Lud-in-the-Mist

Ok, y’all, I know it’s been a hot minute since I’ve posted anything here; I just needed some time away from the socials. HOWEVER, I need to pop in here to talk about LUD-IN-THE-MIST by Hope Mirrlees. Recommended by Emily (@anunexpectedletter) after we discussed our mutual love of Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, I ordered it right away (thanks @a.novel.concept!) and Emily is correct: it’s delightful! Part fairy tale, part mystery, with a dash of the Gothic and some court intrigue thrown in for good measure, all tied up in a story full of whimsy, I enjoyed every page of this book.

Lud-in-the-Mist, the capital of the Free State of Dorimare, is bordered to the west by Fairyland. According to Dorimare law, all things Fairy are show more banned from the land, especially the addictive fairy fruit. Nathaniel Chanitcleer, the mayor of Lud, finds life in his city perfect, yet something seems missing. When fairy fruit is smuggled into the city, and Chanticleer’s children eat some and they both disappear over the Debatable Hills in the direction of Fairyland, he sets out on a journey that will uncover a decades old murder, possibly cost him his position as mayor, and take him to the border of Fairyland and all that has to offer.

Mirrlees’ writing and imagery is gorgeous, and while there are a lot of plot threads woven throughout, everything is brought together in a satisfying finale. It’s clear that many contemporary authors, including Neil Gaiman and Susanna Clarke, who wrote their own stories of cities bordering on the lands of Fairy, drew their inspiration from Mirrlees and LUD-IN-THE-MIST. It’s such a charming novel, it’s not hard to see how this slim volume inspired so many stories that came after it. If you’re a fan of classic fantasy, do yourself a favor and pick up this wonderful book.

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The story holds a pervasive charm even as it treats of somber and malefic aspects of life. Mirrlees simply opts to take it all as evidence of the world's Goodness, I think, and is no Pollyanna. In place of the horror of the young, then, the acceptance of those who have endured as well as enjoyed.

The book does read like Cabell (the notion of the Note, the prose of the story, the dialogue of characters), though for all that hers is a different voice, a different sensibility, if sympathetic. Mirrlees also has a great vocabulary, with a penchant for archaic and rare words like Cabell and Leiber and other fantasists. A stroke of genius to always hint at the fey, at least through the first third, and in this respect not only by talking of show more them rather than featuring them as characters, but also that the Ludites and Dorimarites themselves generally speak of the fey as though the latter were permanently offstage. There are ready sayings and common gestures and traditions, a folklore of the Silent People, but nothing in current society. Even for the characters in the novel, then, the fey are once removed. It is a ready analogue of our world, as different this world she builds might first appear.

Perhaps Mirrlees's most striking invention (if not the Note already mentioned) is her idea that Law is the obverse of fairy fruit, and consequently, the World-in-Law the counter to Faerie.
"But you remember what my father said [Nathaniel to his friend Ambrose] about the Law being man's substitute for fairy fruit? Fairy things are all of them supposed to be shadowy cheats -- delusion. But man can't live without delusion, so he creates for himself another delusion, the world-in-law, subject to no other law than the will of man, where man juggles with facts to his heart's content, and says, 'If I choose I shall make a man old enough to be my father my son, and if I choose I shall turn fruit into silk and black into white, for this is the world I have made myself, and here I am master.' And he creates a monster to inhabit it -- the man-in-law, who is like a mechanical toy and always behaves exactly as he is expected to behave, and is no more like you and me than are the faeries." [162-63]

This is a powerful idea, it embraces both modern economic game theory and the Law of Thelema, and my guess is that Mirrlees attended to more of its nuance and implications than she states explicitly, to her enduring credit.

Mirrlees offers, above or perhaps behind her very engaging tale, a sad critique of Reason, and civilisation. Not in a nihilist sense, but a Romantic sense of hopelessness or disappointment. It is this theme and its relation to the World-in-Law which will reward a rereading, I think.

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From Lin Carter's preface or foreword to the Ballantine Adult Fantasy imprint:
The novel really begins when Master Nathaniel Chanticleer, one of the most respected burghers of Dorimare, of a fine old family, learns that his young son has been tempted to eat of fairy fruit. The emotional crisis that follows, and Chanticleer's painful re-examination of all the tenets by which he has lived so long, is the heart and crux of Miss Mirrlees' brilliant and deeply moving novel, which culminates in the desperate quest of Master Nathaniel after his wandering exiled son to the very borders of Faerie ... and beyond. [x]

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A candidate from the novel for the Library of Imaginary Books: Traces of Fairy in the Inhabitant's Customs, Arts, Vegetation and Language of Dorimare [14] show less

Like many others, I sought this out based on Neil Gaiman's high praise for it. Also like many others, as I began it, I thought it had the feel of Susannah Clarke's wondrous [b: Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell|14201|Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell|Susanna Clarke|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1357027589l/14201._SY75_.jpg|3921305], which I love. Written in 1926, it perhaps skews a bit old-fashioned in style and tone - but as someone who happily reads most anything from Jane Austen on, that shouldn't trouble me, and the vaguely 17th-century-like setting allows for a deliberately archaic flavor. But somehow this just didn't work for me.

