Deathless.
May. 10th, 2011 12:38![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
starladyValente, Catherynne M. Deathless. New York: Tor Books, 2011.
With the proviso that I wouldn't know the story of Koschei the Deathless from a hole in the ground, this was an excellent, excellent book.rushthatspeaks's review of the book has the general outline of the traditional fairy tale, which as you might expect is very different from Valente's version.
For Valente's version takes place against the backdrop of the Russian Revolutions and the rise of the Soviet Union and its headlong rush to war with Germany, the war, after which no one will ever be the same. In Sankt Petersburg, which swiftly becomes Petrograd and then Leningrad, young Marya Morevna grows up watching her sisters be courted by birds turned into young men and knows that her day too will come. When it does, in the form of Koschei the Deathless, Marya is not abducted, but goes willingly, and it's a question of will--who will give theirs up to whom--between her and Koschei thereafter. Things go, if you squint, according to the old story, but also not: the real, not the calendar, twentieth century has begun.
Valente's been great at restoring agency to female characters in fairy tales since she started, but this book I think represents a step forward for her--she marries the bones of the fairy tale to the horrors of Soviet bureaucracy, and does so in a way that makes the house committee of the domovoi, of Baba Yaga going by Chairman Yaga, of rusalki determined to become perfect Leningraders, seem perfectly natural and perfectly chilling. I was reminded many times of William T. Vollman's Europe Central, in that both Vollman and Valente have managed to capture in perfect language the utter horror of the Soviet regime, but Valente is also exploding fairy tales, showing that what ends so many of them is in fact a midpoint at best, that death and life are inseparable, that life surrenders even as it declares that death shall have no dominion, that you've got to keep living even as you're dying. I've always loved Valente's prse, but there's something about the language in this book that seems to indicate a refinement of her voice, a reduction in words accompanied by an increase in their power, the lyrical and the pragmatic working together like an iron hand in a velvet glove.
It's also, somewhat quietly, a profoundly kinky book; which of them is to be master is very much a live issue in Marya and Koschei's marriage, and the games of power and pain they play are always something more than games, and Valente is able to bring that out well. In conclusion: brilliant and amazing, highly recommended.
P.S. Valente's newest book, The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making, is out today, on the occasion of which I read, and enjoyed, her post on Tor.com, which is relevant to both these books: Confessions of a Fairy-Tale Addict.
With the proviso that I wouldn't know the story of Koschei the Deathless from a hole in the ground, this was an excellent, excellent book.
rushthatspeaks's review of the book has the general outline of the traditional fairy tale, which as you might expect is very different from Valente's version. For Valente's version takes place against the backdrop of the Russian Revolutions and the rise of the Soviet Union and its headlong rush to war with Germany, the war, after which no one will ever be the same. In Sankt Petersburg, which swiftly becomes Petrograd and then Leningrad, young Marya Morevna grows up watching her sisters be courted by birds turned into young men and knows that her day too will come. When it does, in the form of Koschei the Deathless, Marya is not abducted, but goes willingly, and it's a question of will--who will give theirs up to whom--between her and Koschei thereafter. Things go, if you squint, according to the old story, but also not: the real, not the calendar, twentieth century has begun.
Valente's been great at restoring agency to female characters in fairy tales since she started, but this book I think represents a step forward for her--she marries the bones of the fairy tale to the horrors of Soviet bureaucracy, and does so in a way that makes the house committee of the domovoi, of Baba Yaga going by Chairman Yaga, of rusalki determined to become perfect Leningraders, seem perfectly natural and perfectly chilling. I was reminded many times of William T. Vollman's Europe Central, in that both Vollman and Valente have managed to capture in perfect language the utter horror of the Soviet regime, but Valente is also exploding fairy tales, showing that what ends so many of them is in fact a midpoint at best, that death and life are inseparable, that life surrenders even as it declares that death shall have no dominion, that you've got to keep living even as you're dying. I've always loved Valente's prse, but there's something about the language in this book that seems to indicate a refinement of her voice, a reduction in words accompanied by an increase in their power, the lyrical and the pragmatic working together like an iron hand in a velvet glove.
It's also, somewhat quietly, a profoundly kinky book; which of them is to be master is very much a live issue in Marya and Koschei's marriage, and the games of power and pain they play are always something more than games, and Valente is able to bring that out well. In conclusion: brilliant and amazing, highly recommended.
P.S. Valente's newest book, The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making, is out today, on the occasion of which I read, and enjoyed, her post on Tor.com, which is relevant to both these books: Confessions of a Fairy-Tale Addict.
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(no subject)
Date: 2011-05-10 20:45 (UTC)Comes down to better marketing, of course, but doesn't mean I can't say anything about it.
(no subject)
Date: 2011-05-10 21:20 (UTC)For what it's worth, and that's a particularly big proviso here, I don't think she is actually being taken up as the face of Soviet/Russian/whatever genre fiction. At least, from my perspective out here in CA, Deathless is one in a long line of her retellings of fairy tales from around the world. Things probably look different from New York, for a lot of reasons, and while I think it's definitely part of a noticeable uptick in fantasy/genre books by Soviet and Russian writers and/or featuring Soviet and Russian settings, I don't think it's going to define Valente's career, or those other writers. It's the second of three books she's released in the last six months, for one thing, and unlike the other two, it's a one-off. And it seems to me that people like Ekaterina Sedia are certainly becoming more visible in the genre, too. I have The Secret History of Moscow on my to-read pile, and I've heard good things about her newest book, and I think a lot of people are looking forward to her steampunk book next year. I certainly am.
All of which is a way of saying, I think the appropriation question is a valid one to raise (I wondered that about The Grass-Cutting Sword, too), but one I can't answer, or at least not objectively. I don't have the background to judge whether Valente got everything 'right' in this particular book--her portrayals of the historical parts are in line with what little I've read on the subjects, but that's all I know--whereas I do for some of her others, but it is a very good book in its own right.