Conference noted::sf

1205.0. "Hope Mirrlees' Lud-in-the-Mist" by VERGA::KLAES (Quo vadimus?) Wed Dec 22 1993 11:50

Article: 468
From: [email protected] (Dani Zweig)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.reviews,rec.arts.sf.written
Subject: Unnumbered Reviews #5: "Lud-in-the-Mist", by Hope Mirrlees
Organization: Netcom Online Communications Services (408-241-9760 login: guest)
Date: 22 Dec 93 14:22:22 GMT
 
	Unnumbered Reviews #5:  "Lud-in-the-Mist", by Hope Mirrlees
 
Hope Mirrlees wrote "Lud-in-the-Mist" (***-, on an uncalibrated four-point
scale) in 1926, but you wouldn't know by reading it.  You wouldn't think
it a contemporary fantasy, either.  It doesn't categorize well -- an odd
and quiet fantasy in which the heroes are complacent burghers, the nearest
thing to fighters are some underworked police, the villains may or may
not be villainous, and the magic may or may not be magical.
 
Lud-in-the-Mist is the capital of Dorimare.  The town is rich, self-
satisfied, and aggressively unimaginative and prosaic.  Being unimaginative
and prosaic is a bit of a challenge when you're just across the border
from Faerie, but perhaps for that reason the merchants of Lud-in-the-Mist
put a lot of imagination into the effort.  For instance, not only is the
importation of fairy fruit illegal, but fairy fruit is deemed not to even
exist:  People who are arrested for selling fairy fruit must defend
themselves against a charge of smuggling silk. 
 
Fairy fruit *does* exist, however, and people who eat of it become
unsuited to the thorough mundanity of Lud-in-the-Mist.  When the entire
student body of Miss Primrose Crabapple's Establishment for Young Ladies
dances off for the hills, it becomes clear that the encroachment of Faerie
influence is getting out of hand.
 
Master Nathaniel Chanticleer, Mayor of Lud-in-the-Mist, High Seneschal of
Dorimare, and a couple of etceteras, is the most determinedly prosaic of
Lud's merchants -- though being prosaic takes more determination than 
usual in his case.  Then there is the doctor, Endymion Leer, who is in 
the thick of the matter -- every man's confidant, dispensing plausible 
advice to all and sundry, and somehow encouraging the general impression 
that the trouble is all Nathaniel's fault.  And, in the background, there
is Duke Aubrey, who was toppled from his throne two centuries ago, and is 
reputed to still trouble the countryside.
 
When Nathaniel Chanticleer starts investigating, he finds evidence of the
uncanny which is hard to ignore -- but he also finds evidence which points
to a thoroughly mundane murder years back, and an equally mundane ring of
smugglers in current operation.  Are we dealing with rogues who are hiding
behind a supernatural facade or with a supernatural presence in workaday
guise? 
 
The book ends somewhat abruptly.  Beyond the direct role of Faerie in the
plot, Mirrlees uses it as a metaphor for the artistic and aesthetic dimension
which gives the purely mundane side of life meaning and value.  In the final
reconciliation of the two, however, plot is sacrificed somewhat for the
benefit of metaphor.  The result is not one of the great works of fantasy,
but it is one which retains its charm after two thirds of a century, and
still repays reading.
 
Disclaimer:  Don't think of this as a review series.  It's just unnumbered
to help me keep track.
 
%A  Mirrlees, Hope
%T  Lud-in-the-Mist
%I  Ballantine
%D  1970
%O  This is a reprint, the original having appeared in 1926
%O  Also, someone recently posted that LUDMIST1.ZIP can be found
%O  on a number of BBS's, but I don't know its copyright status.
 
-----
Dani Zweig
[email protected]
 
 Roses red and violets blew
  and all the sweetest flowres that in the forrest grew -- Edmund Spenser