Michel Faber’s astounding “The Book of Strange New Things” earned him his first gentlemanly recommendation, and I now vigorously re-recommend reading that story of a missionary on a distant planet to spread religion to aliens. I’m typing today to recommend his newest novel, “D (A Tale of Two Worlds).” This is his first novel that is marketed to children, but at DBRL you’ll find it in adult fiction, and to be sure, like all novels, this one can be read by the literate of all ages. Unlike some novels, it won’t traumatize the young or bore the old.
“D (A Tale of Two Worlds)” stars Dhikilo, a child refugee from Somaliland, which is a country that the rest of the world doesn’t recognize as a country. One morning she sees a headline that reads “GOOBYE CARS, HELLO SKATEBOARS” and hears her adoptive parents speaking without using the letter d. She’s troubled by the disappearance of a letter, but no one else seems to be. While attending the funeral of a former teacher she realizes there is something very strange about his pallbearers, and in following them discovers that they are some sort of magic manifestation. She soon discovers her teacher is not dead, and that he too is troubled by the disappearance of a letter. He has a plan, but he’s much too blind and old to see it through. So he exhorts Dhikilo to enter the portal in his attic so that she may go to another world in search of the missing letters. Naturally, his seeing eye dog, which is actually a sphinx capable of transforming into a labrador, accompanies her on the trip.
This trip is a classic of the journey-through-a-weird-world genre, the kind of stuff that should be a lot of fun for kids of all ages (what I actually mean is older kids and adults who have not been overly crushed by the world; very young children might not appreciate it or might be frightened at times). Soon she sees flocks of dragonflies carrying Ds and ds into the distance. She encounters lots of homages to other beloved adventure stories and also to Charles Dickens. She and her sphinx/labrador companion (Mrs. Robinson) are harassed by magwitches, spend a night in an unstaffed, beautiful and initially charming hotel (“Bleak House”) which, it becomes clear in the morning, never intends to let them leave, what with its shifting layout and increasingly aggressive signage. They barely avoid being cannibalized. They perform some weather magic. They navigate the maddening bureaucracy of a passport office. They hear about the Gamp, a terrible ruler who has demanded the removal of all ds. Gamp is a ridiculous, vain, evil man with very strange hair who lies endlessly, starves and terrorizes his people and removes crucial components of language for his own gratification.
I’ll stop telling you what happens now, but more stuff does happen. And while I won’t spoil the ending, I will say it’s an ending that won’t make your child cry (unless your child cries at happy endings).
