#and put away childish things

[literary-illuminati]

2024 Book Review #14 – And Put Away Childish Things by Adrian Tchaikovsky

This book I basically came across by chance. Or, well, not exactly chance, but I’d never even heard of it before until I checked what Tchaikovsky books my local library system had copies of and saw it. Which in a sense is a terrible way to come into this – it’s an incredibly dramatic swerve from any of Tchaikovsky’s other stuff that I’ve read – but coming in totally blind pretty much worked, I think. Genuinely very fun read.

The story follows Harry Bodie, a children’s TV presenter facing down middle age with a career that’s never really lived up to expectations. Somewhat desperately, he signs on to a tabloid-ish program about digging into the family tree, hoping to use the residual fame of his grandmother and her fairly famous and successful series of postwar children’s fantasy novels as a career boost. Instead he gets his face rubbed in the fact that his great-grandmother is only recorded as an indigent madwoman, and the famous author was born in a sanitarium. That the famous Underhill stories were, in fact, based in large part on delusions told as childhood fables and family histories.

Somewhat unsurprisingly, the stories turn out to be less delusional than previously reported. Bodie is in quick succession accosted by a faun, approached by a suspicious PI, and kidnapped by a surprisingly moneyed fan-club-cum-occult-coven. Soon enough he’s getting his first taste of Underhill first hand – or, at least, what’s left of it after a century and change of economizing and entropy.

I’m on record as being fairly dismissive about the whole category of ‘stories about stories’, and I guess I need to eat my words a bit because I actually really enjoyed this. To an extent that’s probably just because it doesn’t get too meta – storyland is a work of deliberate artifice, the stories themselves don’t shape the world or do magic, it just generally never tries to get too cute or didactic about it – but still. This is a book where the hero at one point describes his situation as ‘Five Nights at Aslan’s’ so there’s no real principled distinction for me to cut here. One of the main characters is literally a folklorist.

Though, it’s less about stories than one specific story in particular. The unremarkable schlub plucked out of their mundane life and told that they’re special, that they’re the hero or the true heir and possess some inherent numinous essence that makes them the most important person in the world. This is a terribly appealing story, and one Harry feels the lure of very keenly – he’s self-aware enough to say quite clearly that he goes back to the frozen, decaying world full of half-dead monsters less out of morality or rationality than simply because it was a place where he mattered, for good or ill.

It’s probably not reading too deeply into the book’s themes to note that the story is a lure in a fairly literal sense, or that the true heir is destined to ‘save’ the world by being hollowed out and possessed by those who came before them.

Of course as much as this is in conversation with Narnia et al, it owes at least as much to whole genre of ‘what is nostalgic children’s property, but fucked up?’ creepypasta. Fairyland is choked with fungal growths and creepy, staticy not-snow. The scampering, troublemaking faun is miserable and worn out with bad knees. The Best Of All Dogs is a rotting, terrifying hellhound. There’s even a titanic evil scary clown. Aesthetically the book owes far more to r/nosleep than Lewis Carroll.

Harry himself is an absolute delight as a main character. By which I mean he just sucks so bad, but in very mundane and endearing ways. Who among us can not relate on some level to a failing middle-aged actor who always made a point of not trading on his family name but is secretly pretty resentful it hasn’t helped him more? He refuses the call to adventure then decides his life’s kind of shit and he’d rather get stabbed to death by goblins, so he comes crawling back and begs for a second chance. He’s left a glowing magic sword that will defeat all enemies, but it’s stuck in the body of one of his kidnappers so he just runs screaming and it spends the rest of the book in an evidence locker somewhere. I love him.

I really have no idea to what degree it was intentional, but it also does rather muse me that – okay, you know the standard bit of feminist media analysis where male characters are the actors, while female characters are generally walking set decoration and plot devices? It really deeply amuses me that Harry spends the better part of the story as a magical blood bank getting led around or terrified and awaiting rescue, whereas Seitchman (our counterfeit PI/folklorist) repeatedly forces herself into things through obsessive research skills and a complete disregard for her own safety (and at one point an enthusiastic if unpracticed willingness to sword people). Though to be clear this was mostly amusing to me because it was absolutely never highlighted or commented upon.

This is probably the first book I’ve read that’s recent enough to be set during lockdown without really being a COVID novel, if that makes sense? You could set this the year before or the year after without really losing much, and it lacks the ‘this was written in quarantine’ vibe of a lot of books I read last year. But it definitely adds a sense of specificity and timeliness to it that I rather enjoyed.

So yeah, do not open it expecting anything like Children of Time, but good book!

