The new book of the modern Swedish writer Frida Nilsson, like her previous works, is distinguished by a non-trivial plot, philosophical depth, and a rather gloomy atmosphere.
We learn about the difficult fate of the two main characters - brothers 8 and 11 years old - right off the bat in the first two paragraphs: the parents died, the boys lived in an orphanage, from where after some time they were taken by a stern, gloomy relative . Life in the new house was not pleasant: I had to do a lot of monotonous, boring work, while existing in poverty and squalor, without entertainment, without affection, without a kind word.
But then an opportunity arises, and the boys are transported to a parallel world, where a certain queen is waiting for them in a castle, who supposedly has been dreaming in vain all her life about her own children. Her servants are anthropomorphic animals (badgers, foxes, rats), which, although they walk on their hind legs and wear clothes, still look into the forest no matter how much you feed them. And the queen herself turns out to be a beautiful and strong white snake - a lindworm. And she really welcomes guests very warmly, puts them in a room filled to the brim with toys, treats them to cakes, takes care of them, admires them and caresses them.
At some point, the older brother begins to realize that something is unclean here; it was not for nothing that they were called to this castle out of love for the children. But, trying to share his thoughts with his younger brother, he discovers that he is very distant from him. Now he is more interested in playing with animals and fawning over the queen than in having a heart-to-heart talk together, as before. What happened to the little one, at what moment did the wind change? The elder keeps returning in his thoughts to one episode when he should have stood up for the younger, but could not do this and remained silent. Not out of fear, but out of confusion. Maybe then their friendship began to crack? The kid saw that even his own brother did not resist evil, and stopped trusting him. This problem is heard throughout the book: once we remained silent, did not resist injustice - could everything go downhill because of this? And if so, how to fix the error, and can it be fixed at all? Can one act, which, in fact, is not even an act, but rather an inaction, affect life?
The following I will try to tell in general terms, but there may be spoilers, so if you want to read this book yourself, skip the next paragraph. Well, if you intend to give it only to your children, let's go.
The Queen tells the sad story of her people. She was the last of her kind; the rest were exterminated by people with whom the Lindworms had a long-standing enmity. Here the reader has a desire to condemn people, remember other representatives of the animal world who have been exterminated by humanity, and fall into an ecological narrative. But it's not that simple at all. There are some things the queen doesn’t tell the boys; we learn about this from other heroes as the story progresses. It turns out that people had good reason to do this: the Lindworms were stealing their children. But, it must be said that the lindworms did not do this out of simple self-indulgence; they also had good reasons for kidnapping. Which of them is right, whose side to take?
But the fact of the matter is that this conflict was arranged by nature itself, there is no one to blame here, the situation cannot be broken down into black and white. This is not a children's book, but a teenage book, and here, as in life, there are a lot of shades of gray.
This book is about the fact that life is contradictory; events can and should be looked at from different angles. At the end of the book, one side wins, the other suffers a complete collapse, but by that time the reader already understands that the joy of the winner has a bitter aftertaste, because the vanquished was not the embodiment of evil - it is not entirely ethical to triumph. As for the plot, the ending here is not open, but quite definite. But from the point of view of whether this book answers the questions posed - no, it doesn’t; in the finale, the philosophical abyss only deepens even more. You close the book and think about it for a long, long time.
There are many sad and rather scary, tense moments in the book, there are deaths, so it is not for the impressionable and not for small children. It is for lovers of philosophical fantasy for at least ten years, if they do not react too painfully to a certain amount of tin in literature. However, this is not an adult book, but a teenage one, and the author sees the coast.
leave a comment