Rating: 5/5
Bastian Balthazar Bux is constantly bullied. They call him “screwball” and “nitwit”, “braggart” and “liar”. He is small and fat and sad and continuously dismayed. His mother died a few years ago, and left his father a changed man. Mr Bux was not at all mean to his son; he loved him very much, and gave him everything he could want on the outside. But he did not show interest in what Bastian had to say, and even if he wanted to, he was too busy with his work to be able to.
But one day, all this changed: in fact, no, none of this changed that day, but Bastian forgot about his worries momentarily while immersed in the pages of an old book. He found this book – no, took it, but he had his reasons – in the old bookshop of Carl Conrad Coreander. He had been talking to the grumpy old man when he suddenly had to answer the telephone; and then he saw it, glanced behind at the back room where Mr Coreander was snapping away, and then snatched it and hid it in his coat. He didn’t want to be a thief, but he thought that surely someone would understand that this book was calling to him, asking him to read it, and Bastian – having a great passion for novels – pushed aside his second, third, and fourth thoughts and hurried out of the shop with it. And the book? Oh, yes. The book was called The Neverending Story.
And the plot? Ah, of course. It was all centred on a boy of Bastian’s age, but nothing like Bastian at all (or so Bastian thought). He had flowing blue-back hair combed backward from a pointed widow’s peak, a slim figure with handsome mucles, and white war-paint pasted over his face in dots and stripes and circles. He had been sent on a mission to save the Childlike Empress herself, for she was ill – very ill – and if she died, so would all of the realm of Fantastica. And already, it was beginning to disintegrate. There were patches of Nothing everywhere. Indescribable patches of Nothing: not patches of white, or patches of invisibility, because that would be something at least. There was absolute Nothingness.
But, as he soon finds out, Atreyu (for that was the beautiful boy’s name) cannot complete the Quest of curing the Childlike Empress himself. This is because she desperately needs a new name, and he has not the abilities to give her one. But Bastian – well, Bastian knows he can. He loves inventing stories and personalities and names and appearances. But he is in the Outer World, not Fantastica, and he can’t enter it.
That is, unless Atreyu helps him.
Character development is an important thing in The Neverending Story; Bastian, who we grow to like very much as a fat, shy bookworm, turns into a nice yet bossy, smug and arrogant boy who likes to show off his pride in his strength and agility. And Atreyu, grave and serious and wise, changes into a boy of continuous worry and concern for not himself but Bastian, who is getting ahead of himself and his quest.
Full of “perhaps”es and “maybe”s, the world of Fantastica was once falling into decay. It seemed that it would become well again at first; but will it?