This story begins in a land across the sea …
When I first learned about Katherine Rundell’s “Impossible Creatures” (after critic Ron Charles praised it in the Washington Post), the U.K. fantasy novel wasn’t yet available here in the States.
Thankfully, the book, about two young people facing a murderous threat, a mysterious landscape and a host of magical creatures, is in stores now. (And the audiobook is too; its narrator Samuel West will be known to readerly moviegoers as book-beset Leonard Bast in 1992’s “Howard’s End” and as a boorish Boris Johnson-type on Apple TV+’s adaptation of Mick Herron’s “Slow Horses.”)
Katherine Rundell reveals a secret inspiration of ‘Impossible Creatures’
Katherine Rundell is the author a number of books for young people, most recently of the just-published “Impossible Creatures.” She’s also the author of “Super-Infinite: The Transformations of John Donne” and the upcoming “Vanishing Treasures: A Bestiary of Extraordinary Endangered Creatures.”
Q. Please tell readers about your new book, “Impossible Creatures.”
“Impossible Creatures” is the story of a cluster of islands in the North Atlantic ocean where all the creatures of myth that mankind has ever invented still live and thrive. That’s all the creatures we’re familiar with – dragons and unicorns – but also creatures we invented and have since half-forgotten, like kankos and kluddes and karkadanns. Into those islands comes a boy, Christopher, from our world; he meets Mal, a girl with a coat that allows her to fly, a baby griffin in her arms, and a murderer trying to find her. They discover that the creatures are in peril, and they will need to rise to the call to save them.
Q. You also wrote “Super-Infinite,” a book about the 17th century metaphysical poet John Donne. What do you wish people knew about him and his work?
He was so wildly original: so funny, so sharp, and so insistent on the power of new, vivid language to cut through your interlocutor’s complacent inattention and leave them gasping. He is a great antidote to exhaustion or boredom – if other books begin to feel flat, he can defibrillate you back into belief in language’s power to galvanise: his writing has electricity in it.
Q. Is there a book or books you always recommend to other readers?
For children, I often recommend the books of Diana Wynne Jones, a brilliant writer of wryly wise fantasy; Ursula K. Le Guin; and, of course, The Chronicles of Narnia.
Q. What are you reading now?
Virginia Woolf‘s diaries, which has recently been re-released: one of the most magnificent reading experiences of my last few years.
Q. Do you have any favorite book covers?
Am I allowed to say my own? I love the “Impossible Creatures” covers, both the American and British ones. I also adore the original “Jaws” book cover.
Q. Do you listen to audiobooks? If so, are there any titles or narrators you’d recommend?
I love Timothy West’s reading of the Anthony Trollope’s Barchester novels – he’s just superb. So rich and varied, and a gift to the ear.
Q. Do you have a favorite book or books?
I think my favourite adult novel is “Emma,” by Jane Austen. But I also love, wildly, Hilary Mantel’s “Wolf Hall,” Marilynne Robinson’s “Gilead,” Vladimir Nabokov’s “Pale Fire,” James Baldwin’s “Go Tell It on the Mountain.”
I love murder mysteries: Dorothy L. Sayers and Josephine Tey, especially. And for children, there’s such a wealth of glories: J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis, Philip Pullman, Tove Jansson, E.B. White, and now B.B. Alston and Katherine Applegate and Kate DiCamillo. Such wonders await them if we can get the books into children’s hands.
Q. What’s something about your book that no one knows?
One of the scenes in “Impossible Creatures” is stolen from a moment when, as research for a book, I took lessons in the flying trapeze. I saw a very talented acrobat land badly, and bend her little finger all the way back to the wrist. She was absolutely fine later, and cheerfully casual about it in the way that trapeze artists are. But I stole that fleeting moment for my book, when Mal is learning how to fly with her flying coat; she bends her little finger all the way back to the wrist. Novelists are alarmingly like magpies: always stealing snippets, pieces that shine, from the world around them.
Q. If you could tell your readers something, what would it be?
I would say, thank you. I’m so grateful for the way readers have embraced the book – it’s been a real colossal delight. My favorite thing has been when children come up to me and say, “I know it’s not real. Obviously, it’s not real: it’s just a book. But … just to check … is it real?”
This post was originally published on here
