Angels and Daughters

I followed my daughter through the labyrinth of these lovely books - City of Bones, City of Ashes and City of Glass - snuggled up on the couch reading different installments. It's perfect fare for us as there’s a mother and daughter – Jocelyn and Clary - at the centre of this story. I remember when my daughter was about four starting to read Ursula Le Guin’s The Tombs of Atuan to her and it was terrifying because the mother dies so early in the narrative and the little girl is so completely and utterly alone. Before she could speak she was also riveted by Are You My Mother, the story of the little bird who has fallen out of his nest and needs to find his mother. So it’s an elemental part of a story being separated from a mother and the anxiety this causes, especially in fantasy stories. Fantasy stories do this so well. In this trilogy The Mortal Instruments, Clary must save her mother, who is kidnapped by a Ravener demon and bewitched. It is the adololescent shift in this relationship, where the little girl must rescue her mother. My daughter was very sage about it all, refusing to give away the plot details I was desperate for, thus rescuing me from my own self-destructive thwarting of my plot satisfaction.

Reading these books was so utterly pleasurable. The narrative seemed to combine every fairy tale motif imaginable with out being too much: angels, enchanted swords, magical runes, vampires, lost evil Frankenstein-like fathers, separated siblings, impossible love. I imagine this must have been what reading Harry Potter must have been like for the people who could get over the clunky sentences. It reminded me a little of Buffy the Vampire Slayer – without the cheesiness - and of Phillip Pulmann’s His Dark Materials without the ponderous qualities. When Cassandra Clare was borrowing plots – such as from Star Wars and Paradise Lost she referenced it in a worldly postmodern way. At our place we are both desperate for her new book!