Kate Forsyth’s Bitter Greens

If you missed the introduction to this year’s Fairytale Fantasy series of posts, find it HERE. By the way, I just discovered this great blog post on all things Rapunzel. And here‘s a blog that does a comprehensive job with a ton of Rapunzel retellings.

Forsyth’s Bitter Greens, 2014, Macmillan, is a marvel of a book, the third Rapunzel retelling I’m discussing during Valentine Week and my favorite of the three. (A qualification: if you’re a young reader, you can’t go wrong with Morrison’s Grounded. Find my discussion HERE.)

What an amazing novel this is. I found it started fairly slowly. Don’t let that put you off. You are in for a treat, reader. At the core is Persinette, the French “literary” fairy tale by Charlotte-Rose de Caumont de la Force which is the basis for the Grimm Brothers retelling, Rapunzel, that we probably all know best. In Forsyth’s novel, the Rapunzel story is only the core. The author describes her novel as the “braided” account of three women, and “braided” is a good description. I prefer to think of it as a nesting, though–the Rapunzel core, wrapped in a tale of magical realism about the witch in the story, wrapped in a beautifully rendered historical novel. In fact, this novel won the American Library Association prize for best historical novel in the year it was published, among a number of other prestigious literary awards.

As Bitter Greens begins, we learn that the main character, Charlotte-Rose de Caumont de la Force, a French nobleman from a Huguenot family in reduced circumstances, is being banished to a nunnery from the court of the Sun King, Louis IV of France. A brief preliminary scene shows us Charlotte-Rose’s life in Gascony, where her guardian warns her about her sharp tongue. He is all too right. She stumbles into the kind of trouble that, in Louis XIV’s court, can get a woman locked up for the rest of her life. Charlotte-Rose has scandalized the court with her love affairs, and she has lived a bold life far removed from the decorous, cautious behavior allowed court ladies. She’s a writer in a world where women don’t do such things. Now, because of her talent, her verve, and her boldness, she is in terrible trouble. To make things worse, she is a Huguenot (French Protestant) living in a climate of fear. In the not-too-distant past, French Huguenots were slaughtered wholesale during the infamous St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre, Charlotte-Rose’s own mother has been locked away in a convent, and now the Sun King is tightening the screws on the Protestants once again. Being sent to a Catholic nunnery is not as bad as being burned at the stake, but it’s an ironic and stifling sentence to impose on a Protestant. Worst of all, Charlotte-Rose will no longer be allowed to write.

Throughout this part of Forsyth’s novel, we learn in flashbacks all the ways Charlotte-Rose has scandalized the court. This is the “historical novel” part of the book, and it is accurate, compelling, and beautifully rendered. But in the present time of the novel, locked away, Charlotte-Rose befriends an old nun, Soeur Seraphina, who begins telling her a marvelous tale of another girl locked away–a girl with crazy-long hair locked in a tower. Here is the core of the novel: the Rapunzel fairy tale. Woven in with this retelling is the tale of the witch, a beautiful Renaissance redhead who becomes the artist Titian’s muse, the model for some of his most famous paintings. And so this novel, which appeals to general readers, readers who love fantasy, readers who love fairy tales, readers who love history and historical novels, also has a great appeal for readers who love art and art history.

A quick few notes about the painting: Titian became famous for “Titian red,” the color he used to paint Mary Magdalene’s hair–an interesting factoid that figures in Forsyth’s novel. Also: There is a strange medieval legend that Mary Magdalene’s hair became a “suit” that covered her body. It’s pretty clear that Titian must have been influenced by this legend. Although Forsyth’s novel doesn’t bring this in, I also find it ironic that the witch character is based on the model for Titian’s painting. Rapunzel has freakishly long hair, and . . .so does the witch?

Three fascinating women: Margherita, the “Rapunzel” figure. Selena Leonelli, the Venetian Renaissance courtesan who becomes the artist Titian’s muse and lover, and later the powerful sorceress and witch known as La Strega. And Charlotte-Rose de Caumont de la Force herself. A fairy tale (Rapunzel) wrapped in a tale of magical realism (Selena Leonelli and what she becomes) wrapped in an historical novel about Charlotte-Rose and the court of the Sun King. A true tour de Force, if you’ll pardon the pun.

WARNING! Nerding Out Ahead

Okay, there’s one more feature of this book I have to mention, one of the reasons I love it so much. Each major episode is introduced by a snippet of poetry. I happen to love poetry. (I even have a poetry blog.) If you don’t especially love poetry, then you might take these introductory poetic excerpts as decoration and move on. I, on the other hand, had to look up ALL the poets, ALL the poems. I was fascinated by Forsyth’s selections. The poets/poems are: the unfortunately named, tragic Adelaide Crapsey and an excerpt from her poem “Rapunzel“; the fascinating, multifaceted writer Gwen Strauss and an excerpt of her poem “The Prince”; Nicole Cooley and an excerpt from “Rampion” (rampion being another name for the bitter herb that caused all the trouble in Rapunzel); the Pre-Raphaelite poet, artist, and cultural force William Morris and his poem “Rapunzel” (a subject he also depicted in visual art); Anne Sexton‘s “Rapunzel“(Sexton, as you may know, wrote a ton of poems with a modernist, feminist take on fairy tales); contemporary poet Arlene Ang’s “Rapunzel”; the modernist American poet Louis Untermeyer‘s “Rapunzel” (from the SurlaLune blog mentioned at the beginning of this post); a stunningly gorgeous (the rest of the poem, not so much) excerpt from C. K. Chesterton‘s “The Ballad of St. Barbara” (see the introductory post to this blog series for the connection between St. Barbara and Rapunzel); and the fantastic contemporary poet Lisa Russ Spaar‘s “Rapunzel Shorn.” Here you can find an interesting discussion of many Rapunzel poems–unfortunately, the site only gives the introduction (it ceased publication in 2008), but it may be a good way to run down other poems.

