Book Report: Stardust

I recently reread Stardust, and it remains my favorite of Neil Gaiman’s novels. So take any niggling negativity within the context of substantial appreciation.

But…

And this isn’t really a criticism, as such, but the book is lovely and wonderful and adventury and scary and all, and has two (if I recall correctly) semi-explicit sex scenes. If it weren’t for the sex scenes, I would be happy to make it a bedtime book for my Perfect Non-Reader. She does know about sex, a lot more than I did at seven-and-a-half, but I would not be comfortable reading those bits to her. Nor would I be particularly comfortable skipping those bits to bowdlerize the text for her; I could do that, but that always seems wrong somehow.

And wouldn’t work, practically speaking, in that our rule is that the PN-R is allowed to read behind in the book, to keep earlier bits in mind as we progress. Reading ahead is absolutely forbidden (and always done anyway; we are careful not to catch her at it), but reading behind is essential to the whole project. So a big discrepancy between the book that we read and the book that she reads would open a big old can of proverbial.

Now, the sex scenes aren’t exactly gratuitous, what with (1) they are connected with the plot and serve to advance it, more or less, and (b) they are not written primarily to appeal to the prurient interest, if you know what I mean, heh heh heh. Mr. Gaiman clearly put them in for a reason, and speaking personally, as a reader, I am not complaining. As a father, though, and a recommender, I feel constrained by that decision of his, and I don’t want to feel so constrained, because I do think that other than those bits, the book is fine for tweens and even precocious pre-tweens.

Digression: Yes, I know, I said tweens. Stop rolling your eyes at me, you. I also said pre-tweens. I was initially as appalled by the word as you are (well, not as appalled, because I’m really a fairly easy-going blogger, when it comes to that, but still appalled), but now that the word is in popular use, I am willing to use it. It’s hard to argue that middle-school-age kids is preferable, or nine-to-twelves. End Digression.

I’ll add, by the way, that my Perfect Non-Reader has, in fact, picked up War of the Worlds to reread. And the violence in that book (both actual and emotional) is horrifying; there’s nothing horrifying about the sex in Stardust. I am reminded of the stand-up bit (was it George Carlin? It must have been George Carlin or Lenny Bruce) where the comic says that not only does he think that violence is much worse than sex, and that he would much rather that kids watched a scene in movie where two people made love than that they watched a scene where one person kills another, but that actually, he would prefer that they dub over all the times somebody says the word kill and replace it with the word fuck. Then he did a Gabby Hayes voice: We’re gonna fuck you now, sheriff. But we’re gonna fuck ya’ slow… I heard that bit at an impressionable age, but perhaps not impressionable enough, because I’d still rather read to my Perfect Non-Reader about a Martian sticking a straw in a human like a juice box than about the shopkeeper’s girl seducing Dunstan Thorn.

Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus,
-Vardibidian.