This year, DANCE your way to Valentine’s Day! Novels based on fairytales and folktales featuring dance.

In preceding years (you can find all the posts archived on my blog, btw–just look for February!), I have posted novels based on worldwide fairytales and folk tales, and on two “literary” fairytales (Cinderella and Rapunzel). This year, I’m featuring a whole week of novels based on fairytales and folktales involving dance. Here are the posts:

Day One of Fairytale Fantasy Week: Entwined, by Heather Dixon–a novel based on the classic fairytale “The Twelve Dancing Princesses.” Find the review here.

Day Two: Midnight in Everwood, by M. A. Kuzniar–a novel based on the story behind the classic fairytale ballet, The Nutcracker. Find the review here.

Day Three: Valentine’s Day itself! The amazing fantasy novel Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell, by Susanna Clarke–a novel with a strong dancing subplot. ONE OF MY TWO FAVORITES. Find the review here.

Day Four: House of Salt and Sorrows, by Erin A. Craig–another novel based on “The Twelve Dancing Princesses.” Find the review here.

Day Five: Dark Breaks the Dawn, by Sara B. Larson–a novel based on the fairytale ballet Swan Lake. Find the review here.

TODAY, Day Six: Sexing the Cherry, by Jeanette Winterson–a final choice based on “The Twelve Dancing Princesses,” but be warned–it’s nothing like the others. ONE OF MY TWO FAVORITES.

Day Seven: A wrap-up and a special exploration of the “dance mania” of the medieval period, plus a free download.

TODAY, a review of Sexing the Cherry, by Jeanette Winterson

Sexing the Cherry (1989), by Jeanette Winterson, published in the U.K. by Bloomsbury (in the U.S. by Grove Press), is a hard book to label. Is it a novel? A meditation? A long, gorgeous prose poem? It won the E. M. Forster Award, and has been described as magical realism, as post-modernist, as intertexual. The whole of it uses the story of the Twelve Dancing Princesses as a sort of anchor. It’s not your normal fantasy novel, or any type of genre fiction. If you don’t like literary fiction and read to be soothed rather than challenged, maybe skip it. If you want a trip into the marvelous and strange, read it.

The Twelve Dancing Princesses–the tale

First of all, as in years gone by, I should mention what I mean by “fairytale.” No fairies are necessarily involved. The term has evolved to refer to a particular magical type of folk tale that may involve fairies, princesses, and the like, but may not. (A subgenre of fantasy, involving the fae, is an entirely different matter). And sometimes, what readers have come to know as “fairytales” aren’t any such thing–not folklore, passed down anonymously through the generations and centuries, often by word of mouth, but literary creations by artists hoping to mimic the fairytale aura. I should also mention that my blog posts on this subject won’t refer to anything Disney, except in passing. The Disney take on fairytales occurs in a whole world of its own, it has its faithful fans, and I don’t intrude there.

Winterson’s book (notice I don’t say novel!) is the third in this series to use the Twelve Dancing Princesses as a basis. I could have blogged about so many more. I won’t recap the fairytale–you can read that in the earlier posts in my Fairytale Fantasy series. I have to say I’m amazed at how many writers chose this particular fairytale as an inspiration. I expected that of Cinderella (see last year’s blog posts), but this one I never figured for one of the three or four absolutely iconic fairytales for Western readers, so I didn’t expect so many novels based on it. If you love this fairytale, go onto your favorite search engine and marvel at the lists and lists of Twelve-Dancing-Princesses-themed novels. Almost all of them are either fantasy or fanciful romance, or both. I’ve been hearing a new term lately: romantasy. I guess that covers a lot of fairytale fiction pretty well. It just doesn’t cover Winterson’s book.

The magical realism label really does fit it well. What is magical realism, exactly? It’s not fantasy, or any type of genre speculative fiction, but it encompasses the fantastical. The term seems to have been applied first to certain types of writing coming out of Latin America, such as the novels of Gabriel Garcia Marquez, but it has also been applied to the works of writers worldwide who blur the lines between realism and a supernatural or magical take on the world. Prominent examples of magical realism written in English might be the novels of Salmon Rushdie (and we see what kind of political trouble he got into for blending the realistic and the magical), or to point to a writer not as well-known, Sarah Perry (Melmoth, The Essex Serpent).

