Unwilling Players in the English Symphony – Max Porter’s ‘Lanny’ Book Review and Analysis

Disclaimer: this review will contain quotes and specific events from the book without explicit spoiler warnings. Read with discretion.

If there was ever a book, a poem, a play, that made me reconsider the relationship that we have with nature and each other, all three of those would be Max Porter’s ‘Lanny.’

‘Magical’ doesn’t even begin to describe the way that Porter uses poetic prose, twisting narrative elements, and the fluent language of emotion, control, and art, in such a way to paint the portrait of a small traditional English village with such blatant but invisible secrets. Indeed, this small book contains infinite stories, an “English Symphony” through which the godly figure of Dead Papa Toothwort – an ominous yet somehow relatable omniscient figure – rifles and meddles in the pursuit of entertainment.

From the very beginning of the tale, we view the village as a stage upon which Toothwort wakes and immediately scrolls through, the way a playwright or novelist or poet might scroll through ‘to be written’ post-it notes, picking what he will indulge with his creative and destructive power. His mystery coupled with his historical-legendary identity makes for a conflicting outlook, but we don’t dwell on it longer than it takes him to find the sound of his ‘favourite.’

Lanny.

Toothwort visually sorts through the curling lines of stray dialogue, forming it into poetic verses until everything ‘human’ about the village is under his watchful ear. A Symphony, rather than a cacophony of unrelated, relatable speech. And in the middle of it all, his favourite sound of all, which by association, becomes ours as well.

Ironically, throughout the book we don’t get to hear Lanny’s point of view, his ‘song’ is always reported through the other three characters or Toothwort himself. Toothwort looks for him with an almost predatory eye, and when it comes time for the English Symphony to begin, he resorts to chaos instead of the perfect order he previously set up. The dominoes, deprived of their quirky, yet central, piece, start to fall.

At first the village hums, then sings, with a life he composed just for it.

And Toothwort can’t help but stand back and watch as a set of recognisable characters, previously divided based on their own personal prejudices, swarm around a newfound purpose – finding the boy.

Lanny

Part 1

Among them all, a resident outcast, who flaunts the traditional village with his eccentricity and humility. An artist, who offends by creating. Spinning tales of Toothwort to Lanny, he unwillingly leads Lanny toward the god-like character.

Toothwort’s invisibility momentarily falls away:

Do You believe in Dead Papa Toothwort?

Eh?

He Lives in the woods. I believe in him. I’ve seen him.

I change the subject.

Otherwise, Toothwort is rather vocal in this part, though never seen through the eyes of other characters. The lack of speech indicators not only give the narration a stream-of-thought feel, but give us multiple points view, both internal and external. In between, he is a ‘dark attentive voyeur’ like us. This makes understanding the events very easy, as we believe at first that we know everything too, and lulls us as well as the characters into a false sense of security that nevertheless continues to pull us deeper and deeper into this vibrantly still village.

This stillness becomes even more impressive by the end, as we come to understand just how much was hidden beneath and above and throughout it.

We have missed so much by seeing everything.

We haven’t been paying attention to the most important instrument – the favourite instrument – in the English symphony.

Lanny.

It was written. He’s been here as long as there has been a here. He was young once, when this island was freshly formed. Nobody was truly born here, apart from him.

Just before Lanny disappeared, these words were spoken and subsequently dismissed, but the speaker (a professed madwoman called Peggy) should be listened to not only by the characters, but also by us, the readers. It feels like she’s speaking directly to us, and this is a common occurrence in the book, teaching us that if everyone has a voice, it should be listened to with the same respect as any other, especially those on the edges of society.

Even the things that are not said are owed some credibility.

Peggy ties the fate of the village in to the natural history of England, forcing us to consider that we are also part of the Symphony, the bigger picture, any other artistic word to describe the way that nature and history, magic and humanity, are intertwined.

And at the centre and start of it all, a boy.

Keep this idea in mind.

Part 2

If there is one word you should take away from this book, it is the word ‘listen.’ If we all listened, we would then be able to see. If we could all see, maybe all of the bad things wouldn’t have happened.

At least, that’s what I think.