NEXT UP! The Cinderella retellings, beginning with JJA Harwood’s The Shadow in the Glass.

Measha Stone’s Tower

If you missed the introduction to this year’s Fairytale Fantasy series of posts, find it HERE.

This is the second of the Rapunzel-themed novels I’m discussing during this year’s Valentine Week. The novel, published in 2018, is Book 2 in Stone’s Ever After series. The novels in the series all seem to be fairytale-themed, although Tower is the only one of the four I’ve read. The others seem to be (very loosely, if Tower is any indication) based on Beauty and the Beast, Little Red Riding Hood, and the Fox and the Hound.

Two important things to know about this novel:

This is not a work of fantasy. It is romance.

The fairytale elements are more or less a gimmick on which the romance plot hangs.

So. . .considering this is romance and not fantasy, why am I writing about it in a fantasy blog? Themes drawn from fairy tales are really interesting to me, and when they are present in contemporary fiction, they usually send the novel in a fantasy direction. This novel, though, is not a re-telling of the Rapunzel story, in spite of its subtitle, “A Dark Romance Rapunzel Retelling.” The Rapunzel elements seem to be a fun way the author has chosen to get into her story; a fun way to stand out from the romance novel crowd, maybe? I found the decision to write not just one romance novel but a series of them with a fairy tale hook to be a very interesting choice the writer made.

If you are the kind of reader who enjoys romance as well as fantasy, read on. If you hate romance novels, maybe give this post a miss. I was kind of fascinated with how the Rapunzel element threads through this story, though.

BIG WARNING: This novel is BDSM, and it is very steamy. I won’t say it’s outright erotica, where the whole point of the book is the sex, just a bunch of sex scenes strung along on a bare-bones plot–and not porn, either. But the sex scenes are very explicit, they are a huge part of the book, and the BDSM parts may seem disturbing to some readers.

What are the Rapunzel themes here? The main character Azalea’s last name is Gothel, which is the traditional name of the Rapunzel witch. She has blonde hair which her . . .um. . . SPOILER ALERT. . .”mother” insists she wear very long. The place where she may or may not be imprisoned is a BDSM club named The Tower. The plot involves a power struggle over who will possess Azalea–actually, which place they will imprison her, the male main character’s sex club or the mother’s forbidding house. Azalea has a plant-themed name. And that’s it. It’s a steamy romance novel with a few Rapunzel references stuck to it.

As these kinds of novels go, it’s pretty well-written. The plot is ridiculous, but then, so are fantasy plots, if you really think about it. All fiction requires, as Samuel Taylor Coleridge put it, “a willing suspension of disbelief.” The real question is how willing we readers become due to the skill of the novelist in getting us to buy into the craziness. I mean, think of Coleridge’s own Christabel. Readers of genre fiction, whether it’s fantasy, romance, or whatever else your reading drug of choice might be, glom onto a book because the tropes are ones they love, even crave. Tropes that beckon to them. “Come on in. . .willingly suspend your disbelief. . .let us sweep you away into a different type of world.” That’s the promise of genre fiction.

The real tropes in Stone’s novel are romance tropes, not fantasy tropes. They are (and I may be missing a few): bad boy romance, billionaire romance, bdsm romance, enemies-to-lovers romance, alpha-male romance, a whiff of “mafia” romance (in that the MMC’s business appears to be some sort of mob activity), grumpy vs. sunshine. . .uh. . . I’m probably leaving some out. If you like reading this kind of book, will get a kick out of spotting the Rapunzel references, and don’t mind that the MMC (main male character) is a controlling jerk, go for it. Okay, to be fair, the author works hard to convince us that the MMC is actually a sweetheart at the core. (Was I convinced? Not really.) The BDSM is fairly skillfully handled, though, unlike that supremely stupid, embarrassingly poorly written novel Fifty Shades of Gray. The final tip-off that Stone’s novel is romance, if anyone had a doubt: the requisite “man-chest cover” (see above), which is the usual marketing message to readers that they can expect a hot, sexy between-the-covers experience about hot, sexy under-the-covers activities.

Full disclosure: I actually read romance novels, and have been known to write a few myself (under a pen name), although mine probably don’t tick all the boxes the way Ms. Stone’s do. I also like it that this book appears to be indie-published, which is something I do myself. So I have some real professional admiration here and hope this review doesn’t come off too snarky. I guess if I were going to read a BDSM romance for fun, I’d have liked it better without Rapunzel.

NEXT UP: My discussion of Kate Forsyth’s Bitter Greens, my favorite of the Rapunzel picks.