My thoughts on this book:

I love to put an outlier in these fairytale fantasy blog series, and Winterson’s book is definitely that. I found it fascinating, but I was careful not to read it the way I’d read a novel. I took it in slow, bite-sized pieces. There’s a kind of plot, I guess: a monstrous woman known as the Dog Woman adopts a young boy, Jordan, in 17th century England at the time of the English Civil War. The Dog Woman is a slum dweller, and her life and physical presence and practices turn the stomach. If you have a delicate stomach, reader, be warned. She is so gigantic, so hideous, and so commanding that she can stalk around 17th century England doing whatever she pleases, including murder, and no one stops her. She’s the antithesis of the obedient woman.

Jordan, by contrast, is a sensitive soul. He becomes enthralled with the exotic fruits and vegetables appearing even in the slums of London, exhibited as wonders, as the Age of Exploration brings them to England’s shores: pineapples and bananas, especially. Take a look at the original cover for Winterson’s book–it represents the book a lot more accurately than the lovely cover I’ve posted above:

Jordan becomes an assistant to that very intriguing real 17th century personality John Tradescant. His father was gardener to King Charles I (whose execution by adherents of Oliver Cromwell becomes a prominent plot point–using plot very, very loosely). The son spent years in colonial America and other places around the globe, collecting plants and experimenting on new ways to cultivate them. Winterson’s title, “Sexing the Cherry,” is about that process.

And about so much more. A series of surrealistic episodes involving Jordan form a contrast to the Dog Woman’s messy, violent, frequently hilarious (I believe “Rabelaisian” is the term), mostly scandalous life in the slums. Jordan’s episodes involve questions of gender roles, questions about what it means to be human, questions about humanity’s place in the universe, and in these episodes, Jordan’s storyline shifts from 17th century England to the present and back again with dizzying speed. Who is he, really? Who is any one of us, and do constraints of space and time really bind us?

This is where the Twelve Dancing Princesses come into the book, in case you were wondering. Jordan meets one of them, becomes entranced by her, and then loses her as she seemingly escapes the narrow role she has been forced to play. His search for her leads him to her eleven sisters (the princesses), and as he encounters each sister, he learns her tale of how she escaped the cruel or sometimes just boorish prince who has claimed her. Why this particular fairytale? It seems to speak to Winterson, maybe as a stand-in for the lives women in Jordan’s era have been forced to lead. His transitions back and forth to the present suggest perhaps that these strict and damaging expectations are still operating in the world. There’s nothing stridently feminist in the book in terms of bald statements and sermonizing–I suppose I’d say it’s simply, profoundly inherently feminist.

What I loved most about this book: The gorgeous writing. I love fantasy–reading it, and writing it. I love any kind of well-written speculative fiction, and I don’t care whether it’s “literary” or “genre” or what it is–if it works, and ON ITS OWN TERMS, I’m going to love it. But, primarily, I’m a poet. And Winterson’s book is poetry. I was blown away by it. The writing isn’t divided into lines, nothing rhymes, but it’s poetry in the best sense of the word. And that’s how I read it. Here’s an example. Writing about a moment of extreme jeopardy: “The moment has been waiting the way the top step of the stairs waits for the sleepwalker.” Read that one and think yourself deep into it. Wow.

You can read my poetry blog, by the way, at https://utopiary.wordpress.com. I’m nowhere near the poet Winterson is, though. I’m guessing almost no one is.

A side-note: Genre fiction lovers, don’t feel left out by this post! I’d just like to point out that John Tradescant is the main character in a two-book series by Phillipa Gregory (Earthly Joys and Virgin Earth). I really, really liked these books, even though a lot of times I don’t like her books much. You might want to try them–I think they aren’t as well known as The Other Boleyn Girl and some of her other very popular historical novels.

My experience buying this book:

I read this book through the Kindle app on my iPad. Getting the book was very easy. I went to the Amazon web site and bought the book through One-Click, and presto, it appeared on my iPad. The experience would have been even easier and faster if my Kindle device had been available to me.

This year, DANCE your way to Valentine’s Day! Novels based on fairytales and folktales featuring dance.

