Northern Lights

"Yes, and that’s where this book begins. It gives a fantastic realism punch. There’s a thrill, coming straight into this one from the first book: we’ve just left Lyra and daemons and talking armoured bears, and suddenly we’re in residential suburbia in Oxford, with a son worrying about his mother and her mental health problems and the very earthly authorities who might interfere. And you think, how is this going to relate? Am I really going to find out that this ordinary, fairly bleak reality, a piece of my reality, belongs in the same universe as Lyra? And that’s the beauty of portal fantasy – linking our world to the magic. I think it speaks to the way that sometimes there’s suddenly a new idea, or a new person, or a new decision, or a moment of transcendence – and, briefly or permanently, our ordinary world opens out."