ABSTRACT
Literature changes lives, our lives, as well as dramatising, in its plots and those irreversible and unforgettable moments of suddenly enhanced perception, the life-changing effects on people within texts. The distinction is between narrative as empty fantasy, manipulative and merely lying for routine and other purposes, and narrative as ‘nourishing’ and ‘feeding’: and it is literature of that kind that changes lives, as it changes the lives of the Harpies. Harpies guard and harry the ghosts in the region and when Lyra offers to tell them a story to make the Harpies let them through to search for her friend she thinks she’s on safe ground, being used to spinning lies.
