THAT HIDEOUS STRENGTH

I finished reading A S Byatt's "The Children's Book" yesterday. Shortlisted for this year's Booker Prize, it is a beautifully written story with a profoundly moving end; and perhaps the finest/most appropriate cover design I've encountered.

Nevertheless, whilst this is a deeply intellectual and thought-provoking book, I find myself disagreeing with the underlying vein of "northern realism" - which Byatt attributes to one of her most sympathetic characters - although I actually share such an outlook myself.

For although "The Children's Book" is a brilliant book, dealing as it does with the birth of socialism in the Victorian period, and the popularity of fantasy in The Arts, particularly in relation to childhood, I am left with the feeling that Byatt does not really understand the psychological power - or indeed empowerment - of myth in helping people confront difficult, sometimes profoundly difficult, situations in their real worlds.

Like some of the main characters in "The Children's Book", C S Lewis fought in and survived World War 1, along with fellow Oxford academic Tolkien. Lewis found it difficult to re-adapt to some of the superficiality of College life and students. However, he is best remembered for his own children's tales of Narnia, and for The Cosmic Trilogy which concludes with "A Modern Fairy-Tale for Grown-Ups" called "That Hideous Strength".

Like the Narnia books, "That Hideous Strength" has as a central theme the need to recognise evil, and human susceptibility, both individually and collectively, to its cosmic presence. In an incident which might have been encountered in a work of fiction, but in fact happened in my real life, I was reminded of this theme only the other day.

Visiting a country friend on Boxing Day, I was accosted by a local man who inquired "Do you realise that you are approaching the scene of a murder ?". I was shocked but not surprised by this question as there had been a police road closure in the area since before Christmas, which until then I had put down to a traffic accident/dangerous road conditions arising from the snow.

The full story emerged in yesterday's local paper. A woman had been beaten to death a few days before Christmas, and her husband is now the prime suspect. The couple had only recently moved into their lovely house, in what I have long regarded to be an almost idyllic rural setting in this part of Worcestershire.

Indeed this place has a particular resonance for me, a romantic attraction of the kind which A S Byatt - but probably not C S Lewis - might well disapprove. Moreover, my "country friend" is not human but a cat, whom I have known for over seven years. Yet it was precisely this feline, and another who joined her for a while in the run-up to Christmas, who seemed on some subconscious level to have alerted me to something in the area that was not quite right.

For this is an "almost" idyllic setting terrorised by heavy lorry traffic by day, and sometimes by night, from a dubious enterprise nearby, whose inhabitants seem strangely isolated amongst their many parked vehicles. In short, something of "That Hideous Strength" seems to be blighting the land, not just here but in other parts of Worcestershire where the population has become highly mobile. I ride a bike - in all weathers - incidentally.

Returning to the murder incident, it seems strangely fitting that the prime suspect should be identified to the public, in a police statement of the "northern realist" genre, as the driver of a highly distinctive gold landrover discovery. This seems to have travelled across large areas of The Midlands, visiting various shopping centres, on the day of the crime, carrying black plastic bags, and possibly the murder weapon, for disposal.