[adventures-in-a-world-of-fiction]

Book review: And Put Away Childish Things by Adrian Tchaikovsky

I want to write a quick review of And Put Away Childish Things by Adrian Tchaikovsky. I read this book recently and very much enjoyed it as a fun exploration/subversion of the sort of portal fantasy books I read as a kid. The main character, Harry Bodie, is the grandson of a woman who wrote an extremely successful series of fantasy books about children going to a magical land and having adventures (no, not the series with the lion, the other one). Harry himself is a children's TV presenter failing to break into serious acting, when he discovers that the books were based on stories his grandmother was told by her mother - who suffered from delusions and was institutionalised.

Harry starts to worry he might be delusional too when he sees creatures from his grandmother's books trying to make contact with him. It appears that the world might have been a real place, and the inhabitants have got sick of waiting for the child who was supposed to come to them and never showed up.

The book takes its premise seriously, taking the ideas that are common in children's stories and looking at them through an adult lens. While the obvious comparison is the Narnia books (which are alluded to a few times through the story), I also got vibes of The Magic Faraway Tree (a favourite series of mine when I was little) from the way the Underhill books are described and the little snippets we see. This is a book clearly written with a great deal of love and familiarity with the genre it is exploring. It takes ideas that feel familiar and shows them in a new light in a way that I really enjoyed.

One thing I really loved was that the book was set at the end of 2019 and into 2020 and the time period becomes very apparent. At the start of the book, there's no clear sense of time other than "basically about now", but then there are a few off-hand mentions of this disease people are starting to get worried about. Then Harry has a little adventure in a magical world and comes back to find that, rather than no time having passed, it's been a few weeks. He arrives straight into the start of the first lockdown and he is utterly confused. Where is everyone? Why does the bus driver insist on him wearing a mask? What was with that guy on a home office talking to people on a computer screen? Why won't his friend let him in? The strangeness of how things felt in that first lockdown really comes through when seen through the eyes of a character who missed the start of it.

I also really love how the book explores the idea of time passing differently in different worlds. While this is a trope that is vital to the Narnia series, it is never explained (and doesn't need to be) in that series, but Tchaikovsky takes that idea and gives a reason for it that makes sense within the logic of the story. That was extremely satisfying to me.

Harry isn't my favourite character ever. He's a bit of an asshole, but in ways that feel understandable. When you see a guy with a job he isn't completely satisfied with going, "I just wanted to be a prince of a magical land, was that so wrong?" it's relatable. I think this is a book written for the people who've had thoughts like that a few times themselves. I think it does depend on at least a minimum familiarity with the Narnia books to really get the most out of this one, so if you didn't read those sort of books as a kid, then you're probably not in its intended audience.

If you are an adult who read a bunch of portal fantasy stories as a kid, particularly if you enjoyed the Narnia series, I would definitely recommend this book. It's a fun read, not too long, and generally enjoyable. It's listed on Amazon as part one of a series, so I'm looking forward to seeing what the author has planned for other books to follow.

[rhetoricandlogic]

“And Put Away Childish Things” by Adrian Tchaikovsky

June 11, 2023 ~ Nataliya

“I just wanted to be the promised prince and heir to a magical kingdom,” he told the walls of his cell. “Is that so much? Is that bad of me? I mean, what did I do to earn this clusterfuck, precisely?”

There are portal fantasies (hello, Narnia — for those like me who haven’t read Narnia books, that’s the association that the wardrobe on the cover is apparently supposed to evoke), and there are anti-portal fantasies where the world behind the magical door isn’t all that hunky-dory (Lev Grossman’s Fillory). And then there’s whatever Adrian Tchaikovsky does here, with his off-kilter take on the portal fantasy set during the early pandemic months — what remains of the fantasy once the titular childish things have been put away and a bit of horror undercurrent comes into the story, with an eventual science-fictional flavor.

“He had his own problems, not least of which was discovering that not only was Underhill real, it was a bloody nightmare of epic proportions.”

This novella is rather a delightful mix of dilapidated fantasy setting and snarky reality, set in the shadow of lives full of wasted potential. The world through the portal – Underhill – is not a happy shiny Narnia place (“… childish things they hadn’t put aside when they grew up”), but neither is it a dark gritty setting. It’s a world bubble in strange decay, with quite a bit of odd creepiness there, the vibe of an abandoned playground just before full dark. Tchaikovsky pokes a bit of fun at the good old portal fantasy tropes here, yes, but with a bit of a thoughtfulness, skillfully and sometimes sneakily cynically, and overall in a weirdly enjoyable but twee-less way with the cuteness mercilessly stripped away.

“They were the usual sort of post-war kids’ stuff, born out of a world of rationing so that the young protagonists’ rewards for fighting giants or recovering stolen jewellery was often no more than a decent meal, which they were glad to get. They were ’50s nostalgia that the Baby Boom generation had grown up on, about another world that was green and magical and nice and constantly under threat by monsters both buffoonish and genuinely monstrous.”