One problem was the characters. They have cute, colorful names, but show more rather colorless personalities - unless invested with some heavy-handed trait like red hair, bright eyes, or catchphrases ("Ho-ho-HOH!"). I was briefly interested in poor Ranulph, who sobs, screams, and goes into hysterics easily, poor child - but then runs away, vanishes into fairyland, then reappears, fully functional and happy-ever-after. Plotting is another problem - people "suddenly remember" things, other people willingly pour out terrible stories of plots and trauma to total strangers, having never talked about them before. Huh? And oh, by the way, this guy turns out to be that guy who knew all about this - fancy that! There's some pleasant world-building of history, traditions, and customs - the silent fair is rather evocative, and for some reason I loved the name of the "Debatable Hills." It just all felt rather carpentered, and not very well. Nothing felt inevitable, incidents seemed more random than organic, and then resolved by the decision to open the gates... and they all lived happily ever after.

I admire Neil Gaiman very much - as a person, a supporter of libraries and other laudable causes, and as a writer (sometimes: I loved [b: Coraline|17061|Coraline|Neil Gaiman|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1493497435l/17061._SY75_.jpg|2834844], [b: The Ocean at the End of the Lane |15783514|The Ocean at the End of the Lane|Neil Gaiman|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1497098563l/15783514._SY75_.jpg|21500681], and [b: The Graveyard Book|2213661|The Graveyard Book|Neil Gaiman|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1531295292l/2213661._SY75_.jpg|2219449]...others, not so much). But somehow his enthusiasms for other writers (like [a: Diana Wynne Jones|4260|Diana Wynne Jones|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1597798776p2/4260.jpg] - and I am a thorough-going dog person!) often don't chime with mine. This is one of those times. show less

An excellent but little-known fantasy/fairytale for adults, from early twentieth-century British author Hope Mirrlees. This novel is efficient (especially by fantasy standards), well-written (though the edition I read was not at all well-copyedited), engaging, and thoughtful--sometimes in an unsettling way. As it follows its main character through his evolving relationship with the fairy Other, Lud-in-the-Mist thinks about mortality, the nature of reality, and humans' urges toward both the mundane and the wilder aspects of our minds and worlds.

A side note: The novel's incidental bits of Orientalism are deeply problematic but fascinating, at least from the perspective of a scholar of twentieth-century British literature and culture. It show more would be interesting to think more carefully about what Others and Otherness are here, and about the relationship between the vaguely-mentioned racial/geographic Others and, of course, the Fairies. show less

Nathaniel Chanticleer is the mayor of the titular town, a mercantile and prosaic place whose social order is threatened by the illicit importation of fairy fruit from neighbouring Fairyland. The threat turns personal when the mayor's own son is found to have tasted the forbidden fruit, and Nathaniel - a middle-aged man who by preference devotes his time to committee meetings and formal dinners - is cast on a journey that will transform both himself and his town.

A reflection on the interplay between reason and imagination, the apparent message is that we need a middle way between the excesses of each, between Lud's deadening conventionality and Fairyland's chaos. The story as such is perhaps not the most compelling, but it's beautifully show more written. From the point of view of the retrospective genre assignment as high fantasy, there isn't much action, but a lot of attention to characters, their relationships and foibles.

I came across this because of the LT user recommendation saying it was written as a response to Lord Dunsany's The King of Elfland's Daughter (which I read last year). There's a certain mirror symmetry between them - in Dunsany's book the fields we know and the lands of fairy become entangled due to initiative from our side, and the results are disastrous; in Mirrlees' the initiative comes from the other side, and the consequences overall for the better. Anyone who likes the one is likely to like the other. show less

Every once in a while my deep dives into my library pull up a treasure. Apparently Neil Gaiman in a foreword to a more recent edition calls this one of his ten favorite books. That's no surprise given that his favorite is Crowley's Little, Big, which this book from 1926 resembles in many ways. There is the distinctive but clear author's voice and rich prose, there is the setting of events in the normal world but near to and constantly affected by the fairy world, there is the deep history behind the events of the story, and there is minimal element of actual magic to perhaps no more than simple delusion.

The book begins in heavy descriptive mode -- both enchanting and exhausting. Since Mirrlees was a poet, I expected that style to show more maintain through the book, but the text became much less dense after a few chapters as plot and characterization took over. Readers looking for a story will not be disappointed, nor will readers looking for highly sympathetic and believable characters, or interesting insights into the ephemeral effects of reason and the "fiction" of law.

Compared to Little, Big which I consider perfect, I had two issues with Lud-in-the-Mist. At the story level, a repeated plot mechanism is the false tale -- pretty much all obstacles for the main characters not of their own doing is caused by someone simply misleading them. At the philosophical level, the themes that motivate the story are hammered a bit too hard, given their obviousness.

But even so this was a wonderful book to finally read. Highly recommended. show less

I don't usually put too much credence into book blurbs by famous authors, but for some reason Gaiman's blurb got my attention and I'm glad it did. This really is amazing stuff. It feels very British and definitely old school. This isn't anything like modern fantasy, it's very subtle and very character based. The wonder is still there even though there's not magic flying around and there are no epic battles (or actually any battles of any type). The world is simple and needs little description, it's so classic you just kind of find yourself in it without having to read the first six books of the series.

It reminded me of [book:The Gormenghast Novels|39058] from Meryvn Peake but more fun; each character was so colorful, they were so show more absurd in their words and actions that I couldn't help but fall in love with them. The language is archaic and beautiful and that only adds to the feeling of being in a fairy tale you missed while growing up.

Would love to see a BBC adaptation of this. show less