the sunday lit: October 2019

"Bad fates do not always follow those who deserve them."

The cover of this book simply grabbed my attention and wouldn't let go. Then I read the synopsis and was hook completely.

I have never read any books by Leigh Bardugo, and learning that this one was a part of her Grishaverse was a bit of a snag in my plan to add it to my autumn reading pile. I was really worried I'd have to read all the books in the universe in order to understand it, but lo and behold - it's not necessary. These are fairytales that Ms Bardugo imagined her characters reading as children, the stories that shaped their childhoods - just like Cinderella, Snow White, etc. shaped ours.

And here we have six stories that are different takes on classics like Beauty and the Beast, Little Mermaid, Hansel and Gretel and others. All the stories are more spooky, have different, more realistic outcomes as well and just a bit of flair that, in my opinion, makes them better thank the originals.

1) Ayama and the Thorn Wood is a mix of Minotaur from the Greek stories, Beauty and the Beast (but the Beauty isn't really beautiful), Scheherazade and Cinderella. The King and Queen had a disfigured son, born on the night of a blood moon, whom the King captured and put in a labyrinth. When he grew up, the Beast escaped and began terrorizing the villagers. On the same night, a girl was born who was so beautiful no one could believe she was born to her ordinary parents... but this is not her story. This is the story of her younger sister, Ayama, a girl so plain her parents treated her like a servant, making her do all the housework and sleep in the soot near the fireplace. When the King asked for a brave volunteer to go to the Beast and negotiate, Ayama's grandmother said she should go... And so she did, several times. And each time she'd tell the beast a story, he'd promise to honor their bargain and she'd leave... Except the last time.

"Few can resist the sight of a pretty girl crying."

2) The Too-Clever Fox is I suppose a conglomeration of all the foxes in the stories we were read. The clever fox who always finds a way is a popular trope, and here the fox is just too clever for its ow good. Koja is an ugly fox with a patchy coat that barely survived his birth -there he sweet-talked his mother out of eating him. He used his smarts to survive, to steal chicken, get out of traps and form alliances. But when a terrible hunter Jurek comes to their forest and animals start disappearing, he is summoned by the others to save them. He befriends the hunter's sister Sofiya and tries to get her to betray her brother... never even doubting his cleverness, never thinking that the worst of monsters hide under the nicest of smiles.

"She had given herself to a monster, in the hope of saving just one girl."

3) The Witch of Duva is a take on Hansel & Gretel, but with quite a few differences. The girls near the Duva forest used to disappear a long time ago, but when a terrible winter came, the wood became hungry again and soon it was happening again... Amidst the chaos, Nadya's mother dies and her father falls into despair over not having enough work and therefore money. Soon, though, he remarries and his new wife, Karina, starts to interfere in their life. She won't led Nadya and her father be alone, she sends the girl away from home and tries to make her miserable... One night, after going out to hunt something for dinner, Nadya stumbles upon a little house in the woods and there finds a witch... The witch takes her under her wing, starts teaching her things and soon, time flies by and she's been there for quite a while... When an enchantment helps her get home she witnesses something she never imagined, not in her wildest dreams... Nothing is as it seems.

"Remember that to use a thing is not to own it."

4) Little Knife tells the story of a cursed village where travelers dare not go. A long time ago, a beautiful daughter, Yeva, was born to a rich duke. She was such an astonishing beauty that the midwife tried to steal her when she was born... Later on, her father hired a blind nursemaid to care for her, and she was prohibited from leaving the house as a riot would break out every time she'd step foot outside and the men saw her... Her father decided he could use her to his advantage and created little contests for men who wanted her hand in marriage. (All the tasks benefited him.) Among the suitors was a Tidemaker, Semyon, who could speak to the river in town, whom he named Little Knife... The river helped him achieve all the tasks... but he kept asking for more, feeling suddenly entitled to her help and to Yeva's hand in marriage... The story does not lead to a happy ending for him, however, though Yeva did live out her days a s a free woman, happy at last.

"He'd fought bravely, and yet somehow, he always ended up here ,alone in the dark."

5) The Soldier Prince is the penultimate story, and is the Grishaverse version of The Nutcracker. Droessen is a doll maker who is famous for his inventions, as they all seem to possess a bit of magic. He is invited to all the social gatherings but still people look at him with suspicion because his power makes them wary. Alas, all he wants is a wife and knowing that he cannot just marry one of the women who are richer than him, he decides to groom one. He makes a nutcracker and gives it to Claire, telling her to confess all her secret, her wants and desires to it... Over time, the nutcracker becomes a confidante of Claire's, and even as she grows into a young woman, she still takes the soldier up to the attic where he is her price who takes her to an enchanted land far away from home... But the nutcracker has no recollection of who he is, he just knows that he is hers.. and that the Rat King who is giving him such kind advice is supposed to be an enemy. But when the soldier decides that he wants to be real, to be more than just Claire's toy, can he fulfill his goal or stay a playmate forever?

"I was not made to please princes."

