When I was ten years old, I read The Shadow in the North by Philip Pullman. It is the second book in the Sally Lockhart trilogy, and it is my favorite, although it wasn't at first. The first book is The Ruby in the Smoke, a straightforward Victorian mystery. The third is The Tiger in the Well, which although good, disappointed me.
But I'm not writing about the other books.
I just watched the BBC adaptation of The Shadow in the North and I was strongly reminded of the first time I read the book. (The adaptation, by the way, is excellent--much better than the adaptation of The Ruby in the Smoke--and is available in its entirety on YouTube in ten minute increments; more traditional viewers will be able to see it on PBS this summer).
The Shadow in the North was the first book I read with a sex scene. (It was entirely PG, of course, but I was shocked nonetheless.) The Shadow in the North was the first book I read wherein I fell in love with one of the characters. I had read Black Hearts in Battersea, by Joan Aiken, right before the trilogy and had come very close to having a crush on her main character, Simon (who had not even been my favorite character; his friend Dido Twite held that distinction), but Frederick Garland of The Shadow in the North (and The Ruby in the Smoke before it) was head and shoulders above him. He was funny and dashing, a photographer and private detective, and hopelessly in love with Sally Lockhart. The beauty of much of Pullman's writing is in the strong female characters he gives us. This strength often flips the traditional power dynamic between men and women in books, creating male characters who wait in the wings, longing. Frederick Garland was appealing because of the fact that he waited for her. As a reader, I couldn't help myself thinking that I was more worth waiting for than Sally Lockhart, with her pistol and her enormous dog.
The Shadow in the North was the first book that broke my heart. Frederick Garland dies in a fire, right after he and Sally sleep together and she finally agrees to marry him. In Black Hearts in Battersea, my favorite character had apparently died, leaving me shocked and dismayed, only to appear again very much alive on a whaling boat bound for Nantucket. Frederick Garland, though, was dead, irrevocably, and I had not been in love with the feisty Dido Twite, who eventually made it back to London, and Simon.
The adaptation was very, very good--I'll admit to crying--but it left out the part that was truly heartbreaking about the novel.
After Fred dies, Sally realizes that, although a photographer, although a man constantly surrounded by cameras (or something to that effect; I wish I had my book with me to quote directly), not a single photograph remains with him in it.
Perhaps the adaptation was so good because of the richness of the material, as opposed to the penny dreadful upgrade that is The Ruby in the Smoke. No matter the reason, this evening I was carried back to the uncomfortable fold-out couch in our apartment in Paris, where I spent hour after nail-biting--and occasionally blushing--hour reading The Shadow in the North. I remember finishing the book with an upset stomach, convinced that I infinitely preferred The Ruby in the Smoke. It only took me a few years to change my mind.
They are geared towards younger readers. They are quick reads. But I cannot recommend them enough. In a lot of ways, The Shadow in the North was the first real book I read. Pullman has no intention of coddling his readers. He just means to tell the story he has in mind.
It's been nine years. I still miss Frederick Garland.