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The Five Jars, M. R. James
I mentioned this in a comment to sovay the other day, and I guess I’d never posted about it a couple of months back when I read it, so: one of the Yuletide 2020 fics (which I now can’t seem to find) was for an M. R. James story, and the author, in notes, mentioned that a detail was also a shoutout to The Five Jars, so I got curious, googled, and learned that James had written a children’s-fantasy novella. There’s a pdf on Project Gutenberg.
Apparently this was written primarily as a gift for his goddaughter, and it takes the form of a letter to “Jane” from an unnamed middle-aged-professor sort who it’s probably not much of a stretch to think is based on James himself. This is a divergence from most kids’ fantasy fiction, which tends to have child protagonists, but I’m not sure a kid would have all that much trouble identifying with a bachelor adult. I don’t think I would have.
So, the plot: intuition and voices from a brook guide our main character to a box that can only be opened by moonlight, and which contains the titular five jars, which last belonged to a wizard in Roman Britain and contain potions that grant abilities to interact with a usually unseen world. The potions must be used one by one on successive nights, and the question is whether our protagonist can keep the box safe from sinister forces until he’s got the full set of powers. He’s aided in this by some schoolboy members of the “Small People,” who are less Fae than Victorian-style fairies (though they don’t have wings and are vaguely insulted at the idea), by his grumpy tabby-cat, and by and a benign but uncanny witch(?) who seems to be the opposite number of the main antagonist. All this stuff is enjoyably Jamesian— he’s just as good at creating an atmosphere of vague unease here as in his other stories, even if there are allies to counter it. Overall I’d say it felt more John Masefield than E. Nesbit, though I’m not exactly sure of the distinction.
Anyway, my problem is that it just sort of stops— not sure if James got bored with the narrative, if he figured his goddaughter was too young to read anything longer, or if he planned another instalment; but having defeated the “bat ball” (which is as creepy as it sounds), the main character opens the last jar and gains the power to shrink down and visit the Small People on their own turf, so... he does? He spends an evening hanging out with the family of one of the schoolboys, which is all very nice for the characters, but without the difference in scale, it’s much like visiting a normal human household. And that’s the end of the book. I think there’s a fairy-tale-within-the-fairy-tale when they show him a story in one of their books, but it still felt anticlimactic to me. 7/10 anyway — it doesn’t stick the landing, but it’s a quick read.
Apparently this was written primarily as a gift for his goddaughter, and it takes the form of a letter to “Jane” from an unnamed middle-aged-professor sort who it’s probably not much of a stretch to think is based on James himself. This is a divergence from most kids’ fantasy fiction, which tends to have child protagonists, but I’m not sure a kid would have all that much trouble identifying with a bachelor adult. I don’t think I would have.
So, the plot: intuition and voices from a brook guide our main character to a box that can only be opened by moonlight, and which contains the titular five jars, which last belonged to a wizard in Roman Britain and contain potions that grant abilities to interact with a usually unseen world. The potions must be used one by one on successive nights, and the question is whether our protagonist can keep the box safe from sinister forces until he’s got the full set of powers. He’s aided in this by some schoolboy members of the “Small People,” who are less Fae than Victorian-style fairies (though they don’t have wings and are vaguely insulted at the idea), by his grumpy tabby-cat, and by and a benign but uncanny witch(?) who seems to be the opposite number of the main antagonist. All this stuff is enjoyably Jamesian— he’s just as good at creating an atmosphere of vague unease here as in his other stories, even if there are allies to counter it. Overall I’d say it felt more John Masefield than E. Nesbit, though I’m not exactly sure of the distinction.
Anyway, my problem is that it just sort of stops— not sure if James got bored with the narrative, if he figured his goddaughter was too young to read anything longer, or if he planned another instalment; but having defeated the “bat ball” (which is as creepy as it sounds), the main character opens the last jar and gains the power to shrink down and visit the Small People on their own turf, so... he does? He spends an evening hanging out with the family of one of the schoolboys, which is all very nice for the characters, but without the difference in scale, it’s much like visiting a normal human household. And that’s the end of the book. I think there’s a fairy-tale-within-the-fairy-tale when they show him a story in one of their books, but it still felt anticlimactic to me. 7/10 anyway — it doesn’t stick the landing, but it’s a quick read.