I Think There Are A Lot More

As A Little Girl, I Didn't Like Stories About Little Girls. I Liked Stories About Dragons And Beasts And Princes And Princesses And Fear And Terror And The Four Musketeers And Almost Anything Other Than Nice Little Girls Making Moral Decisions About Whether To Tell The Teacher About What The Other Little Girl Did Or Did Not Do.

Louis De Bernires Is In The Direct Line That Runs Through Dickens And Evelyn Waugh. . .he Has Only To Look Into His World, One Senses, For It To Rush Into Reality, Colours And Touch And Taste.

Outside Our Small Safe Place Flies Mystery.

He Was Beautiful, That Was Always Affirmed, But His Beauty Was Hard To Fix Or To See, For He Was Always Glimmering, Flickering, Melting, Mixing, He Was The Shape Of A Shapeless Flame, He Was The Eddying Thread Of Needle-shapes In The Shapeless Mass Of The Waterfall. He Was The Invisible Wind That Hurried The Clouds In Billows And Ribbons. You Could See A Bare Tree On The Skyline Bent By The Wind, Holding Up Twisted Branches And Bent Twigs, And Suddenly Its Formless Form Would Resolve Itself Into That Of The Trickster.

I Know That Part Of The Reason I Read Tolkien When I'm Ill Is That There Is An Almost Total Absence Of Sexuality In His World, Which Is Restful.