The Susanne

I would like to argue the case for what I believe to be the best, and only, read­ing order of the Chron­icles of Narnia. Oh, after I make a tiny men­tion of the supreme superi­or­ity of the excel­lent White Witch of 1988 over the rather sickly and weak one of 2005. Hon­estly, Tilda Swin­ton, you’ve noth­ing on Bar­bara Keller­man! Just look at her!

I was ter­ri­fied of her for years! I had one of those Stompa beds which are kind of bunk beds with only the top bunk, leav­ing room for a play area under­neath. And can you ima­gine my terror as I night after night feared fall­ing asleep because I knew the White Witch was hiding down there, just wait­ing for me to fall asleep so she could kill me! Oh the ter­rors of a young mind. Now I recently saw the 2005 film (against my own res­ol­u­tion never ever ever to see it for fear of ruin­ing the won­der­ful exper­i­ence that the BBC series was to me in my childhood…) and I must say, I didn’t find the witch scary at all. In the BBC series, the witch is the most mag­ni­fi­cent part of the whole thing. But in the film…well..she’s ter­rible. And not in the ‘terribly frightening’ sense of the word, but ter­rible in the ‘terribly disappointing’ sense. I could go on and on about the other things that dis­ap­poin­ted me in the film, but as I knew in advance what to expect and chose to see it anyway, I’m just going to leave it for now. I’ll just quielty mourn the loss that modern tech­no­logy is caus­ing our chil­dren to suffer in terms of ima­gin­at­ive view­ing. What’s fun about talk­ing anim­als that look like anim­als? What’s fun about com­puter graph­ics that look so real you don’t have to ima­gine it being real? I’m just saying..

Ok. Over to the books! Count­less dis­cus­sions exist on this sub­ject and I’m dying to voice my opin­ion. Work­ing in the lib­rary I noticed that the edi­tions of The Chron­icles of Narnia on the shelves there were all numbered, and invari­ably The Magician’s Nephew was numbered as the first book. Now, I hon­estly don’t see how anyone can believe that this would make a nat­ural read­ing order! The Lion, The Witch and the Ward­robe is clearly the first book: it intro­duces the land of Narnia to the reader in a way which The Magician’s Nephew simply can’t.

The children’s exper­i­ences in Narnia in The Lion, The Witch and The Ward­robe takes the reader on a jour­ney to a — both to the reader and the chil­dren of the story — unima­gined land which they find at the back of an old ward­robe. The Magician’s Nephew is a ret­ro­spect­ive story, the story of how it all began; and it is para­mount to the full and proper exper­i­ence of that book that the reader already be famil­iar with the land of Narnia. As to the view that as The Magician’s Nephew comes first chro­no­lo­gic­ally, I simply don’t see how that can be con­sidered a valid argu­ment by anyone. Firstly, it was pub­lished much later, second to last in fact, and secondly it hardly offers a sat­is­fact­ory intro­duc­tion to the magical uni­verse which the Chron­icles depict. Being much more abstract, and much less like a fairytale, it hasn’t that won­der­ful qual­ity which The Lion, the Witch and the Ward­robe has, and which has dazzled gen­er­a­tions of chil­dren and made them fall in love with the Chron­icles. All love begins with an ini­tial attrac­tion, and The Chron­icles of Narnia being children’s stor­ies, The Magician’s Nephew simply does not have ‘it’.

When C. S. Lewis replied to a little boy’s letter saying he agreed with him about the read­ing order of the Chron­icles (the silly little boy thought The Magician’s Nephew should come first as the story is chro­no­lo­gic­ally before the rest of the books), it is my belief that he was humour­ing a little child and not at all intend­ing to set the cannon for the read­ing of his mas­ter­piece in years to come.

Enough people have debated over this sub­ject that I feel no need to go into the boring facts and det­at­ils; I’ll just leave it at this: When I, together with Lucy Peven­sie, first found my way through that ward­robe it was the begin­ning of my rela­tion­ship with Narnia. And I am a firm believer in that being the only real way to get there.