In preceding years (you can find all the posts archived on my blog, btw–just look for February!), I have posted novels based on worldwide fairytales and folk tales, and on two “literary” fairytales (Cinderella and Rapunzel). This year, I’m featuring a whole week of novels based on fairytales and folktales involving dance. Here are the posts:

Day One of Fairytale Fantasy Week: Entwined, by Heather Dixon–a novel based on the classic fairytale “The Twelve Dancing Princesses.” Find the review here.

Day Two: Midnight in Everwood, by M. A. Kuzniar–a novel based on the story behind the classic fairytale ballet, The Nutcracker.

Day Three: Valentine’s Day itself! The amazing fantasy novel Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell, by Susanna Clarke–a novel with a strong dancing subplot. ONE OF MY TWO FAVORITES.

TODAY, Day Four: House of Salt and Sorrows, by Erin A. Craig–another novel based on “The Twelve Dancing Princesses.”

Day Five: Dark Breaks the Dawn, by Sara B. Larson–a novel based on the fairytale ballet Swan Lake.

Day Six: Sexing the Cherry, by Jeanette Winterson–a final choice based on “The Twelve Dancing Princesses,” but be warned–it’s nothing like the others.

Day Seven: A wrap-up and a special exploration of the “dance mania” of the medieval period, plus a free download.

TODAY, a review of House of Salt and Sorrows, by Erin A. Craig

House of Salt and Sorrows (2019), by Erin A. Craig, published by Delacorte Press (an imprint of Penguin Random House), amusingly described by a review in the Wall Street Journal as a tale of “a Grimm sea.” Craig’s novel is a YA horror/gothic-tinged take on “The Twelve Dancing Princesses.” Twelve sisters have seemingly been cursed as they die off one at a time. The protagonist of the story, sister #6, Annaleigh, tells the tale in the first person, a typical YA tactic. Her four eldest sisters are dead, each in a different grisly way. Ava, dead of plague. Octavia, fallen off a ladder. Elizabeth, drowned in a bathtub. Eulalie, plunged from a cliff into the rough seas surrounding the sisters’ island home. (I know, I know. . .it sounds straight out of Edward Gorey’s Gashlycrumb Tinies: “A is for Amy who fell down the stairs;/B is for Basil assaulted by bears. . .”) Because of the supposed curse, everyone now shies away from the sisters, even the new eldest, Camille, who will inherit her father’s riches. But Annaleigh suspects murder instead. This novel serves up generous lashings of gothic horror, mystery, an ingenious invented mythology, and YA tropes like the spunky girl torn between two equally attractive boyfriends, while stirring in the fairytale magic of “The Twelve Dancing Princesses.” The distraught surviving sisters relieve their stress and grief by heading into a mysterious magic passageway for nights of forbidden dancing. Meanwhile Annaleigh confronts red herring after red herring (definite sea thing going on here in my post) as she drives toward a solution to the mystery.

The Twelve Dancing Princesses–the tale

First of all, as in years gone by, I should mention what I mean by “fairytale.” No fairies are necessarily involved. The term has evolved to refer to a particular magical type of folk tale that may involve fairies, princesses, and the like, but may not. (A subgenre of fantasy, involving the fae, is an entirely different matter). And sometimes, what readers have come to know as “fairytales” aren’t any such thing–not folklore, passed down anonymously through the generations and centuries, often by word of mouth, but literary creations by artists hoping to mimic the fairytale aura. I should also mention that my blog posts on this subject won’t refer to anything Disney, except in passing. The Disney take on fairytales occurs in a whole world of its own, it has its faithful fans, and I don’t intrude there.

My first post in this series gives the same information: The original tale was collected in 1815 by the Brothers Grimm, nineteenth century German folklorists who were–and remain–famous for their efforts. Present-day folklorists classify this tale as Aarne-Thompson-Uther type 306, “the worn-out shoes.” You can read the original Grimm version in translation here. Later collectors of fairytales published French, Russian, Scots, and other versions. Some of the tropes (characteristic features) of the tale include the princesses numbering as many as twelve (sometimes only one), the shoes that mysteriously wear out, the magical place of forbidden dancing, the clever suitor who discovers the secret and wins the hand of the eldest princess. More disturbing features include the idea that the princesses are trapped in the magic dancing venue until rescued, and unsuccessful suitors may come in for cruel or downright grisly treatment. Magic and/or imprisoning mirrors may be involved. Any adaptation may include some or all of these tropes, or turn them topsy-turvy.

