Reading for pleasure

Rosemary Sutcliff liked to write in very ancient ages. A clash of invaders and natives of the British isles, usually. Knight's Fee, which I just finished reading (in tears) is set at the end of the eleventh century. That's a little more modern than some of her stories. The Eagles of the Ninth just got made into a movie. I haven't seen it yet. I wonder how Sutcliff would translate to screen. If any of you have seen it, (and better yet if you have also read the book) please tell me how you liked it. That one, of course, is set when the Romans were running around Britain. King Arther figures in one series and my favorite was set in the Bronze age.


She does not have a lot of flashy marketing appeal. It is sort of a dense read, thick with atmosphere and rich language, not the snappy images that we get in a lot of youth lit. I like to write a picture in a few words, but there is also something about describing a voice as "hairless" that makes for more sensual experience. She dips her reader into this lugubrious world so that we start to smell and taste it.

The story itself was not fantastic or even very original. It's simple and true, exploring the growth of a human heart. I guess she probably could have sold it as a rags to riches cinderella story. Boy raised among hunting hounds (and beaten with them) becomes a knight at the age of twenty-two. But that's like saying that The Lord of the Rings is about lost jewelry.

I suppose I like this, and most of Sutcliff's books because it is really a friendship story. Mostly, she writes stories about male friendship. I wonder if she ever wrote about girl friends... I'll have to look it up. The heart of this story is the little moments that make a friendship. In this book, a goldfinch is the beginning of the central friendship. The two boys being quiet together, beating each other up, sharing a public moment in a very private way. These slow, subtle events are so true to real life, though few of us really think about the difference a goldfinch makes in a relationship.



So, the bottom line is, I would read Rosemary Sutcliff no matter what she wrote about because her language is so beautiful. It just so happens that she likes to write about one of my favorite topics; friendship.

P. S.
Sun Horse, Moon Horse was not the first Sutcliff book I read, but for some reason, it is my favorite. I don't remember much about it. Spoiler: it ends with the death of the main character and it's quite a horrible death. But I would have been disappointed with anything less. For a long time I thought I had imagined that I had read it, or dreamed that it was a Sutcliff book, because I couldn't find it on any of the lists of her books and I couldn't remember the name. But there it is. It's real and I liked it.