Sir Terry Pratchett passed away on March 12, 2015. An advocate of Assisted Dying, he nevertheless succumbed to the conditions of his Alzheimer’s Disease and died of natural causes.
For those of us on social media, these were the Tweets that alerted us:
I have written elsewhere on how this affected me. In short, despite knowing for several years that it was coming, it was still a blow.
For now, though, we are – with occasional digressions – going to look at The Shepherd’s Crown, the final Discworld novel, which was published on August 27, 2015.
In this novel, Tiffany Aching and her family, friends and associates must face a challenge that the reader may find heartbreakingly familiar: Granny Weatherwax has passed away and left the craft of witching without an ostensible leader. Granny, who spent years insisting that she was not a leader, devoted her life to making sure that things happened according to her own code of personal conduct and honour.
Her death leaves a figurative gap in Witchcraft and an actual gap in the hierarchy of witches.
Or, more accurately, the question is asked: who is going to take up residence in her cottage and carry on where she left off?
Tiffany considers putting herself forward for it – Granny even names her in her will – but stops when she realises just how much she loves her own home in The Chalk with all the challenges that it might bring: a move to Granny’s patch, the kingdom of Lancre, would be a change she doesn’t feel ready for. There’s also her growing relationship with Preston, whom she met during the events of I Shall Wear Midnight. So another rather more unconventional candidate is considered.
But amidst all this turmoil, an old foe has returned to the Discworld: cast out by her own subjects, Nightshade, the Queen of the Elves – met previously in Lords And Ladies and The Wee Free Men – has arrived at the home of the Nac Mac Feegle, the small blue protectors, guardians and general getters-in-the-way-of to Tiffany. Their first instinct is to kill her as she was responsible for them being thrown out of Fairyland in the first place but mercy – in the guise of Jeannie, their Kelda – persuades them otherwise…
In a perfect world, I would be saying that this last book was insightful as always, full of gripping characters and a wonderful story that races you to the end while illuminating some previously unconsidered facets of the human condition.
It is, as they say in the classics, a bit shit.
But it’s hard to pin down just what is wrong with save that, like the last couple of Discworld novels, it doesn’t “feel” quite like a Terry Pratchett novel.
The best explanation probably comes from Rob Wilkins, Sir Terry’s PA and Biographer. In his Afterword, Wilkins writes:
“The Shepherd’s Crown has a beginning, a middle and an end, and all the bits in between. Terry wrote all of those. But even so, it was, still, not quite as finished as he would have liked when he died.”
That’s the best explanation for it, I think: it wasn’t completely finished. It’s not a bad book, just not quite as good as what we were used to. The setting and plot is what we are used to but characters don’t quite sound like the characters we know and love.
It is wonderful, though.
But it begins with a farewell.
As I said above, Granny Weatherwax passes away early in the book: in the second chapter, to be precise. For those of us who were not spoiled it came as a complete surprise, though not wholly unexpected.
A. S. Byatt wrote a review of The Shepherd’s Crown for The Guardian. It was published on the day of the novel’s release. She mentioned that Granny died as part of her recounting of the story – and, as a driver of the plot, it would be hard to give any kind of accounting of the story without mentioning that one detail. She was eviscerated on social media by angry, mourning fans.
Frankly, though, I’m glad she did it. It was hard enough reading the book knowing that it was the last one: having that warning to brace yourself before beginning was a help. Of course, the dedication foreshadows this event, quite clearly:
For Esmerelda Weatherwax
– Mind how you go.
And Death visits her on page 36, helping her cross over just two pages later:
“Well, the journey was worth taking and I saw many wonderful things on the way, including you, my reliable friend. Shall we go now?”
MADAM, WE’VE ALREADY GONE.
Which, ten years later, still managed to bring a tear to my eye just in the typing of it for this post.
Personally, I think Byatt was in the right.