My thoughts on this book:

This is a wonderful YA fantasy novel with characters to love and root for, good writing, an ingenious mythological/magic system, and then, on top of all that, horror and mystery. If you like your YA completely sweet, though, the horror might put you off. It gets intense.

I did think, however, that the “Twelve Dancing Princesses” stuff felt a bit tacked on. Was the dancing stuff really necessary to make this plot work? I get the twelve sisters dying off one by one part, and the sinister man Annaleigh meets at the magical ball. I got a bit weary of it all, I must confess, but reader! I am old! I am not the audience for YA. So young readers may love every little bit.

One aspect of this book I REALLY appreciated: it’s part of a two-book series, Sisters of the Salt, yet there is no cliffhanger ending at the conclusion of this novel, book one in the series. If you don’t plan to go on with the series, you’ll still get a satisfying reading experience. If you do go on to the next one, House of Roots and Ruin, about the youngest sister, Verity, I’m not sure how much depends on your having read book one. I doubt I’ll read it myself, but I am sure many YA readers and readers who love YA will rush to purchase it. Go for it!

Content warning:

The horror! The horror! I can imagine some young teens, or maybe even older readers, might get freaked out by the horror and the description of violent, grisly deaths. If this is you: be warned.

My experience buying this book:

I read this book through the Barnes & Noble app on my iPad. Getting the book, for me, was difficult enough that if I hadn’t been committed to reading on different ebook platforms, I might have given up and gone to an easier way to purchase, like Amazon’s Kindle, or even One-Click from their web site, or of course–since I’m using an iPad, Apple’s seamless iBook app. I’m sure if I had a Nook, Barnes & Noble’s dedicated reading device, buying the book there would have been just as easy as buying on my Kindle. As it was, needing to buy from the Barnes & Noble web site put one more difficulty between me and my addiction (books!). The main problem is not with Barnes & Noble. As I’ve mentioned before in this blog series, it’s a problem Apple created when it ensured that only its own iBooks store could process ebook sales directly in-app. That said–the Barnes & Noble purchase felt unnecessarily complicated. (By contrast, the Kobo process was a breeze, and the Amazon process is practically a no-brainer.) I think it took me five or six tries before I finally purchased the book on the Barnes & Noble site. That’s enough to drive an e-reading reader batty–and away. Once I did have the novel on my app, though, reading it there was a very satisfying experience–lots of intuitive tools and easy navigation.

Two great solutions. Let’s hear them again!

• Buy a paperback or hardback copy from your local independent bookstore! (oh, all right, from a chain big box bookstore, I guess, if you just have to.) I myself am hooked on the convenience of ebooks, but you don’t have to be.
• GET THE BOOK FROM YOUR LIBRARY. You may be able to find it there in paperback/hard cover, but in the U.S., your public library is full of free-to-read ebooks, and librarians are great at finding it for you in ebook form if you can’t find it yourself. I’m not sure about library policies in other parts of the world, though. Let’s hear it for librarians, unfairly embattled in these hard times. Who knew anyone would take out after librarians, of all selfless people? It’s like picking the wings off butterflies. Really beautiful ones, too.

This year, DANCE your way to Valentine’s Day! Novels based on fairytales and folktales featuring dance.

In preceding years (you can find all the posts archived on my blog, btw–just look for February!), I have posted novels based on worldwide fairytales and folk tales, and on two “literary” fairytales (Cinderella and Rapunzel). This year, I’m featuring a whole week of novels based on fairytales and folktales involving dance. Here are the posts:

TODAY, Day One of Fairytale Fantasy Week: Entwined, by Heather Dixon–a novel based on the classic fairytale “The Twelve Dancing Princesses.”

Day Two: Midnight in Everwood, by M. A. Kuzniar–a novel based on the story behind the classic fairytale ballet, The Nutcracker.

Day Three: Valentine’s Day itself! The amazing fantasy novel Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell, by Susanna Clarke–a novel with a strong dancing subplot.

Day Four: House of Salt and Sorrows, by Erin A. Craig–another novel based on “The Twelve Dancing Princesses.”

