There are no sparkles, no wondrous rhetoric, just one precisely observed sensory detail after another: A dead bluebottle on a windowsill some soft coats some cold crunchy snow some prickly pine branches – and then you’re in Narnia. And when he sends Lucy through the wardrobe (it’s on page five – he doesn’t waste time), it’s like nothing else in fiction up to that point. Look at how he carefully sketches all the relationships between all four of the Pevensie children. He puts the shadows of the war in the background, the excitement of a new house in the country in the foreground. Look at the way he constructed the opening of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. But I don’t think Lewis gets enough credit for his craft as a writer. “Everyone knows Lewis’s Narnia books are a foundational work of the modern fantastic. Foreign Policy & International Relations.
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