6) When Water Sang Fire is the last story, a version of The Little Mermaid that makes who you thought was a hero into the villain, and makes to villain sympathetic, giving the backstory people never think a villain would have. Ulla is a Sildroher (mermaid) who is very powerful, her songs are the best in her class and her talent is innate. But she has dark hair and pale skin, her classmates teasing her that she was conceived when her mother was on land, that she was a halfling... One day she makes a friend, Signy, who was forced to sing with her - and when they made powerful magic together they simply clicked. Years later, they are invited to sing at the palace where they meet Roffe, a lazy but ambitious youngest prince who charms them into coming to the land with him. There he is supposed to find a gift for his father that would be the best of all his brothers in order to win the throne. He makes Ulla and Signy perform magic that creates a fire that can be sustained underwater, injuring Ulla in the process and stranding her on land. He and Signy leave, becoming king a queen, and Ulla hides in a a cave, waiting for desperate people who are willing to strike bargains, willing to give up what is most dear to them, waiting for one of the princesses to inevitably visit her...

And that is all. I hope you pick up the book because it is a beautiful collection of both words and illustrations. And sometimes fairytales are for adults, too.

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"So many pebbles on that beach - millions - all of them worn smooth by the sea's relentless grinding, but not this one. This one had stayed sharp."

I love this book. I love, love, love this book. Despite not being really into the Homer's epics (I know the basic story of both 'Illiad' and 'The Oddyssey' and have read parts while in school - that type of writing is just hard for me to get through) I absolutely adored this amazing retelling.

What grabbed my attention was the premise - the story of the sacking of Troy told though a woman. What? Did I read that correctly? I am always interested in reading women's stories written by women so this was right up my alley. And when I started reading it, I knew I was in for a treat. And what a treat it was...

"The death of young men in battle is a tragedy - but theirs is not the worst fate."

The novel tells the story of Trojan women enslaved by the Greek soldiers during the sacking of the city of Troy. We all know the famous "beauty that launched a thousand ships" story of Helen, Paris and Menelaus. But here, a story of a less-though-of woman is presented. Briseis, queen of Lyrnassus, is taken as a slave after her city is destroyed and she is given as a gift to Achilles to be his bed-girl. That night, terrified at having been given as a plaything to a man who she had witnessed killing her brothers and her husband, she surrenders her body but tries to keep her mind sharp. "He fucked as quickly as he killed" she says of the famous hero, "and for me it was the same thing. Something in me died that night."

Endless days of serving the soldiers, helping out in the camp hospital and then nights spent in his bed are presented so vividly, I felt as if I was living them. I could feel her tension, the battle raging inside her - she had to help these monsters, her enemies and inside she felt as if she was losing pieces of herself each day.

"'Silence becomes a woman.' Every woman I've ever known was brought up on that saying."

I'm not going to retell the whole storyline. You may already know it from reading the original, or some parts may be new to you. My intention here is to tell you how this story made me feel. And it made me enraged. I am furious at how easily we forget the sacrifices of women, how easily we silence them and invalidate their stories. It always felt to me, even in my own life, while listening to the stories of my ancestors, that people believed women were made to suffer. Somehow, suffering was a burden they had to bear and they had to do it silently. But the stories everyone remembers and tells are the stories of brave men and their sacrifices. Why are theirs so much more regarded and respected? Why is a man who lost his life braver than a woman who lost her husband, her sons, her daughter to rape, lost herself? And then bore it silently, believing it was just her lot in life for being born female...

Another part of this novel that I was drawn to was the characterization of Achilles. He is a mighty warrior and a fierce and respected leader of his Myrmidons. But he is also "not a man at all but an angry child". His mother, the nymph Thetis, abandoned him and his father when he was a small child and this caused him to stop growing. He was so dependent on her that his development simply stopped. Later on, Patroclys came into his life and took up the role his mother had. But it was never the same... He never truly developed, and all his skill at killing was borne out of anger for his mother's abandonment. In a small window we get into Thetis's thoughts she says he grew up "saturated in her grief" because she knew he was mortal, and mourned him from his birth.

"Yes, yes, but what next? And suddenly he knows: nothing, nothing comes next, because that's it, that is the end - it's been there all along, only he hasn't been ready to see it."

Achilles remained a child. When Agamemnon takes Brieis away from him, after giving his "prize" back to her father, he refuses to help with the fighting because of the insult and the situation becomes dire. He won't go back to the battle even after allowing his soldier to go back, not even to inspire them and just watches from a distance. And, finally, the way he goes from day to day after Patroclys's death is so reminiscent of his life when Thetis left - he expresses his grief as he did when he was a child of six. No eating, no sleeping... he merely exists, shuffling from day to day, refusing to burn his friend's body because he cannot admit to himself that he is lost.

In the end, this is the story we don't hear too often - the story of humanity. The story of real people as they were during the war. Not the heroics, not the battles (those are not described) just the aftermath of destruction, of the hurt people cause each other, of the way we strip others of their dignity just because they are on some arbitrary "other side". The novel acknowledges this as well, mentioning that aeons later people will only talk of the heroes, no one will mention the atrocities, the rape, the humiliation, the monstrous killings... Just the glory of the victors, their bravery and their honor told by men over and over again.

But, luckily for us, the women are starting to tell their stories as well. No more silence of the girls.

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About Me

I blog from time to time about things that inspire me. Lately, I have been getting back into the habit of reading, and my posts reflect that. I'm also always trying to take pretty photos, with varying degrees of success.

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