Because there’s a quite a lot of mourning for Granny across the Disc: Mustrum Ridcully, Archchancellor of Unseen University, flies immediately to Lancre to confirm the news and to pay his respects. Characters from all over the books are shown mourning the loss of a such a revered figure.
And then, because the story – and life – must go on, the plot resumes, touching on matters that Sir Terry deemed relevant to it: in this case, it was about growing older gracefully, or at least with dignity; dealing with toxic individuals in our lives; and finding a space in our world that we can live in, in a manner that we find acceptable.
I shan’t talk too much more about the plot because I have resolutely tried to avoid too many spoilers for these books – at least until the discussion of any sequel volumes makes it necessary – but mostly because I want to focus on the impact of this book.
We are all familiar with how the death of a celebrity affects the culture. For myself, the first celebrities that I am aware of “knowing something about” dying were Alfred Hitchcock and John Lennon, both in 1980. I was 10 at the time. I was aware of Hitchcock through The Three Investigator series of novels, as well as some of his anthologies. As a filmmaker I knew little of him, save that I had seen The Birds quite recently on television. Oh, and that he cameoed in all of his movies, the first artistic “quirk” by a creative type that I knew of.
I knew a little more about John Lennon because he had been a Beatle and had just released a new album with a couple of singles that were being played on high rotation on our local radio station.
Their deaths only touched me a little, because I was unfamiliar with a lot of their other work and had no “proper” connection to them as artists or individuals..
As I said way back at the start of this whole retrospective, I read my first Terry Pratchett novel at 15: his death occurred just shy of thirty years later, when I was three times the age I was when I’d first discovered him. I had read nearly everything he had written by then: certainly everything that had been published with a reasonably wide circulation: there were no other authors, or actors or musicians whom I’d followed so assiduously and consistently across so long a span of years.
Terry Pratchett was important.
To me, at least.
And I knew he was to others as well: I went to buy my copy of The Shepherd’s Crown on the day it was released. As I stood in the queue waiting to pay for it, I noticed that the guy standing behind me also had a copy. We grinned at each other, holding the books up to each other like a salute… then our faces fell as we realised that we were sharing the experience of buying the latest Discworld novel for the last time.
I never once considered leaving it alone, to keep it as a last unread treat, as a lot of fans have done, trying to keep the idea that there are more Discworld novels alive. I can understand and empathise with that idea, but it’s not for me. I mean, I’m not a literary leech that has to have every word or draft of an author’s corpus available to me, but if they have a completed novel that has been prepared for publication, I personally feel that it is a disservice to not read it.
So I did.
I went home and read large swathes of the book aloud to anyone who would listen: to my wife, who was also a fan, and then to our dogs, who were less interested but listened patiently anyway. And like so many of the other Discworld novels, this was a book that had sections crying out to be read aloud.
And which, when read aloud, did lead to crying.
Then, when it was finished I put it on the shelf, bringing it down a couple of years later for another read. Which affected me just as badly.
A second reread a few years after that was still as affecting, but it felt a little more positive: I don’t know a lot about mourning, but I do know that the spaces left empty from the people who leave never fill up again, but they are surrounded with memories that soften them.
My latest reread just a few months ago was still sad. Even collating pieces for this last post in the Retrospective brought a lump to my throat. But I think I’m largely over the worst now. Just as when I remember the people close to me who have left us, I can appreciate all the joy these books have brought me, without dwelling overlong on the pain that this last, final story gave.
Which is all that we can do, really.
But we are moving forward into a world that has gone ten years without Sir Terry Pratchett now. All that we have now are his words, which as we know, continue to keep him alive as long as they are spoken.
Therefore, to conclude this Retrospective I can really only think of one phrase from his work that sums up what I’ve learned from all his books about how we should approach the future.
They embrace a philosophy of care and warmth and love for others in all that you do.
So…
…Mind how you go.
And thank you, Sir Terry Pratchett (1948 – 2015)
Coming up next: Normal Stuff will resume at the end of April.
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