The Phoenix and the Carpet #5


 My reading of the fifth chapter of Edith Nesbitt's (1904) children's adventure story "The Phoenix and the Carpet". In this part of the book the children (and the wondrous bird) journey to the mystical heart of London where they find (or create... or reanimate) a cultus of the sacred fire bird. Poses some interesting questions about the true nature of the religious impulse and what actually constitutes a sacred song!

This chapter strikes me as being rather like a seed from which the magical realism of Ben Aaronovitch's Rivers of London (and similar books by other authors) grew. The weird fusion of the quotidian and the paranormal and the surreal heartbeat that ticks, like an Edgar Allen Poe horror, just beneath the surface of supposed normality.



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