"Theodora Goss - Pip and the Fairies" - читать интересную книгу автора (Goss Theodora)

Pip and the Fairies
By Theodora Goss, illustration by Susan Moore

3 October 2005




"Why, you're Pip!"


She has gotten used to this, since the documentary. She could have refused to
be interviewed, she supposes. But it would have seemed—ungrateful,
ungracious, particularly after the funeral.


"Susan Lawson," read the obituary, "beloved author of Pip and the Fairies, Pip
Meets the Thorn King, Pip Makes Three Wishes, and other Pip books, of ovarian
cancer. Ms. Lawson, who was sixty-four, is survived by a daughter, Philippa. In
lieu of flowers, donations should be sent to the Susan Lawson Cancer Research
Fund." Anne had written that.


"Would you like me to sign something?" she asks.


White hair, reading glasses on a chain around her neck—too old to be a mother.
Perhaps a librarian? Let her be a librarian, thinks Philippa. Once, a collector asked
her to sign the entire series, from Pip and the Fairies to Pip Says Goodbye.


"That would be so kind of you. For my granddaughter Emily." A grandmother,
holding out Pip Learns to Fish and Under the Hawthorns. She signs them both
"To Emily, may she find her own fairyland. From Philippa Lawson (Pip)."
This is the sort of thing people like: the implication that, despite their minivans
and microwaves, if they found the door in the wall, they too could enter
fairyland.


"So," the interviewer asked her, smiling indulgently, the way parents smile at
their children's beliefs in Santa Claus, "did you really meet the Thorn King? Do
you think you could get me an interview?"


And she answered as he, and the parents who had purchased the boxed set,
were expecting. "I'm afraid the Thorn King is a very private person. But I'll
mention that you were interested." Being Pip, after all these years.


Maintaining the persona.