Writing Worth Reading
Writing Worth Reading
A schoolboy discovers that in his dreams he travels to many worlds. I suppose the reason parallel worlds fiction appeals to children is because the child is a bit like a lunatic in some way…they haven’t yet been socialised or told the ways in which they have to direct their thoughts and censor their personalities.
Christopher Chant?
There is so much children’s fiction that is described as parallel worlds fiction – from Narnia to Alice in Wonderland to Marianne Dreams and so on. Diana Wynne Jones is a brilliant writer of this sort of book: it’s about a schoolboy who discovers that in his dreams he travels to many worlds. He’s quite innocent about it all and sees it as a child would – as an amazing experience that he doesn’t particularly try to analyse. His uncle asks him to do some experiments and sends him into these worlds with a spirit traveller called Tacroy, and tries to get him to bring stuff back. Christopher thinks his childhood fantasies have been recognised by an exciting adult, but the reality is that his uncle’s just trading the stuff on the black market. The point is, though, that Christopher experiences these parallel worlds incredibly vividly and physically, and they’re tangible; whereas Tacroy, perhaps because he’s an adult and not in tune, only really sees them as a mist. Again it’s about who has access to these worlds and what they take with them; how the reasons why they get there define what happens when they get there. Tacroy envies Christopher’s access, but equally Christopher’s access is far less informed – he doesn’t understand what’s going on at first.
I suppose the reason parallel worlds fiction appeals to children is because the child is a bit like a lunatic in some way – they don’t stand within these ordinary worlds’ orthodoxies and they haven’t yet been socialised or told the ways in which they have to direct their thoughts and censor their personalities.
Read full interview
Joanna Kavenna is a novelist, travel writer, and reviewer. She has held writing fellowships at St Antony’s College, Oxford and St John’s College, Cambridge. Her first book, The Ice Museum, was about travelling in the North in search of the mythical land of Ultima Thule. Her first novel, Inglorious, won the Orange Broadband New Writers Award. Here she tells The Browser that the concept of parallel worlds is no more dubious than that of a single reality, and that this is something that writers have known for centuries.