I liked that Tchaikovsky grounded this book is present day reality by using the early days of Covid pandemic as the background for the “real world” part of the story. I haven’t quite seen this in my reading so far — and like it or not, this recent shared experience is not something we can pretend never happened.

Great read as usual, and yet again Tchaikovsky doesn’t disappoint..

[lizabethstucker]

And Put Away Childish Things by Adrian Tchaikovsky

3 out of 5

A Netgalley ARC, courtesy of Solaris Books. Anticipated release date is March 28, 2023.

Although actor Harry Bodie was currently employed, it was only as a presenter on a popular children's television series. Despite twenty=five years working in the entertainment business, his career was still not as secure as he had hoped to be by 40. Frustrated and desperate, Bodie is convinced by his agent to appear on a genealogy show. He assumed the primary focus would be on his grandmother Mary Bodie, author of the Underhill book series. Then he discovers a dark hidden secret about his great-grandmother, sending him into an alcoholic down=spiral.

One drunken night Harry sees a faun straight out of the books. He's no longer a child wishing for impossible things, but perhaps he can find his way back to that innocent time. as it appears the Land of Underhill really exists. Unfortunately it isn't as it once appeared. Can Harry save Underhill and its remaining residents or is it past time for a childhood fantasy to fade away?

The premise is definitely interesting. I found the choice of an adult male protagonist to be different. Sadly I found Harry unlikeable in the extreme almost throughout the book. It wasn't until things were at their worst that he showed some redeeming features. Character and execution are the weakest parts of the book, although i can recognize the talents of the author. This is the first Adrian Tchaikovsky story that I've ever read, so I had nothing to base my responses to in comparison to his other works.

The Narnia books are such a heavy influence to the point of being blatantly mentioned throughout. Sadly, despite my love of that series, I alternated here between boredom and annoyance. However there were flashes of brilliance, particularly as the end approached. I found the ending, in my opinion, to be how fictional worlds read and loved by children can come alive, but once no one reads them any longer, the lands begin to disappear, no matter how much the inhabitants try to stop that disintegration..

Pet peeve? The use of COVID. It wasn't necessary as far as I could see. Although I suppose it was a great explanation as to how Harry wasn't kicked out of his apartment for non-payment of rent.

There is without a doubt an audience for this standalone fantasy. Perhaps I've become too jaded and old to appreciate this unique view of hidden lands and overage Chosen Ones. If the premise intrigues you, I encourage you to read it.

(Review cross-posted on Goodreads, StoryGraph, and Tumblr, with a link on Twitter.)

[rwby-confess]

Confession #221

[a-flickering-soul]

fics where tauriel is like "idk where dwarf heaven is but it will become dwarf and tauriel heaven as soon as i can find it" <<<<<<

[moomeecore]

on that subject, obsessed with today when i was like "hey guys, can you two stop playing the jumping game for now because it's giving caden a headache" and my 6 yr old cousin is like "you mean 'me'. it's giving 'me' a headache, because your caden". it's like yeah man ur right. my bad . and then they stopped jumping. it was awesome

[quotablefanfiction]

Tony blinks. “I’m seven. I’m pretty sure I’m not allowed to make life-altering decisions at this age.”

de-aged Tony (chp. 1)

Put Away Childish Things by arsenicarcher (Arsenic) (AO3) Avengers (Marvel Movies) – Mature – OT9 #Alternate Universe #Torture #Child Abuse #De-Aging #Hurt/Comfort #Everyone’s Poly #Tony built a giant tower so everyone could have space for their issues

Tony and Clint are captured by villains who can only get what they want from a child-Tony. So, obviously, they de-age him. Because comics.

[fortes-fortuna-iogurtum]

...

[aspirant1598]

[selfinflictedgunshotwound]

getting tired of myself and everything around me again 😐

[literary-illuminati]

'guy loses a month and change in faerieland, comes back in the middle of COVID lockdown, spends a considerable amount of time wondering if he fucked up and ended up in some kind of alternate nightmare world' is actually a pretty great bit ngl.

[artemisaed]

[brothersonahotelbed]

im so fucking embarrassed im going to have to hobble into work tomorrow and tell them i sprained my ankle tripping off a CURB and won't be in for a few days and it's going to ruin everything for both me and my coworkers i hate it here

[chicago-geniza]

"I begged God then--but as an adult, I refuse to beg God" is a sentence of all time. She has so many sentences of all time

[thesquireinvictus]

I think a lot of people play fast and loose with their diet and health because the consequences seem so far off. You don’t hit the proverbial brick wall until middle age, after doing yourself decades of damage, and science is so advanced that what used to kill you outright now takes its time. But watching people live painful, debilitated lives even from a young age, and watching people have heart attacks and strokes in their thirties and forties, and watching people die slow, years-long, uncomfortable or painful or even devastating, gruesome deaths...