DEATHLESS
Catherynne M. Valente
Tor 2011
Reviewed by carol
★ ★ ★ ★
Refreshing, magical, thoughtful, agonizing; Valente has re-written a Russian fairy tale into a complex love story. It begins:
“In a city
by the sea which was once called St. Petersburg, then Petrograd, then
Leningrad, then, much later, St. Petersburg again, there stood a long,
thin house on a long, thin street. By a long, thin window, a child in a
pale blue dress and pale green slippers waited for a bird to marry her.“
An amazing opening; one that lets the
reader know the magic of names and the beauty of language and juxtaposes
it with reality. Valente has taken the timeless part of fairy tales,
the “long, long ago and far, far away…” away and rooted her love tale in
Russia during the time of Stalin and eventually the war with Germany,
although “there is always a war.” The story is about Marya Morevna, her first husband Koschei the Deathless, and her lover Ivan. Based on a fairy tale, in one of the original versions Marya
has chained Koschei in the basement. Married to Ivan, she forbids him
from the basement, but like all fairy-tale lovers, one day he disobeys.
In the process he sets Koshei free, who heartlessly repays him by
stealing Marya away. Ivan must track down Koshei’s hidden death to kill
him before he can free Marya.
Valente, however, tells the story from
Marya’s point of view. But this is no simple fairy tale re-telling; this
is the very idea of a fairy tale reduced to its components than put
back together as a whole. This is the before story and the after story,
as much as the untold one.
There are familiar elements to anyone
wide-read in fairy tales; Baba Yaga, of the house with chicken legs, and
the Baba Yaga with the flying mortar and pestle; house-spirits that
require nourishment of one form or another for protection; offers to
teach from an elderly crone of suspicious intentions; a horse that
transforms physique and personality depending on the time of day;
princes disguised as birds that come courting sisters; a sorcerer’s
death hidden in a jeweled egg; a trip that involves three different
houses in the woods, and three different sisters; and a set of tasks
that require cleverness and friends to complete.
But at heart, it is a story about love, and relationships, and need, and dying.
Characters, as always with Valente, come
alive in creative ways, from Marya’s many mothers, to the Tsarina of
Ill Luck, to the gun-girl, and the swan-woman. I especially enjoyed Baba
Yaga, who retains her old, intimidating and carnivorous ways: “Husbands, lie, Masha. I should know; I’ve eaten my share.” She also has a humorous way of refering to Marya in soup-pot terms that echo the fierce Baba Yaga in tales: “Listen, soon-to-be-soup.“
I continue to adore Valente’s writing
style, a poetic sort of descriptive writing that is always looking for
deeper truths. The format of the fairy tale is well-suited to her style.
Particularly, there’s frequently use of the traditional repeated
encounter experience that is just a little different each time, teaching
the protagonist something more:
“Olga kissed his beak and drew him away with her, crooning and chirping to him in the soft, secret language of the wed.”
“Tatiana swatted his wing and coaxed him
away with her, warbling and clicking to him in the bright, squabbling
language of the well-matched.”
“Anna smiled at him, her face lighting
like an oil lamp, took his wing and walked back towards the house,
croaking and cawing to him in the strident, ordered language of the
incorruptible.“
Complicated, disjointed, there are
perhaps not as many transitions as I would have wished and an abundance
of small stories that don’t always connect. Though Valente perfectly
captures complex emotion, the allegories and flights of imaginings don’t
always come clear to me. I’m left with the feeling of being sure
something is significant, but not exactly why.
The Acknowledgements thank Valente’s
husband Dmitri and his Russian family, leading me to wonder if Valente
was writing parts of her own relationships. All
I could think when reading this is that Valente too must know the
unhappiness and beauty of mismatched love. Haunting, beautiful, and like
Mayra, it leaves me just a little hungry, wanting more.
“She had
not known before that she wanted all these things, that she preferred
dark hair and a slightly cruel expression, that she wished for tallness,
or that a man kneeling might thrill her. A whole young life’s worth of
slowly collected predilections coalesced in a few moments within her,
and Koschei Bessmertny, his lashes full of snow, became perfect.“
cross posted at http://clsiewert.wordpress.com/2014/02/16/deathless-by-catherynne-valente/
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