Review of The Carpet People by Terry Pratchett

Terry Pratchett is a household name—at least in Europe, and is yet gaining ground in the US. Millions of his books are still sold despite the near decade since his unfortunate passing. But every cake starts with a mixing bowl, which in Pratchett's case is the 1971 novel The Carpet People. Let's take a look.

The Carpet People tells the story of the Munrungs, a tribe of humans who call a vast carpet home. Led by the strong by stupid Glurk, they thankfully have his rational brother Snibril to help keep the ship afloat. And wise leadership is needed as threats, from monsters hiding in the carpet hairs to the phenomenon of Fray, randomly appear to wreck havoc on the Munrungs. An event of such magnitude transpires, however, which forces the Munrungs out of the established groove of their lives and into the wilds of the carpet, there to meet all manner of people and animals, savage to civilized. Can they co-exist?

Much of The Carpet People is a tour of Pratchett's fertile imagination. Glurk, Snibril, and the other Munrungs run into all manner of creatures, people, and societies on their journeys. Pratchett plays with commonly known horrors, novel creations, and the idea of mini-life in a carpet throughout their journey. Overall, the story is colorful, dynamic, and plays fast and loose (+/- 200 pages)—not unlike Pratchett's ouevre.

But it can be difficult to identify a through-line in The Carpet People. The Munrungs have all manner of adventures and encounters, but to what end? There are loose themes of civilization vs. barbarism (enlightenment), as well as the need for compromise, tolerance, and adaptation in terms of culture and society. Pratchett has immense fun with the trappings of all, from the idiocy of certain traditions to the absurdity of bureaucracy. That being said, the relative lucidity of theming in later Pratchett novels is stronger, a bit more detail needed to sharpen the undercurrent here.

Another struggle of the novel is character voice. It can be difficult to distinguish the Munrungs and the myriad of people they encounter. I understand this is comic fantasy and the literary pretension of fully singular, realistic character voices is not to be expected. That being said, the main characters are most often indistinguishable pawns to a tale. A bit more idiosyncrasy would have gone a long way.

Something readers may find uncomfortable is the relative freedom with which Pratchett plays with his world—emphasis on “relative”. On one hand, several of the things in the book can be tied to a micro-scale existence in a macro-scale piece of realia, e.g.. the carpet. Clearly there are full-sized humans living above on the carpet. On the other hand, not everything adheres to human physics. There are some “carpet physics” happening. Fantasy events in a fantasy world set in the real world makes for a weird combination—if you think about it too much. I don't recommend it. That being said, it's almost unavoidable given how the introduction of every neologism (and there are a fair few) gets the reader's mind turning: What real world thing is Pratchett riffing off of, if at all? This semi-slippery sense of relativism may not be to every readers liking, at least it wasn't to mine.

In the end, Terry Pratchett did not emerge from the writing womb fully fledged. The Carpet People is, no pun intended, rough around the edges. But the book is clearly Pratchett. The humor, the slap-stick shenanigans, and the human concerns are front and center. Remove the author's name from the cover and readers will, in a matter of a few pages, know who wrote the book. And so while I can't help but feel Pratchett left a bit on the floor (har har) in terms of utilizing a carpet as a setting, what's there is enjoyable and clearly seeded the fields of books which came.