Lud-In-The-Mist
1926
Lud-in-the-Mist is the city where the river Dapple, flowing down from the forbidden realm of Fairyland, meets the ordinary world. For centuries, the citizens of Dorimare have suppressed all memory of the fairy fruit that once graced their tables, banishing the mystical Duke Aubrey and declaring such things criminal. Now Nathaniel Chanticleer, the pragmatic mayor, faces a crisis: his young son Ranulph has eaten the forbidden fruit, and the boy's soul appears to be slipping away into the land of dreams. What begins as a father's desperate search for a cure becomes an odyssey through Dorimare's hushed history, forcing Nathaniel to confront the very fears he has spent his life outrunning. Mirrlees constructs a world that feels like a half-remembered fairy tale told by someone who also knows grief, weaving the numinous into the texture of daily life with an assurance that would influence fantasy for decades to come. This is a novel about what happens when the walls we build between ourselves and wonder start to crack, and the terrible, beautiful things that might come through.
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“Reason I know, is only a drug, and, as such, its effects are never permanent. But, like the juice of the poppy, it often gives a temporary relief.””
— Hope Mirrlees
“Pride and resentment are not indigenous to the human heart; and perhaps it is due to the gardener's innate love of the exotic that we take such pains to make them thrive.””
— Hope Mirrlees
“A house with old furniture has no need of ghosts to be haunted.””
— Hope Mirrlees
“You should regard each meeting with a friend as a sitting he is unwillingly giving you for a portrait - a portrait that, probably, when you or he die, will still be unfinished. And, though this is an absorbing pursuit, nevertheless, the painters are apt to end pessimists. For however handsome and merry may be the face, however rich may be the background, in the first rough sketch of each portrait, yet with every added stroke of the brush, with every tiny readjustment of the "values," with every modification of the chiaroscuro, the eyes looking out at you grow more disquieting. And, finally, it is your face that you are staring at in terror, as in a mirror by candlelight, when all the house is still.””
— Hope Mirrlees
“The country people, indeed, did not always clearly distinguish between the Fairies and the dead. They called them both the 'Silent People'; and the Milky Way they thought was the path along which the dead were carried to Fairyland.””
— Hope Mirrlees
“Why is Melancholy like Honey? Because it is very sweet, and it is culled from Flowers.””
— Hope Mirrlees
“A bad conscience makes a very good ghost.””
— Hope Mirrlees
“It was not so much a modification of the darkness, as a sigh of relief, a slight relaxing of tension, so that one , rather than saw, that the night had suddenly lost a shade of its density... ah! yes; there! between these two shoulders of the hills she is bleeding to death.””
— Hope Mirrlees
“...it is never safe to classify the souls of one's neighbors; one is apt, in the long run, to be proved a fool. You should regard each meeting with a friend as a sitting he is unwillingly giving you for a portrait -- a portrait that, probably, when you or he die, will still be unfinished. And, though this is an absorbing pursuit, nevertheless, the painters are apt to end pessimists. For however handsome and merry may be the face, however rich the background, in the first rough sketch of each portrait, yet with every added stroke of the brush, with every tiny readjustment of the 'values,' with every modification of the chiaroscuro, the eyes looking out at you grow more disquieting. And, finally, it is your face that you are staring at in terror, as in a mirror by candle-light, when all the house is still.””
— Hope Mirrlees
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<a href="https://lex-books.com/book/lud-in-the-mist-527526d3-1ef0-4d1f-b0d6-e0ac6a6628d5"><img src="https://lex-books.com/badges/read-on-lex.svg" alt="Read Lud-In-The-Mist by Hope Mirrlees free on Lex" width="160" height="40"></a>[](https://lex-books.com/book/lud-in-the-mist-527526d3-1ef0-4d1f-b0d6-e0ac6a6628d5)[url=https://lex-books.com/book/lud-in-the-mist-527526d3-1ef0-4d1f-b0d6-e0ac6a6628d5][img]https://lex-books.com/badges/read-on-lex.svg[/img][/url]Read Lud-In-The-Mist by Hope Mirrlees free on Lex: https://lex-books.com/book/lud-in-the-mist-527526d3-1ef0-4d1f-b0d6-e0ac6a6628d5Cite this book
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Mirrlees, Hope. Lud-In-The-Mist. Lex, lex-books.com/book/lud-in-the-mist-527526d3-1ef0-4d1f-b0d6-e0ac6a6628d5.Mirrlees, H. (1926). Lud-In-The-Mist. Lex. https://lex-books.com/book/lud-in-the-mist-527526d3-1ef0-4d1f-b0d6-e0ac6a6628d5Mirrlees, Hope. Lud-In-The-Mist. Lex. https://lex-books.com/book/lud-in-the-mist-527526d3-1ef0-4d1f-b0d6-e0ac6a6628d5.
