Entry tags:

books, let's get literate! 2009

Tender Morsels, Margo Lanagan: Nymeth sang praises for this book and at best, I'm a sheep. Plus, it had the Printz behind it and I'm nothing if not an award junky so I read Tender Morsels not knowing what to expect. I knew it was in the flavor of a fairytale but not much more than that. I didn't go in expecting much, to be quite honest. In my head I was comparing it to the last retelling of Snow White I read which was Mirror, Mirror by Gregory Maguire. That story bored me a little because I wasn't paying full attention to what I was reading nor the cultural references Maguire threw in. I was hesitant about Tender Morsels because of that, which is a good example in not comparing books by their premises. At the end of this book, I was a soggy, crying hot mess, complete with tissues and fogged glasses—for good reason. Tender Morsels will break your heart and then repair it and then break it again and this cycle continues through the end of the novel, so bittersweet and lovely.

At the very end of winter, Liga turned fourteen, and no one noticed but herself. Then spring exploded in its usual celebrations, fat with clumped blossoms and bursting leaf, raucous with birdsong. In April, her bloods stopped, and Da grew by turns wilder in her tempers and more silent in his sulks.

"Bleed, girl, bleed!" he shouted at her one night, turning back to her after he had had at her and fallen away.

"I cannot make it happen," she said angrily.

"I know that, curse you!"

"I'd think you would be glad—you always say how dirty it is." And she crawled away to the truckle.

His head looked at her over the edge of the big bed. "Are you really so stupid?" he said, as if astonished.

Gerten Longfield is a man bent on his own pleasure and finds it with his daughter, Liga. Liga and her father live together in an isolated cabin at a distance from the main town. The story opens with pain and fright and confusion as he uses a remedy for his daughter's pregnancy—one of many made by Muddy Annie to cause Liga to miscarry the evidence of his sexual abuse. After Liga figures out what he's doing, she manages to keep one pregnancy a secret. When an accident removes her father from the picture, Liga's life begins to change swiftly as Branza is born, followed by more hardship that leads Liga to the brink: only to be brought back from it be receiving her Heart's Desire: a safe, comfortable world where there is no fighting and unpleasantness to raise Branza, and her second child, Urdda, a place as peaceful as fifteen year old Liga thinks the world should be.

It's so hard to summarize this book. It was brutal to read because the rape and abuse Liga suffers is never dodged. Lanagan never makes it easy for the reader: why should she? It isn't easy for Liga. We follow Liga through the abuse that leads her to her Heart's Desire, then through the time in that place, where her and her daughters befriend magical bears who have stumbled in from the real world. However, along with bears, other things have found ways to slip in and abuse Liga's Heart's Desire, leading to the inevitable truth that Liga, Branza and Urdda can't—and in some cases, won't—stay there forever.

The story in the middle of this book is a retelling of Snow White and Rose Red, with a few differences from what I remember—mostly about the dwarf. The dwarf in this story is just a complete douchebag, and I loved all the scenes with him, Branza and Urdda because they were so very different from each other. For example:

"But how is it you can turn birds to treasure," said Urdda, "and frog-eggs to pearls? I should like to be able to do such things."

"Get away! Stand you back from all of it or you'll render it rubbish, you waster-space!"

But Urdda stood firm. "Where do you come from, sir?"

"I come"—the littlee-man stalked towards her in a way that might have been menacing, had he been full-sized—"from Smelly-bumhole Land. You may call me Mister Odiferous. Up through the arse of the world I come here, and when I'm finished I will squeeze myself back out it. Now, take your lips and flap them somewhere else, useless hussy."

Urdda laughed uncertainly. "Half your words I cannot understand, sir, through your accent and their strangeness."

I loved the last section of the book, where the three women find themselves in the real world and have to come to grips with all the things they've missed and the experiences that are new and the social rules they have never been subject to. Very quickly I came to love Annie, when in the beginning she is set up as a gray character, it was so lovely to watch her mistakes become a blessing instead of a burden.

This story is about women and their role in communities, about sexuality and motherhood, about sisterhood and growing up and letting go of childhood. I loved the diverse representation of women and men in this story; both the bad and the good, the magical and the real, and how magic informed the story but never overtook it. I especially loved how we see the characters grow. There was a scene in the book between Annie and Liga that made my heart hurt—it was beautiful and right and bittersweet and it felt like it brought the story full circle. I would reproduce it, but it really needs to context of the story before it to have the impact it does.

The writing, too, was gorgeous. I've never read a word by Lanagan before and the last time I remember being this charmed and in such awe over a narrative was In the Night Garden by Valente. There's a particular kind of style that communicates the dialect of this small, European flavored town. It's lush and sweet, like a peach plucked from the tree and warmed by the sun. It doesn't leave you cold even when those words are invoking subject matter that leaves you trembling with rage and uselessness, and just a little bit of hope. This novel is hopeful, for all its dark corners and empty spaces—it leaves you with beauty and just maybe, a better understanding of the complications of people; their flaws and their strengths, their darkness and their light. Beautiful work; I can't recommend it highly enough.

"You are pure-hearted and lovely, and you have never done a moment's wrong. But you are a living creature, born to make a real life, however it cracks your heart."