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Round 1 Match 4: Here Lies Arthur vs Tender MorselsApril 14, 2009
Judge Meg Rosoff's Statement OK. I was a little worried that this one was going to be a walkover. After all, Here Lies Arthur won the Carnegie medal in England, and it is fresh and original with a fantastic concept. Forget the good kind wise King Arthur you know from The Once and Future King and a thousand other pseudo-histories. Philip Reeve’s Arthur is a Dark Ages thug who travels the land looting and burning villages for his own gain, and thus a far more likely version of the shadowy historical figure, about whom very little is actually known. What makes Reeve’s Arthur so interesting is that he just happens to have the world’s finest spin doctor -- a bard by the name of Myrddin (Merlin), hired to disseminate big positive mythic PR about Arthur and make sure he’s still talked about a thousand years later. The story is told by a gender-shifting girl/boy who becomes Myrddin’s acolyte, and really does require the reader to re-evaluate the way myths are made and history is told. Which is no mean feat. There’s no doubt that Philip Reeve is a very interesting writer. I’d already read Here Lies Arthur, but was pleased to have a chance to reacquaint myself with its strengths (see above) and weaknesses (there’s a slightly bloodless quality about the storytelling which to my mind lessens the emotional impact). In any case, I turned to Margo Lanagan’s Tender Morsels with some trepidation. The (very beautiful) cover suggested that it might be some kind of retelling of a classic fairy tale, which would make the match with Here Lies Arthur appropriate, but could it compete with Reeve’s revisionist approach to myth? By chapter two I was reeling with shock. A literary teen book (published in America) that begins with father-daughter incest? And moves quickly on to a horrifying gang rape?? Surely not. And yet I knew almost immediately that I was reading something utterly astonishing – beautifully written, brave, uncompromising, highly uncomfortable – but astonishing. As I continued reading, I felt the hairs on the back of my neck rise. This was a book unlike anything else I’d ever read in the genre. Lanagan has created something as dark as a “children’s” book can get – and we’re not talking about the trendy faux-dark of dying teenager books or ‘gosh, look at us push the sexual boundaries’ books. Tender Morsels takes on unexplored, almost unexplorable territory, its fairy tale format allows access to the deepest darkness that inhabits the human soul. And yet. And yet….it works as a YA book. Not that I’d thrust it on the average twelve-year-old Twilight aficionado. Tender Morsels needs a sophisticated reader, one who really wants to know what the world is about, capable of facing the truly awful, the strange and the good in human nature. If that reader is a jaded middle-aged reader (like me) all the better. But my enthusiastic fifteen year old self would have killed for a book like this. I was shocked, transfixed, amazed by Tender Morsels. In my opinion, it has blown the lid off the genre. When was the last time you could say that about any book?
 Oh, come on, Meg! Surely father-daughter incest and gang rape aren’t that far removed from marriage between cousins! Eew! Sick twisted authors, the pair of you! This is as close as we’re going to come to comparing apples to apples: an exploration of the King Arthur myth and a reimagining of the fairy tale, Snow White and Rose Red. Tender Morsels rightly wins on its own merits, but for me great expectations also played a part. I really wanted Here Lies Arthur to be just like the Hungry City Chronicles, but it was a very different sort of book; whereas I’ve always admired Margo’s short stories, but this is her first book that has completely unhinged me. What are the chances that it faces The Kingdom on the Waves, that other blowing-the-lid-off-the-genre book, in the third round? Posted by Battle Commander on April 14, 2009 | Comments (0)
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