Adam's Reviews > At the Back of the North Wind

I sought out more of George MacDonald's fiction (a long while) after reading his exceedingly wonderful Phantastes. At the Back of the North Wind was filed in the library's juvenile fiction section, which should have tipped me off to what was to come. The book is 400 pages of light reading - it's meant to be read to children - and in some ways not a lot happens. The first section sets the stage for the rest of the book: Diamond is swept off on midnight rides by the beautiful, magical North Wind. At one point he makes his way to her "back," which seems to be code for heaven, and ever since that point, he acts a little odd, like a little angel - he's always polite, never misbehaves, and he's capable of precocious wisdom. Then North Wind never shows up again until the last ten pages. This is what I was not expecting: most of this book is not at all fantasy; it's more of a character exposition.

I give the book four stars, however, because MacDonald is just such an irresistibly charming old Scottish author. The manner of speaking, the characters' kindnesses to each other, and the way things turn out in the end with just the right mixture of "everything's all right if you just trust that it is" and "there is sadness in the world," all combine to make a nicely worth-reading story.

I was under the semi-misapprehension, due to a misreading of other reviews, that the book was a strong Christian allegory (North Wind is Death). But that's something you'd have to go a ways to read into it - it would be just as easy to read the book in several other ways (Diamond is a poetic soul with strange dreams; North Wind is an elemental spirit/North Wind is Death, and teaches Diamond a life lesson that is important and not dependent on Christian metaphysics). There is certainly Christianity in the story, though, since that is what people believed and structured their lives around back in The Day.