This one's the first Philip Pullman that I've tried out. This author is an amazing story teller! I brought the book recently, along with his Dark Materials trilogy. I wanted to compare his writings in both the scenarios taken the fact that this one's not a science fiction. It's based in the 19th century London, and describes perfectly well, the situation and the circumstances during those times. The imagery for my imaginary eye was brilliant. I could totally imagine the various scenarios described in this book.
The following is what I made out from the book. The protagonist, Sally Lockhart, belongs to the capitalist society. She's rich. A lady. And is well off with her life, settled perfectly well, surrounded by her family, friends. It takes a single push that suddenly threatens her entire life, and she comes face to face to the reality, the horrors, of the poor. What makes a difference, are the choices that she makes. As the book goes forth, it tell us, that yes, even if she belongs to the richer side of the society, she would count as 'evil' only if she chose to cast a blind eye at those horrors. She chooses not to. At the same time, she is struggling with her own problem, a fight against a man she has no clue about, who suddenly wants to steal away everything that Sally has; even her own daughter.
Pullman has described all to well what she might have been going through. Sally Lockhart is the protagonist of these other two books too, that he has written. I presume I should have read them first, for Sally was younger then.
It's a true fact, whenever I read a book, I always end up doing something extremely crazy and reckless, within 5 hours of reading its last word. I was pretty calm by the time this book ended though. But yes, I certainly decided on some things. There were certain things that I was doing, and I always chose to look past it. If I see the bigger picture, I am a criminal. It's only if I stand up, face it, that I'd be able to think of myself as a good person.
Another fact that I adored about this particular character, Sally, is that despite being a brave, and in some ways, even notorious, she kept her calm, remained strong, for herself and others. A perfect lady, in all senses. I love the ending of this book. It gave me hope. Hope, that there are good people out there, in this world, no matter how difficult a situation might be. And I also realised, that these good people were the bad ones too, who chose to differ, and to take the correct choices, even though they were difficult. That's what made the bad, the good.