Charming Monsters

Five sisters alone in a Transylvania castle during a long, dark winter; five sisters with a secret portal in their shared bedroom, leading them to a fairy court; five sisters whose lives begin to fall apart as their childhood dreams begin to clash with the outside world. Can a book really get much more lolita-esque than that?

Wildwood Dancing is a charming book for anyone with a love of fairy tales, especially the more obscure ones: there’s bits from the Twelve Dancing Princesses here, along with the Princess and the Frog, and snippets from so many others, blended up with a gothic dollop of Romanian folklore. The author, Juliet Marillier, clearly knows her lore, and weaves old ideas and new interpretations throughout the story. She uses the Romanian setting not only as a creepy, beautiful backdrop, but also as a key point in the story: many of the challenges the sisters face come from local custom and culture, rather than the paranormal. 

In summary: Jena and her four sisters have been sneaking off every full moon for years, through the magic gateway in their room and into the court of the fairy queen, where they dance the night away. When their merchant father falls ill and must spend the harsh winter recovering in a warmer climate, they are left alone to handle the castle – and the predatory encroachment of their cousin, who does not believe women can handle business, or even managing their own house, without the protection of a man. At the same time, the mysterious arrival of the Night People to the fairy court throws the supernatural balance out of whack, leading to a confrontation between the fairy court and the human realm.

The only caveat I had about this book: the writing is lush and dense, much more so than most contemporary young adult novels. That makes it a slow read, great for those who enjoy spending loads of time exploring a novel, and possibly frustrating to those who (like me) are anxious to find out what happens in the end! And for those who do want more, there’s apparently a semi-sequel available, called Cybele’s Secret.

One of my ongoing interests is the vast capacity people have to spout ridiculous ideas as if they were fact: Proctor & Gamble is run by Satanists, John McCain is a Mancurian Candidate for the Vietcong, a magical Sky Fairy watches everyone’s every move, aliens have secretly been visiting our planet for decades, and so on.

One of the more insightful books I’ve read on the topic was Mistakes Were Made (But Not by Me): Why We Justify Foolish Beliefs, Bad Decisions, and Hurtful Acts by Carol Tavris and Elliot Aronson. There’s a pretty good overview of the book here and the first chapter is available online here.

On a related note, Fred Clarke over at Slativist has a two-part breakdown (part one, part two) of how this issue played out with the aforementioned Proctor & Gamble rumour, which touches on “why people get angry when you send them that Snopes link debunking their latest dumb email chain letter”.

What’s interesting to me about Clarke’s analysis is his insistence on the responsibility of the people involved for their part in circulating information which they know to be untrue, and his insistence that they can not possibly believe what they are claiming. Richard Dawkins makes the same point every time he directly asks a religious individual whether or not they *genuinely* believe the dogma they’ve just spouted off. I’ve generally felt that people spewing this sort of nonsense were morally neutral by reason of reality distortion, but the suggestion that, beneath the cognitive dissonance, most people are aware of what they’re doing when they embrace and propigate these lies is an interesting avenue to consider.