Lanny, Max Porter
This was one of the prescribed texts on my post-graduate reading list and for once it was one piece of prescribed reading I didn’t mind. Lanny was very different, a welcome change from the reprinted classics and reinterpretations of old poetry. It had a simple story with a supernatural twist that captured my attention.
But I’ll be honest, the premise didn’t initially interest me. It was another take on a missing child plotline that seemed to exaggerate the flaws of the central cast as they desperately search for the child. At its core, Lanny is a book about relationships and connections, with the young boy, Lanny, being at the centre of all of the different dynamics throughout the short novel. It was an exploration of human nature and the human condition, and I wouldn’t have taken much interest in it if that was the sole focus of the narrative. I didn’t expect much from Lanny, and yet when I opened the first few pages I was hooked.
Words spread across the page, a collection of voices that all seemed to trail like sounds on the wind. Each one had its own tone, its own personality, and they all seemed to be being overheard by some unknown creature introduced in the opening paragraphs as Dead Papa Toothwort. This ancient entity starts our story, with Porter’s unique typographic style appearing quickly and emphasising the creature’s power and presence. It was something new and suddenly Lanny became much more interesting. There was this supernatural creature pulling the strings, manipulating the lives of those in the village, and who eventually takes enough interest in the young boy to spiral the plot in the book’s second half. It explored the themes of humanity by incorporating another genre entirely.
It incorporates elements of fantasy, reinterpreting Celtic mythologies to create a modern fable. Primarily it takes inspiration from the stories of Fey and faeries, the creatures who watch over the world from the hidden places and act as collectors for the things that take their interest. Dead Papa Toothwort is written to be one of these Fey, a reimagining of a woodland sprite that has found itself a new interest when Lanny and his family move to town.
I will admit that the typographic style took some time to get used to, and I would recommend the audiobook for those with short attention spans or dyslexia like myself as the shifts in narrative voice can be difficult to follow. But if you can, stick with it. The visuals add to the fantastical feel of the story being presented, something which the audiobook does miss out that little bit. Part of the enjoyment of reading Lanny is piecing together the narrative from the differing perspectives, working out who is who and what is happening. The audiobook takes away a bit of this mystery as there are different voices and accents used for each character who appears. However, with this in mind, the audio definitely adds to the presence of Dead Papa Toothwort, giving him a sense of scale that can’t really be represented by words on a page.
Writing is certainly a medium for experimentation and Porter takes every opportunity he can to push the limits with Lanny. He expertly establishes his conventions and by the second half you don’t even notice that the signposts are missing and all that’s left is the subtle markers which hint at the wider narrative. His examples have since inspired my own writing, highlighting new ways for the supernatural to appear as its own entity and tell its own story alongside the main narrative. And with the surprise of Lanny, another one of Porter’s books, Grief is the Thing with Feathers, is now on my reading list.
