Control key in dark retelling of Grimm fairy tale

In her latest dark and propulsive fantasy novel , Hugo-, Nebula- and Lotus-award winning writer T. Kingfisher explores questions of coercive control by reimagining the Grimm fairy tale . Read this article for free: Already have an account? To continue reading, please subscribe: * In her latest dark and propulsive fantasy novel , Hugo-, Nebula- and Lotus-award winning writer T.

Kingfisher explores questions of coercive control by reimagining the Grimm fairy tale . Read unlimited articles for free today: Already have an account? In her latest dark and propulsive fantasy novel , Hugo-, Nebula- and Lotus-award winning writer T. Kingfisher explores questions of coercive control by reimagining the Grimm fairy tale .



The original fairy tale plays on the trope of the false bride: On her way to be married, a princess is betrayed by her servant and is forced to change places with her. When they arrive to her betrothed’s kingdom, the false princess forces her to become a goose girl, and thereby keeps her away from the palace. As further insurance that the true princess remains undiscovered, the servant has her talking horse, Falada, killed.

In Kingfisher’s revision, the trope of the false bride appears to drive the action; the titular sorceress, Lady Evangeline, conceals her nature to convince a squire, Samuel Chatham, to marry her. So too Kingfisher shifts the meaning of the figure of the goose girl; far from being powerless and irrelevant, she acquires a valence of potency when she appears not as a hapless servant, but as Samuel’s sister Hester, a no-nonsense, middle-aged woman. A Sorceress Comes to Call The energy of Kingfisher’s novel comes from Evangeline’s daughter Cordelia’s attempt to escape her mother’s coercive control.

This is reinforced by the way the narrative perspective alternates between Cordelia and Hester. torques other key elements of the fairy tale. In , the sorceress-mother is a protective force, whereas, as Hester intuits, Lady Evangeline is more akin to Doom than to any sort of protective force.

“Three days after her first panic-filled awakening, Doom appeared on Hester’s doorstep, in the shape of a (beautiful) woman.” When the novel opens, Cordelia’s mother is making her obedient during a church service: “Being made obedient felt like being a corpse. ‘My body’s dead and it doesn’t do what I want,’ Cordelia had whispered once, to her only friend, their horse Falada.

‘It only does what she wants. But I’m still in it.” Cordelia is subject to this direct, magical form of control relatively few times in the novel, most notably at a dinner with Samuel and Hester.

During this instance, Hester is bewildered by the apparent shift in Cordelia’s personality: “Cordelia was different. Terribly, dreadfully different, as if fainting had allowed some stranger to sneak in and take over her body.” Monday mornings The latest local business news and a lookahead to the coming week.

Falada, the magic horse, also connects fairy tale and novel, and here too Kingfisher adds a dark turn to the connection. While in Falada is a being truly protective of the princess, in Falada is not merely a magic horse, but Cordelia’s mother’s familiar — a horse made from magic: “‘I made you,’ (Cordelia’s) mother said, looking straight ahead. ‘I made him and I made you, and you belong to me.

Don’t forget it.’” Far from being Cordelia’s friend, Falada is a malign force in Cordelia’s life and in the novel. In the world of the novel, sorcery is thought to be a venal power, whose purpose and power goes no further than to allow a sorcerer or sorceress to defraud ordinary people.

Lady Evangeline uses this perception to hide her powers in plain sight. Sorcery, too, has clear limitations: “(W)edding ceremonies break spells..

.. Water, salt, and wine, on holy ground.

It is most inconvenient for sorcerers.” With , Kingfisher has written a compelling novel that will more than satisfy longtime fans and invite new readers to delve further into her other novels. Melanie brannagan frederiksen is a Winnipeg writer and critic.

A Sorceress Comes to Call By T. Kingfisher Tor, 336 pages, $37 Advertisement Advertisement.