"...that a children's book that's utterly enchanting and has roots in the books mentioned above, was inspired by a book that's utterly adult, a story where its characters access a different kind of fairyland, one accessible like a sexually transmitted disease"
This completely blows my mind actually. Most people don't write a sex-fueled fantasy novel and then turn around and say "this inspires me to write a children's story." I really admire the breadth of her work. Not to mention the fact that even though each of her projects are quite different, they still have elements that mark them as a Valente novel, such as her talent with the English language and her great female characters as you mentioned.
I could be wrong about the genesis of this novel, mind you. Maybe she always planned to write it and used its title as a kind of pre-Easter Egg in Palimpsest, but I thought it was the other way around, that she wrote The Girl Who... because so many people had commented on what she had written about it in Palimpsest.
Yeah, Palimpsest came first and she never intended to write Fairyland. The book's origin story is here, and well worth reading, because the inscription is spot onFairyland is a ship of our own making.
This completely blows my mind actually. Most people don't write a sex-fueled fantasy novel and then turn around and say "this inspires me to write a children's story." I really admire the breadth of her work. Not to mention the fact that even though each of her projects are quite different, they still have elements that mark them as a Valente novel, such as her talent with the English language and her great female characters as you mentioned.
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How Palimpsest inspired The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland
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