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tasharobinson 's review for:
The Brothers Lionheart
by Astrid Lindgren
It's fascinating to see how many international reviews this book has, far more than any other book I've seen on Goodreads. Thanks to Google Translate, I've read reviews of it in Spanish, Indonesian, Swedish, and Arabic. And it's especially interesting how many of them say roughly the same thing: this is a magical and compelling book, but given how it romanticizes death and particularly suicide as something sweet and brave, it's hard to imagine giving this to a child to read. The book starts when two young brothers die — one of lifelong chronic illness, the other sacrificing his life to save the first from a fire. They go on to a sort of Narnia-esque afterlife, in an idyllic world where they have their own house and land and horses, and where the sickly younger brother has a healthy body with working legs. But as with Narnia, there's evil and adventure, in this case from a neighboring valley ruled by a rapacious tyrant, and it pulls the two brothers in. This is a very sentimental book, largely aimed at kids — Swedish author Astrid Lindgren, of the Pippi Longstocking books and Ronia the Robber's Daughter (one of my favorite childhood novels), really lays on the colorful description of the world of Nangiyala, and emphasizes how much fun it would be for a 9-year-old to live like an adult, with his own home and horse and hearth. (It's interesting that the two brothers are extremely affectionate and devoted to each other, and the younger one in particular can't bear to be apart from the older, but once they've both moved on to Nangiyala, they never once mention their mother again — possibly because there's no good way to romanticize a mother losing both of her children in rapid succession.) But this is also very much a book about courage, and how the timid younger brother, who's spent his entire life disabled and in bed, learns to be brave in order to save his older brother, and then save the valley where they live. It's just very odd to my sensibilities — and apparently to many other sensibilities around the globe — that the ultimate expression of that bravery involves committing suicide, and helping his brother die, so they can go on to the NEXT afterlife together.