A Fantastic Creation

Title: The Dreamfighter and Other Creation Tales
Author: Ted Hughes
Published: 1995
Pages: 150

Reading Time: December 8-December 11, 2009.

Plot Teaser:
In these new creation stories by Ted Hughes, God is still hard at work fashioning his creatures, breathing life into his clay. He has some triumphant successes but as always there are mistakes and he has to keep his wits about him when the more tiresome inventions need conning into being something else. He is a brilliant, mischievous and wily God, brought to life himself in these mesmerizing tales by a master storyteller. Here is a collection that will enthrall Hughes's adult audience as well as younger readers.

How I Got It:
A friend of mine was looking to unload her own overstuffed book collection in 2008, and asked me to rifle through a hodgepodge box of stories. This was one of the books in that box, and I picked it up because I have always been interested in myth and fantasy, not to mention inventive stories involving God and creation.

The Review:
Apparently, this Ted Hughes fellow was a big deal in the United Kingdom. In 1984, he held the post of British Poet Laureate, which basically means he was the country's representative wordsmith. No pressure. He held this post and title until his death in 1998, having written numerous collections of poetry and children's books. Oh, he was also married to a woman named Sylvia Plath, but let us try to focus on his own works and accomplishments. Ahem.

To be frank, I had never heard of Ted Hughes before opening the covers of this short story collection. However, after going through this charming assortment of creation tales, I can certainly respect and understand why he has been held in such high esteem by the writing world. He has a very biting and wry style that make the stories in The Dreamfighter and Other Creation Tales a twisted pleasure to read. There is indeed mischief, misbehaviour, and plenty of misunderstandings that shed a light on the headaches that God likely would have encountered at the dawn of time. The collection I read has eleven stories in total; there is another edition of the book that has 360 pages, so I am assuming that one has a greater number of tales to be told. Regardless of which one you read, I am confident you will enjoy the playful theatrics housed therein.

As mentioned, these are meant to be children's stories, but they are written in such a matter-of-fact way and are so interesting that they are also appropriate for an adult audience. One can take the stories as straight forward entertainment, or he or she can find little nuggets of social and cultural insight as well. It is in this way the book transcends age boundaries.

The stories in this collection generally begin with a problem of some sort, and end with a resolution that is usually humourous. The endings also enlighten the reader about how a certain creature came to be, and how its habits were formed. For example, the ant on the cover of this book was originally a giant that grew larger and larger, as he took the job of being God's bodyguard; someone who would protect Him from His nightmares. As the nightmares eventually go away, the giant has no purpose, and becomes a really angry and unpleasant thing. To solve this problem, God creates a Snow Bride that melts into the crannies of the Earth. The giant is so eager to please and be useful to God, that he asks to be made small, so that he can search the earth to find God's Snow Bride. God turns the giant into the first ant, and this is why ants are scouring the Earth today and hiding in little dirt caves; they are looking for God's lost Snow Bride.

It is stories like the one above that brought a smile to my face throughout Ted Hughes' collection. There are demons, there is a trickster frog who invents gambling, a camel who feels like he is one of God's rejects, and God's mother even makes an appearance. The tales are highly imaginative, speculative, and there is hardly a dull moment in any of them. I can see myself reading these to my own children some day, and discussing the moral choices and implications of the decisions made by God's creations in these stories. Or just enjoying the humour.

The Verdict:
There is not much to complain about here. Hughes writes like someone who has been reading and telling stories his entire life, and regardless of whether or not you believe in an all-encompassing God or not, there is a good deal of charm and even some poking fun at the All Mighty, so that anyone can pick this up and enjoy it. While there does seem to be a favouring of the Abrahamic understanding of God in these stories, people of any faith should be able to appreciate the bite-sized-but-grander-than-grand stories of this collection.

4/5

Next Up:
The Best Christmas Pageant Ever by Barbara Robinson.