First, congratulations on another fabulous chapter! I'm afraid my comment will soon approach whatever word limit LJ imposes, but hopefully you'll bear with me and read the whole thing :-)
To start off, as someone who currently teaches small children, your first quote had me in stitches for a solid five minutes! Where do you find these quotes? They are always so appropriate, so fitted to your work as if you wrote them yourself.
A quick few nods to details in the actual chapter that I can't resist commenting upon:
"monochromatic pale skin and gray sky" is sheer brilliance. I have spent the past 3 years living in Spain--an occidental country which is not so drastically different from home, but every time I do go back to the US, for the first few days all I can see is round, doughy faces, bleach blonde hair (as if I weren't blonde myself), impossibly light eyes, and a very Midwestern sameness. It has occured to me before that part of what you write about is essentially culture shock, but not the culture shock of visiting Tashbaan for the first time, which is expected. It's foreign, it will be different. Anyone with half a brain in their heads should anticipate that. No, this is the traitorous sting of going home and finding that it no longer fits. That you no longer fit. That even the colors are not what you remembered, that it is somehow smaller, somehow less, somehow vaguely alien to what you have become Elsewhere. They call it 'reverse culture shock'. Discovering that what should have been home, what should fit like a glove, now pulls uncomfortably at your skin. That the face in the mirror gazes back with eyes that don't fit your own mental reflection. If the Pevensies (as one reviewer pointed out) don't make as much as an effort to act like the children they once were, perhaps it is not from stubbornness or obliviousness but from a different kind of forgetfulness: those old days of being just English schoolchildren are so far off that it's hard even to remember what they were back then and how they acted. Dissimulating works to some extent, but trying to be those children again would almost be a betrayal of everything they have lived in the meantime. And mere acting would seem stilted; they have grown up, and what adult really understands children? (Well, maybe Lucy, because she's just awesome like that!) I could go on, but will finally exercise some restraint!
On a related note, your Mrs. Pevensie (I also like the nod to Helen, but think it will work perfectly well with her surname... at least until Mr. Pevensie comes home!) is wonderful. The sorrowful acceptance of unexplainedly (is that a word? I think I'm losing my English) missing a large part of her children's lives, and feeling the need to ask permission to be let back in... the whole conversation was perfect.
And speaking of perfection, the beauty spell! You've given it so much more depth by relating it to the Lone Islands incident. Actually, the insight that touched me more wasn't regarding the slavers but rather what Susan said about Lucy being a woman, in Narnia, but regarded only as a girl. The context with the slavers is more practical, a more solid reason, perhaps. But the one that would affect me more if I were in their shoes would be the one that had been building up inside Lucy (and, really, both Queens) ever since their return: a woman stuffed in a girl's body. They've dealt with it remarkably well, but who could blame poor Lucy for feeling helplessly frustrated upon returning to her own land where she is Queen, but *still* only a little girl? She's coped with that in England, but that must burn more than ever back in Narnia.
And my comment is indeed too long to post. Splitting in half...
Syrena lets her inner novelist write comments
To start off, as someone who currently teaches small children, your first quote had me in stitches for a solid five minutes! Where do you find these quotes? They are always so appropriate, so fitted to your work as if you wrote them yourself.
A quick few nods to details in the actual chapter that I can't resist commenting upon:
"monochromatic pale skin and gray sky" is sheer brilliance. I have spent the past 3 years living in Spain--an occidental country which is not so drastically different from home, but every time I do go back to the US, for the first few days all I can see is round, doughy faces, bleach blonde hair (as if I weren't blonde myself), impossibly light eyes, and a very Midwestern sameness. It has occured to me before that part of what you write about is essentially culture shock, but not the culture shock of visiting Tashbaan for the first time, which is expected. It's foreign, it will be different. Anyone with half a brain in their heads should anticipate that. No, this is the traitorous sting of going home and finding that it no longer fits. That you no longer fit. That even the colors are not what you remembered, that it is somehow smaller, somehow less, somehow vaguely alien to what you have become Elsewhere. They call it 'reverse culture shock'. Discovering that what should have been home, what should fit like a glove, now pulls uncomfortably at your skin. That the face in the mirror gazes back with eyes that don't fit your own mental reflection. If the Pevensies (as one reviewer pointed out) don't make as much as an effort to act like the children they once were, perhaps it is not from stubbornness or obliviousness but from a different kind of forgetfulness: those old days of being just English schoolchildren are so far off that it's hard even to remember what they were back then and how they acted. Dissimulating works to some extent, but trying to be those children again would almost be a betrayal of everything they have lived in the meantime. And mere acting would seem stilted; they have grown up, and what adult really understands children? (Well, maybe Lucy, because she's just awesome like that!) I could go on, but will finally exercise some restraint!
On a related note, your Mrs. Pevensie (I also like the nod to Helen, but think it will work perfectly well with her surname... at least until Mr. Pevensie comes home!) is wonderful. The sorrowful acceptance of unexplainedly (is that a word? I think I'm losing my English) missing a large part of her children's lives, and feeling the need to ask permission to be let back in... the whole conversation was perfect.
And speaking of perfection, the beauty spell! You've given it so much more depth by relating it to the Lone Islands incident. Actually, the insight that touched me more wasn't regarding the slavers but rather what Susan said about Lucy being a woman, in Narnia, but regarded only as a girl. The context with the slavers is more practical, a more solid reason, perhaps. But the one that would affect me more if I were in their shoes would be the one that had been building up inside Lucy (and, really, both Queens) ever since their return: a woman stuffed in a girl's body. They've dealt with it remarkably well, but who could blame poor Lucy for feeling helplessly frustrated upon returning to her own land where she is Queen, but *still* only a little girl? She's coped with that in England, but that must burn more than ever back in Narnia.
And my comment is indeed too long to post. Splitting in half...