can do. The language created a feeling, a mood, to the book that was more than just a description of the setting or the plot of story. This feeling is hard to explain...
We also discussed how the magic was part of the world in the story and not just a plot device. Its not being wielded for good or evil, it may be feared and those non-magical curious about it, but its not menacing. There is a juxtaposition between the magical realm of Elfland and the mundane, normal world of "the fields we know". This difference between the lands has a lot to do with time and the discussion and impression of how time flows and influences everything. The world of "the fields we know" is change and is always changing, whereas Elfland is stagnant, stuck in time.
I could go on and on about the themes and writing and intriguing things about this story, but I think I am going to wrap up with the upset that was: the unicorn hunting. Orion, the son of the Daughter of Elfland, is part magical so he is drawn to magical beings. He hunts unicorns and it is very sad; plain and simple. Even more upsetting is that the town cannot fathom that magical beings such as unicorns are real, despite seeing one. So they just DECIDE that it didn't happen; they didn't see anything. This part of the book had so many callbacks to reading The Last Unicorn and King Haggard's obsession with possessing all of the unicorns in the world.
Last but not least - Carmen told me there is a concept album adaptation of this book by Bob Johnson from 1977. How cool is that?! I haven't had the chance to listen to it yet, but I did find it on YouTube music. I've loaded it to listen to it this week and I'll post an updated of my thoughts about it.
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