I was reading an old interview with Philip Pullman and he mentioned the ending of The Amber Spyglass, which has probably made me cry more than anything I’ve seen or read (except maybe for the last five minutes of Six Feet Under).
The mournful ending of “His Dark Materials” wrings protests from some readers, but as Pullman once told an interviewer, “I am the servant of the story.” He added, “The story made me do it. That was what had to happen. If I’d denied it, the story wouldn’t have had a tenth of its power.”
After I finished the book for the first time, I spent hours trying to unravel Pullman’s Gordian knot. But reading that quote made me realize exactly how much of an effect His Dark Materials has had on me because of the ending. Had Lyra and Will lived happily ever after, it never would have stayed with me. It would really be the atheist version of The Chronicles of Narnia: a story that I liked when I was a kid, but not one that ever merited re-reading as an adult out of anything but nostalgia. It was because of the ending that I went back later and re-read and realized exactly how much truth Pullman’s thoughts about Dust and death really had.
Then I imagined myself writing something as sad as the end of The Amber Spyglass. And I felt a flutter in my mind — the edges of a story taking place, something that will develop over years and years into something real and substantial. Characters of my own that I will someday grow to know as well as any author knows her characters, with whom I will imagine in circumstances so sad that I will cry as I am writing them down. It felt like a premonition.
I just wanted to remember that.
