Reading Wednesday

[sabotabby]

Just finished: The River Has Roots by Amal El-Mohtar. This one has been on my list forever just because of the author, so I never looked up what it was about or anything like that. If I had, I'd have read it sooner. It's a queer feminist retelling of "The Two Sisters"/"The Twa Sisters," a.k.a. Loreena McKennitt's "The Bonny Swans," which I loved as a teenage goth and still love as an adult goth. It's so immersive in its writing that I somehow failed to connect there being two daughters with one suitor, a miller with a daughter, a river, a land dispute, and a harper until about halfway through when the realization hit that El-Mohtar is at least goth-adjacent and approximately my age lol. 

Anyway, it's about Esther and Ysabel, two sisters whose family owns a willow grove (willow being used for "grammar," a.k.a. magic) downstream from Faerie. Esther is being courted by the village incel but is in love with Rin, a shapeshifting Fae who plays the harp and has become enchanted by Esther's singing. Esther would kill or die for her younger sister, and the bond between them is gorgeously written.

Tangentially, "The Bonny Swans" always confused me as a kid because it's stitched together from a bunch of versions of the story, so the father is a farmer in the first verse but the king in the last, and it's unclear whether what the miller's daughter pulls from the river is a swan or a woman, and the novella actually goes a fair way to resolving some of these contradictions. But I also noticed that this is low-key a trans narrative, because in the first verse the farmer has "daughters, one two three," and in the last verse there's no middle daughter, but there's a brother named Hugh. This particular story just leaves out the middle child but there's a free plot idea for you if you want one.

Sour Cherry by Natalia Theodoridou. Apparently feminist fairy tale retellings is the Nebula theme this year. This is Bluebeard; a modern day woman telling a story to her son about his father, flashing back to a dreamy narrative about a man who curses the land wherever he goes. It's haunting and poetic and unflinching in its depiction of not just domestic abuse but why women stay in abusive relationships. I thought it dragged at the end but was so well-written that I'd absolutely recommend it.

Currently reading: Here Where We Live Is Our Country by Molly Crabapple. I just started this last night after pre-ordering it the second I knew of its existence. It's a detailed, illustrated history of the Jewish Bund and the concept of "doikayt," or hereness, the formation of Jewish identity in the diaspora. Obviously this is very relevant and very up my alley and this is the right person to tell the story.

Comments

[greylock]

Tangentially, "The Bonny Swans" always confused me as a kid because it's stitched together from a bunch of versions of the story,

The older I get, the less "fairy tales" make sense. Even after you know the backgrounds.

The Bible never made sense either.

[sabotabby]

Fairy tales make emotional sense, not rational sense.

[greylock]

I will not lie, I paused to argue... and thought about it.

[sovay]

It's so immersive in its writing that I somehow failed to connect there being two daughters with one suitor, a miller with a daughter, a river, a land dispute, and a harper until about halfway through when the realization hit that El-Mohtar is at least goth-adjacent and approximately my age lol.

She and Jessica P. Wick co-edited Goblin Fruit from 2006 to 2016. She is absolutely familiar with the ballad.

It's a queer feminist retelling of "The Two Sisters"/"The Twa Sisters," a.k.a. Loreena McKennitt's "The Bonny Swans," which I loved as a teenage goth and still love as an adult goth.

I had just been listening to Clannad's "Two Sisters" (1976) in memoriam Moya Brennan.

(I do not love "The Bonny Swans" in the same way as other versions of the ballad, even though I used the swan motif in a very loose retelling of my own once. Patricia C. Wrede would be the first author I saw pick narratively up on the third sister. She was almost certainly inspired by McKennitt: "And then, in late 1994, I heard a new version that referred to the king's three daughters in the first line." I used to sing the weird bleak version I learned from the singing of Roger Wilson, which also has three sisters. It's in direct descent from Bradley Kincaid, who in 1928 is the oldest recorded version I have heard as opposed to read. That one offers you four sisters if you feel like it, but as far as I know no one ever has.)

[sabotabby]

They're all good versions. I feel like the beaver hat is a particularly nice touch.

[sovay]

I feel like the beaver hat is a particularly nice touch.

Yes! It's an amazing touch of time.

[springheel_jack]

i've forgotten why we all didn't like molly crabapple at one point. i feel like there was a reason.

[sabotabby]

There was? I can't remember.