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Susan Pevensie’s Retirement Home Reading List
I wrote this story for you, but when I began it I had not realized that girls grow quicker than books. As a result you are already too old for fairy tales, and by the time it is printed and bound you will be older still. But some day you will be old enough to start reading fairy tales again….
—C.S. Lewis, dedication to The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe
If it were up to Susan, they never would have left Narnia. This is something her siblings never understood: that the question of whether she is or is not a friend of Narnia has nothing to do with unfriendliness and everything to do with getting by. Susan has lots of friends. She can talk to anyone. But she’s not going to invite anyone to dinner, or bring an old friend to a party where she’ll feel out of place. In this way, Narnia is an embarrassing old friend, badly dressed, too racist and sexist to introduce to anyone without an apology.
Susan is too old for fairy tales, but here’s a fairy tale: Four siblings went hunting in a wood, and when they saw the lamppost, only Susan wanted to turn back. She could smell the camphor from the wardrobe; she could feel the walls beginning to close in on her. England was an embarrassing old friend, too dingy to introduce at Court, and she hadn’t liberated Narnia to return to rations at home. She didn’t want to go, but they would go, with or without her, so she returned with them for fear of being left behind. Later, she left Narnia behind.
When Susan was very old, she sometimes thought about returning. The best thing to do was to read a book until the feeling passed.
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The Chronicles of Narnia, by C.S. Lewis
Susan doesn’t always agree with C.S. Lewis’s take on things—why does he spend so much time on her younger siblings? Why does he only describe one of her disastrous suitors? She has much better stories than that one—but these seven books, which describe the adventures of Susan, her siblings, and assorted other hapless children in Narnia and its surrounding lands, are still the first thing she picks up when she starts to miss everybody too much. Adventures! Witches! Talking mice! Remember that time your embarrassing cousin got turned into a dragon? That was hilarious. Whatever happened to that guy?
His Dark Materials Boxed Set: The Golden Compass, The Subtle Knife, The Amber Spyglass
Philip Pullman
4.2
Paperback
$28.97
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His Dark Materials Trilogy, by Philip Pullman
Lyra grew up running wild at Jordan College, an alternate universe version of Oxford; Will lives in the same city in our own world. When they each follow a mysterious window into a third universe, they join forces to unravel the mystery of Dust, a mysterious substance that sticks to adults but not to children. Their adventures put them at the center of a conflict between witches, angels, armored bears, and the Magisterium, a murderous church that believes Dust is original sin and is determined to kill Lyra before she yields. Philip Pullman’s trilogy is often viewed as a response to Lewis’s treatment of Susan in the Narnia books; Susan can’t help but be flattered.
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The Dalemark Quartet, by Diana Wynne Jones
Remember The Horse and His Boy? Imagine if Shasta was the first character to show up in the Narnia books, and you’ll start to get a sense of the way this series is structured. Diana Wynne Jones begins by introducing her fantastic characters—Moril, the son of traveling minstrels whose instrument has strange powers; Mitt, a failed assassin who knows the names of the gods; and Tanaqui, a weaver and witch—before jumping into a ordinary-modern-girl-gets-sucked-into-a-world-of-magic-and-adventure plotline in the final volume.
The Wood Beyond the World, by William Morris
The characters in this book speak the way Susan and her siblings spoke when they were Kings and Queens of Narnia; here, too, human men are called Sons of Adam, and a wicked enchantress rules a fantastic kingdom. Morris’s 1894 fantasy reads like the parts of the Pevensies’ story Lewis skips over, and could be an outtake from the reign of any one of Narnia’s monarchs. The story—an unhappy husband tries to get over his unfaithful wife by leaving town, and wanders into a magical land by mere chance—is one of the earliest examples of modern English fantasy, and heavily influenced C.S. Lewis.
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The Princess and the Goblin and The Princess and Curdie, by George MacDonald
You’ve heard of an Achilles Heel, but have you heard of a goblin’s toe? Well, that’s because goblins have no toes, a vulnerability that becomes crucial to this story about a goblin plot to tunnel under a castle, kidnap the young Princess Irene, and make her the goblin prince’s bride. Susan read this Victorian children’s book and its sequel, The Princess and Curdie, as a young child, long before she ever heard of Narnia; when her cousin Eustace told her about his adventures underground, she accused him of copying it wholesale from MacDonald.
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The Magicians Trilogy, by Lev Grossman
The Magicians and its sequels read like a mature mash-up of the Narnia chronicles and an obscure British fantasy series you probably haven’t heard of. Quentin Coldwater, a student at an exclusive magic college, discovers that Fillory, the Narnia-like setting of a series of children’s books he loves, is a real place. Quentin and his friends find a pathway to Fillory, but learn that remaining stuck in a story can have its downsides, a fact Susan needs reminding of from time to time.