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Oxdemugopihales
Dec. 30th, 2009 09:02 amIt was bin night last night, thank goodness. The prawn and bug shells from Christmas lunch were getting a bit ripe.
I'm reading The Whisperer by Fiona McIntosh, a young adult novel set in that mediaeval hinterland where so many fantasy novels are set. I'm surprised the characters from all these books don't run into each other while they're out and about on their divers quests. The characters in the current book have just sat down to a feast featuring their equivalent of turducken: roast ox stuffed with deer stuffed with mutton stuffed with goat stuffed with pig stuffed with hares stuffed with voles. Guess what I'm serving next Christmas!* If only it were called oxdemugopihales.
The interesting thing (well, interesting to me) is the author is Australian, but all those animals are European, as is the general setting. Why no kangaroo stuffed with koala stuffed with eastern barred bandicoot eaten under the shade of a coolibah tree? Or elephant stuffed with zebra stuffed with warthog? It's as though fantasy needs a common geography, an ur-map imprinted on its readers.
* Crayfish, probably.
I'm reading The Whisperer by Fiona McIntosh, a young adult novel set in that mediaeval hinterland where so many fantasy novels are set. I'm surprised the characters from all these books don't run into each other while they're out and about on their divers quests. The characters in the current book have just sat down to a feast featuring their equivalent of turducken: roast ox stuffed with deer stuffed with mutton stuffed with goat stuffed with pig stuffed with hares stuffed with voles. Guess what I'm serving next Christmas!* If only it were called oxdemugopihales.
The interesting thing (well, interesting to me) is the author is Australian, but all those animals are European, as is the general setting. Why no kangaroo stuffed with koala stuffed with eastern barred bandicoot eaten under the shade of a coolibah tree? Or elephant stuffed with zebra stuffed with warthog? It's as though fantasy needs a common geography, an ur-map imprinted on its readers.
* Crayfish, probably.