Day Five: Dark Breaks the Dawn, by Sara B. Larson–a novel based on the fairytale ballet Swan Lake.

Day Six: Sexing the Cherry, by Jeanette Winterson–a final choice based on “The Twelve Dancing Princesses,” but be warned–it’s nothing like the others.

Day Seven: A wrap-up and a special exploration of the “dance mania” of the medieval period, plus a free download.

TODAY, a review of Entwined, by Heather Dixon

Entwined, a novel (2011) by Heather Dixon, published by Greenwillow Books (an imprint of Harper Collins) and based on the fairytale “The Twelve Dancing Princesses,” is one of a number of recent retellings of this fairytale. The novel sets the fairytale premise in a vaguely Victorian or Edwardian but definitely magical kingdom, where the recently-widowed king has to manage his twelve energetic daughters. The daughters, all named for flowers or plants, range from the eldest, Azalea, who has come of age and will be presented at the next ball so that suitors may vie for her hand, to the littlest, Lily, just a baby. The daughters live to dance, and when they discover a full year of mourning will force them to wear nothing but black and give up dancing, they are distraught. The chilly king doesn’t help matters with his rigid rules and seeming indifference to their grief–and his own. Azalea and her sisters discover a magic passageway to a pavilion where they can dance in secret, but they discover there’s a wicked price to be paid for all that dancing, and a mystery to be solved. Meanwhile, the various unsuitable suitors cause Azalea plenty of consternation, family ties are explored in a heartwarming way, and the plot ends in a battle of wits and magic.

The Twelve Dancing Princesses–the tale

First of all, as in years gone by, I should mention what I mean by “fairytale.” No fairies are necessarily involved. The term has evolved to refer to a particular magical type of folk tale that may involve fairies, princesses, and the like, but may not. (A subgenre of fantasy, involving the fae, is an entirely different matter). And sometimes, what readers have come to know as “fairytales” aren’t any such thing–not folklore, passed down anonymously through the generations and centuries, often by word of mouth, but literary creations by artists hoping to mimic the fairytale aura. I should also mention that my blog posts on this subject won’t refer to anything Disney, except in passing. The Disney take on fairytales occurs in a whole world of its own, it has its faithful fans, and I don’t intrude there.

The original tale was collected in 1815 by the Brothers Grimm, nineteenth century German folklorists who were–and remain–famous for their efforts. Present-day folklorists classify this tale as Aarne-Thompson-Uther type 306, “the worn-out shoes.” You can read the original Grimm version in translation here. Later collectors of fairytales published French, Russian, Scots, and other versions. Some of the tropes (characteristic features) of the tale include the princesses numbering as many as twelve (sometimes only one), the shoes that mysteriously wear out, the magical place of forbidden dancing, the clever suitor who discovers the secret and wins the hand of the eldest princess. More disturbing features include the idea that the princesses are trapped in the magic dancing venue until rescued, and unsuccessful suitors may come in for cruel or downright grisly treatment. Magic and/or imprisoning mirrors may be involved. Any adaptation may include some or all of these tropes, or turn them topsy-turvy.

My thoughts on this book:

It’s fun to read, pretty light-hearted. I found it a bit too cutesy, especially the magic–dare I say Disney-cute? After I read it, I discovered the author actually works as a story artist for Disney and loves working on Mary Poppins especially. So if that’s your thing, you may really love this book. (It’s not my thing, but as my old mother used to say, “Everyone to her own taste, said the old woman who kissed the cow.” Or, in high-falutin’ form, De gustibus non disputandem est.)

How to read it:

I got my copy to read on my Kindle, although as accident would have it (no way to charge the aging device), I had to read it on my iPad instead through the Kindle app. I do love physical books, but I travel extensively and can’t pack suitcases full of them, so I have become a big fan of e-reading. Buying an e-book ON a Kindle is about as fast as you can gratify yourself. I had to go to amazon.com and get it there, because my iPad is of course an Apple product, and the iPad strives mightily to get you to buy your e-books through iBooks. So I had an extra step to negotiate, but once I got to the Amazon site, I bought the book FAST using One-Click. Then, when I opened the Amazon app on the iPad, there it was. Reading it on the iPad was a nice experience, even though I missed my Kindle Paperwhite and how easy it is on the eyes.