![]() Young Diamond has that quiet wisdom of a serious child which so often shocks adults. When Diamond, the boy, is well he is very loved by his poor parents, and they live in the barn with his namesake, an old horse named Diamond who pulls the handsome cab for young Diamond’s father the cabman. You know from the beginning that this child will die… will be ultimately carried away to the Back of the North Wind. He presumably needs mothering while he is in the feverish ‘ride’ of an overcoming sickness that leaves him unconscious of his own Mother’s nursing of him for long days. As you read this you find yourself substituting the idea of sickness, and even death for every ride the boy takes in the arms of North Wind. ![]() The North Wind is personified as a beautiful lady, who mothers a young boy. The title, and the whole story, is a metaphor for death. I don’t know if the impact of the book could have been absorbed by me if I’d read it as a child. Though Fantasy tales have been around forever, MacDonald is seen as one of the pioneers of the written genre. And, that is what they both could best be considered, fairy tales for adults. I read it first in my thirties, along with another of his works, Phantastes: A Faerie Romance for Men and Women. ![]() But, don’t think of it as a children’s book, though it is simple enough in writing structure for the young to read. When the Angels Are Too Happy to Sing SenseĪt the Back of the North Wind is an enchanting book written as a fairy tale composed of fairy tales and nursery rhymes that sing and dream. ![]()
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