Contrasts

Now here's a bit of an odd thing. My most recent novel for 'grown-ups', Kurt Vonnegut's Mother Night, was so easy to read I had to hold back from rushing at points; in contrast, my reading for 'kids', Ursula Le Guin's The Farthest Shore - the third novel in her Earthsea sequence - took a heck of a lot of concentration to get through, and even when I'd finished I still wasn't entirely sure what it was all about.

Does this imply a greater seriousness, a gravitas behind Le Guin's fiction that my favourite literary comedian lacks? I think some of his critics think so. It seems that giving Mr Vonnegut the LoA stamp of approval raised a few hackles here and there, and I'm glad that it did as that will allow him a chuckle or two up in heaven. But I see his sharpness and clarity - his ease as a story-teller - as a strength; in contrast, I think the fine writing involved in the Earthsea sequence (and there's some wonderfully atmospheric stuff in The Farthest Shore, especially when any of the dragons are on the scene) gets in the way of real momentum.

I suppose that Ms Le Guin's ultimate concern is our coming to terms with death, yet there was something terribly theoretical about the notion of dying in her novel. Vonnegut's deaths somehow manage to be real, even when at their most casual. So it goes, I suppose.

Mind you, isn't it wonderful that a writer of fantasy intended primarily for children was able to get away with something like Earthsea at all? Can't see that happening today somehow. Now you'd have to throw a few vampires in just to get published.