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Title: The Golden Key
Author: George MacDonald
Illustrator: Maurice Sendak
Published: New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1976 (1867)
Rating: 5 of 5
Page Count: 86
Total Page Count: 104,874
Text Number: 302
Read Because: reviewed by![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
rushthatspeaks and fan of the author after reading The Princess and the Goblin, borrowed from the Corvallis library
Review: A boy finds a golden key at the base of a rainbow in Fairyland; a girl flees home to join him on a journey in search of the key's lock. A dreamlike, numinous fairytale, The Golden Key is delicate, brief, and bold. It reminds me best of Neil Gaiman's remarkable poem "Instructions," despite the gap of years and style that separate the two works: both are boldy fantastic, freeform to the point of forgoing plot but never direction, short but evocative. It reminds me also of Catherynne M. Valente's The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making, despite a similar disparity: both are a strange, vast journey; both urge a wholehearted embrace of the fantastic, not because it's without complication, but because it's remarkable—but, as in "Instructions," this message of inspiration never grows didactic. But really, what The Golden Key is is the best that this sort of fairy tale can be.
The Golden Key is deceptively short, nearly a short story; it's short enough to read twice, and its rambling, looping journey benefits from a second look. MacDonald's voice makes for brevity in more than page count, his language light and slightly distant, nodding at the repetition key to classic fairy tales without overindulging, skimming over long journeys but casting a sharp eye on remarkable sights, and the effect is eminently consumable and almost effervescent. The brevity also keeps the drifting plot and dream logic in check, so where a longer story may grow repetitive even in its slew of wonders, The Golden Key dances from nighttime rainbows to a land of layered shadows to underground caverns with streams of molten metal and each one is a pure, crystalline miracle. The Golden Key is dreamlike, fantastical, utterly convincing; consumable, deceptive, quiet; numinous, allegorical, inspirational. I have a certain bias towards the stories it reminds me of, largely because I encountered them first, but I'm glad to have stumbled upon this one; it is the best I hope for, in a story like this: something that makes me see a world of magic, and want to grasp it with both hands. Of course I recommend it wholeheartedly.
Review posted here on Amazon.com.
Author: George MacDonald
Illustrator: Maurice Sendak
Published: New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1976 (1867)
Rating: 5 of 5
Page Count: 86
Total Page Count: 104,874
Text Number: 302
Read Because: reviewed by
rushthatspeaks and fan of the author after reading The Princess and the Goblin, borrowed from the Corvallis libraryReview: A boy finds a golden key at the base of a rainbow in Fairyland; a girl flees home to join him on a journey in search of the key's lock. A dreamlike, numinous fairytale, The Golden Key is delicate, brief, and bold. It reminds me best of Neil Gaiman's remarkable poem "Instructions," despite the gap of years and style that separate the two works: both are boldy fantastic, freeform to the point of forgoing plot but never direction, short but evocative. It reminds me also of Catherynne M. Valente's The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making, despite a similar disparity: both are a strange, vast journey; both urge a wholehearted embrace of the fantastic, not because it's without complication, but because it's remarkable—but, as in "Instructions," this message of inspiration never grows didactic. But really, what The Golden Key is is the best that this sort of fairy tale can be.
The Golden Key is deceptively short, nearly a short story; it's short enough to read twice, and its rambling, looping journey benefits from a second look. MacDonald's voice makes for brevity in more than page count, his language light and slightly distant, nodding at the repetition key to classic fairy tales without overindulging, skimming over long journeys but casting a sharp eye on remarkable sights, and the effect is eminently consumable and almost effervescent. The brevity also keeps the drifting plot and dream logic in check, so where a longer story may grow repetitive even in its slew of wonders, The Golden Key dances from nighttime rainbows to a land of layered shadows to underground caverns with streams of molten metal and each one is a pure, crystalline miracle. The Golden Key is dreamlike, fantastical, utterly convincing; consumable, deceptive, quiet; numinous, allegorical, inspirational. I have a certain bias towards the stories it reminds me of, largely because I encountered them first, but I'm glad to have stumbled upon this one; it is the best I hope for, in a story like this: something that makes me see a world of magic, and want to grasp it with both hands. Of course I recommend it wholeheartedly.
Review posted here on Amazon.com.