He has done this before but never with such sincerity. He means this terrible thing. He’s meant it forever. He makes a once-in-a-century effort, whistling his dream into being, setting the village up for its big moment. By the time he gets to the edge of the woods he has crumpled into nothing more than whiff or a suggestion, he is only silent warm crepuscular danger, and the badgers and owls have seen this before, and they know not to greet him, but to hide.

This is the last we hear in part 1, and the last we hear of Toothwort (except from Peggy), and Lanny has already vanished, but we don’t know that yet. Nobody does. Except Toothwort, the owls and the badgers, because they have seen this before.

Maybe we should be hiding as well.

Maybe we should put the book down, leave it there, with a boy and the woods and an art teacher and a family that could be happier but isn’t unhappy enough yet. But, like Toothwort, the reader-writer-director god, we love chaos and tragedy, so we read on.

Part Two, or Act Two, begins with the same poem by Lanny’s mum, except now in fragments. This is the only indicator we have of speaker, as the section headings have disappeared. All we have to go on now are voice, which Porter has expertly crafted in Part 1 so that is a simple feat.

Peggy’s stood in the dark at her gate, watching.

The first thing we see in part 2 is an exchange between Lanny’s Mum and a neighbour, Mrs Larton. The perspective switches between the two women intermittently, until it becomes too difficult to tell what is actually going on, but we at least know how both women think is happening, based on their preconceptions about each other.

Look me in the eye and tell me it’s not exciting, the whole country watching.

The rest of this Part should be read in the same way, driving home the truth that I believe this book is trying to get across: you never know what is going on, you just think you do. Everyone always thinks they know every single thing about every single thing, and if they don’t, it doesn’t exist. Otherwise, it’s entertainment, a game we don’t have any skin in, but we’re background characters, excited to be watched and listened to by something, someone, the country, the world, an audience, a god. This is why we love tragedies, only when we’re not the heroes.

Peggy kneels and places her ancient hands on the acorn-garland…

I know you.
I know what you’re up to.
Give they boy back.

And then just before the end of Part 2.

Listening for endings.

Waiting.

I believe Peggy, an old madwoman on the edges of the village, reduced only to her madness and her gate, is such a character in the life of the village that she refuses to be a character in the book.

She refuses outwardly to succumb to the attention of the world, letting it change her the way it changes other characters in the book. She remains vigilant by her gate, praying, seeing, knowing that Toothwort is at fault and knowing no matter what else the world sees this performance has to end at some point. She will not play along, only wait. Because just like the owls and the badgers, she has seen this before.

Only she is not hiding.

Part 3

Of course.

He is a child.

What to say about Part 3/Act 3 that can be explained without reading?

Pretty much as soon as the three main narrators wake, the truth of the whole ordeal becomes so so clear, it was a performance after all, only it’s not over as it was also, above all, a test.

Here I think I ought to be very brief, it would be a disservice to describe the ending of a book that still makes me so emotional. But if you do choose to read this, and get to the end, I hope you will keep in mind what I have said — or not, I’m pretty sure Porter did a much better job making every reader put the book down every few pages and just sit staring at a wall or a plant and then inevitably pick it back up again. I know I have never picked it up without finishing it in that same sitting.

Lanny Greentree, you remind me of me.

I will spare the details for your own reading, but I must say Peggy’s prologue is probably the most peaceful resolution to admittedly the most chaotic series of events in the recent history of the village, and it is only because of her stoicism that it is so. We can only wonder, after the book is gone, and Toothwort sleeps again, who and when and where he will find his entertainment next.

Conclusion

There are many things I would like to say about this book that I must sadly leave to the pencilled-in annotations and lost post-it notes in my old English Lit coursework folder. The short of it is this: there is more than one story in this book, but that’s nothing new. Sure, there is a plot, three plots in fact, and a godly omniscient subplot which is also the writer, and alongside that a whole symphony of stories that we read even when we put the book down.

This is an anthology of people, not characters, and it’s a simple feat to find yourself in it tucked into a corner of the orchestra, or tucke dunder a leaf clinging to a piece of moss, waiting for ending, or maybe beginnings.

Maybe you’re hiding in the book between the lines, which is just as well. Toothwort will be less interested in you that way.