Faith lost and found
The Crane Wife by Patrick Ness
George Duncan is an American living and working in London. At forty-eight, he is the owner of a small print shop, divorced, and lonelier than he realizes. But one night he is awoken by an astonishing sound-a terrific keening, coming from somewhere in his garden. When he investigates he finds a great white crane, a bird taller than even himself. It has been shot through the wing with an arrow. Moved more than he can say, George struggles to take out the arrow from the bird’s wing, saving its life before it flies away into the night sky.
The next morning, a shaken George tries to go about his daily life, retreating to the back of his store and making cuttings from discarded books-a harmless, personal hobby-when through the front door of the shop a woman walks in. Her name is Kumiko, and she asks George to help her with her own artwork: cuttings made from what look like the most delicate slices of feathers. George is dumbstruck by her beauty and her enigmatic nature and begins to fall desperately in love with her. She seems to hold the potential to change his entire life, if he could only get her to reveal the secret of who she is and why she has come to him.
I am unabashed fan of fairy tale retellings. Whereas the original tales are more concerned about imparting lessons and instilling certain morals, modern retellings breathe life into the stories, making them more character- and narrative-driven than the originals. Unfortunately, as such, The Crane Wife falls quite short of my own high expectations.
For me, it all boils down to the characters, who remained flat and enigmatic. Although Ness sketches out somewhat interesting back stories about George and his adult daughter Amanda, it’s as if once they meet the mysterious Kumiko their own development comes to a halt and they become simply obsessed with finding out more about her. As the titular character, Kumiko herself remains frustratingly remote and withdrawn, refusing to answer George’s questions about who she is and where she has come from. While the crane wife keeping her identity secret is a big part of the original fairy tale, Kumiko is reduced to simply being a mysterious and alluring woman (an irritating trope, come to think about it), rather than a flesh and blood one. As a result, her romance with George is barely believable, and it’s hard to sympathize with George, who has clearly fallen in love with an idea of a person than an actual person.
I’m sure I could list more of my issues with The Crane Wife, but let me quit while I’m ahead. I was such a big fan of his YA trilogy (which began with The Knife of Never Letting Go) that I’m a bit bummed this has been such a letdown. But like that saying goes, you can’t win everything.
The Girls at the Kingfisher Club by Genevieve Valentine
The Hamilton sisters weren’t supposed to exist. Joseph Hamilton wanted a male heir, and his wife did her best. But in the end, he was disappointed, left with no son, no wife, and twelve girls, whom he kept secluded in the upper rooms of his Fifth Avenue town house and raised with only the scantiest knowledge of the outside world.
Jo, the firstborn, “The General” to her eleven sisters, is the nearest thing they have to a mother. She is the one who taught them how to dance, the one who gives the signal each night, as they slip out of the confines of their home and escape to Manhattan’s underground speakeasies. Together they elude their distant and controlling father, until he announces his plans to marry them all off.
As their father handpicks the suitors he deems eligible, the girls continue to do what they have always done: dance. From Salon Renaud to the Swan, and finally, the Kingfisher, the club they would call home. They dance until the night it is raided, and Jo finds herself separated from her sisters and confronted by a bootlegger from her past. As old mistakes and the demands of her father and eleven sisters bear down on her, Jo must determine whom she can trust, and how much she is willing to risk on her own.
After having a baffling, frustrating time reading The Crane Wife, I was so relieved to find The Girls at the Kingfisher Club next on my TBR list. A re-imagining of the “Twelve Dancing Princesses,” this is a fairy tale retelling done right-let me break down why.
George Duncan is an American living and working in London. At forty-eight, he is the owner of a small print shop, divorced, and lonelier than he realizes. But one night he is awoken by an astonishing sound-a terrific keening, coming from somewhere in his garden. When he investigates he finds a great white crane, a bird taller than even himself. It has been shot through the wing with an arrow. Moved more than he can say, George struggles to take out the arrow from the bird’s wing, saving its life before it flies away into the night sky.
The next morning, a shaken George tries to go about his daily life, retreating to the back of his store and making cuttings from discarded books-a harmless, personal hobby-when through the front door of the shop a woman walks in. Her name is Kumiko, and she asks George to help her with her own artwork: cuttings made from what look like the most delicate slices of feathers. George is dumbstruck by her beauty and her enigmatic nature and begins to fall desperately in love with her. She seems to hold the potential to change his entire life, if he could only get her to reveal the secret of who she is and why she has come to him.
I am unabashed fan of fairy tale retellings. Whereas the original tales are more concerned about imparting lessons and instilling certain morals, modern retellings breathe life into the stories, making them more character- and narrative-driven than the originals. Unfortunately, as such, The Crane Wife falls quite short of my own high expectations.
For me, it all boils down to the characters, who remained flat and enigmatic. Although Ness sketches out somewhat interesting back stories about George and his adult daughter Amanda, it’s as if once they meet the mysterious Kumiko their own development comes to a halt and they become simply obsessed with finding out more about her. As the titular character, Kumiko herself remains frustratingly remote and withdrawn, refusing to answer George’s questions about who she is and where she has come from. While the crane wife keeping her identity secret is a big part of the original fairy tale, Kumiko is reduced to simply being a mysterious and alluring woman (an irritating trope, come to think about it), rather than a flesh and blood one. As a result, her romance with George is barely believable, and it’s hard to sympathize with George, who has clearly fallen in love with an idea of a person than an actual person.
I’m sure I could list more of my issues with The Crane Wife, but let me quit while I’m ahead. I was such a big fan of his YA trilogy (which began with The Knife of Never Letting Go) that I’m a bit bummed this has been such a letdown. But like that saying goes, you can’t win everything.
The Girls at the Kingfisher Club by Genevieve Valentine
The Hamilton sisters weren’t supposed to exist. Joseph Hamilton wanted a male heir, and his wife did her best. But in the end, he was disappointed, left with no son, no wife, and twelve girls, whom he kept secluded in the upper rooms of his Fifth Avenue town house and raised with only the scantiest knowledge of the outside world.
Jo, the firstborn, “The General” to her eleven sisters, is the nearest thing they have to a mother. She is the one who taught them how to dance, the one who gives the signal each night, as they slip out of the confines of their home and escape to Manhattan’s underground speakeasies. Together they elude their distant and controlling father, until he announces his plans to marry them all off.
As their father handpicks the suitors he deems eligible, the girls continue to do what they have always done: dance. From Salon Renaud to the Swan, and finally, the Kingfisher, the club they would call home. They dance until the night it is raided, and Jo finds herself separated from her sisters and confronted by a bootlegger from her past. As old mistakes and the demands of her father and eleven sisters bear down on her, Jo must determine whom she can trust, and how much she is willing to risk on her own.
After having a baffling, frustrating time reading The Crane Wife, I was so relieved to find The Girls at the Kingfisher Club next on my TBR list. A re-imagining of the “Twelve Dancing Princesses,” this is a fairy tale retelling done right-let me break down why.
- Fully realized, individual characters. This isn’t an easy feat considering that Genevieve Valentine has twelve sisters to create, but miraculously, she pulls it off. From tough-as-nails Lou to the beautiful Ella to the dance-crazy twins Mattie and Hattie, each character has a distinct trait that sets her apart from the rest. Although yes, some are more distinct than the others (since the story is largely told from Jo’s perspective as the eldest, she’s naturally closer to the older girls in the group), there is still a firm sense that they are not only a close-knit family of sisters, but also individuals in their own right.
- A gritty heroine. As the eldest of twelve girls, Jo has always known from a young age that it is up to her to protect her sisters from their cruel, indifferent father. The responsibility weighs on her at times, but she knows she wouldn’t have it any other way. While on the outside she maintains a cool façade of being the biddable, “yes, sir” kind of daughter, she in fact leads the rebellion against their father by taking her sisters out to dance.
- The setting. Valentine sets her modern retelling in the 1920s Jazz Age, deep in the underground speakeasies of Manhattan, and the setting could not have been more perfect. The flapper fashions, the booze, the frenzied dance scene-I kept picturing those scenes of total debauchery from The Great Gatsby.
- Going beyond the fairy tale ending. Without spoiling too much, Valentine continues the story long after the sisters make their inevitable escape, and that’s where the story really gets interesting. Since they’ve been sheltered from the real world for so long, each sister has to figure out what to do next on their own.
- Romantic without being unrealistic. Since fairy tales require heroes as much as heroines, it’s important to note that Valentine also redefines who the heroes are. They are not noble princes rescuing the sisters on shining, white steeds; in fact, some of them are even on the run from the law-but are no less honorable for all that. And in a subtle twist, Valentine also tweaks gender expectations, since she suggests at least one of the sisters is queer.
- The writing. Valentine has a restrained style that still manages to convey so much nuance and depth in a handful of words. I bookmarked quite a few memorable sentences, but this is one of my favorites: “He looked a little younger, or night made him younger, or Jo was always going to be young when she met him again. It was hard to tell.”