Sally Gardner

The Snow Song by Sally Gardner

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I’ve been trying to remember if I’ve read anything by Sally Gardner before because I know her as a prolific children’s author. There are plenty of her titles I could name but haven’t read, the only one I definitely have is Tinder because was on the 2015 Carnegie shortlist in my School Librarian days. That one was an illustrated novel retelling Hans Christian Anderson’s The Tinder Box, I reviewed it on Goodreads and gave it three show more stars.

The Snow Song also reads like a fairy tale, though I don’t know if it is directly inspired by anything specific. The story begins with a young woman named Edith falling in love and quickly engaged to a handsome visiting shepherd. However her alcoholic father had promised her to the village butcher (and bully), and so an agreement is made that if the shepherd doesn’t return from grazing his sheep in the summer before the first snow then she will have to marry the butcher. Her shepherd never returns and in her grief, Edith’s hair turns bright white and she loses her voice.

The isolated folksy mountain village which is the setting for this story initially has a very vague sense of time and place. However, there are eventual mentions of home sewing machines and trains existing in the outside world which would place the time as at least the late 19th century, meaning this village is stuck in something of a time warp due to its isolation. As is so often the case, village life is run by a group of male elders who fiercely uphold patriarchal ideals. Women are only wives and mothers, and they must marry whoever their fathers and the elders agree for them and are essentially voiceless within their small society. There also are myriad traditions and superstitions enforced even when they fly in the face of sense and survival. All the female characters are miserable, even the ones who cling to tradition. Many of the men are faring no better, especially as everyone cows to the tyranny of the butcher.

At first, Edith finds there is power in not speaking. It unsettles everybody, especially the men, and encourages many villages to unburden their long-held secrets. The change they witness in Edith, and the clear injustice in her forced marriage to the old, repellent butcher, begins to make waves with the women folk. Eventually, Edith’s voice returns and she has new strength and power to stand up to the village elders.

It was interesting that most of the male characters are never named and only referred to by their lowercase professions – the cabinet maker, the butcher, the miller (and the miller’s son), the mayor etc. The shepherd and the butcher’s grandson were named, both of whom are treated as outsiders (Misha, assumed to be the village idiot), but I think that was it. Whereas the women all have names. I’m not sure what to make of this detail, on the one hand, I think it’s a part of the traditional story styling but I think it also demonstrates that the men are only their functional roles within society rather than individuals – even more sympathetic and enlightened ones, such as the blacksmith.

It is remarkable to me how compelling this book was! The style is that of a traditional fairy tale so it is very simply told and few words are spent on characterisation, yet Gardener deftly populates Edith’s life and the lives of her friends. The building rage of the other women, and a couple of men, in the village is slow at first but increases momentum towards a satisfying climax. I liked how well the story demonstrated the different ways that individuals in the village were affected by the behaviour of a few with too much power. It only took me 4 days to read this (384 pages) and it kept me up too late a couple of times! It’s been a while since that last happened.

My only minor criticism is that I was confused by what was going on in the mid-winter forest section. The magical realism got too blurry, a bit more fantastical than I was comfortable with in the story but honestly, that’s such a small quibble!

It also reminded me of All The Truth That’s In Me by Julie Berry which I read for the Carnegie 2014 shortlist and loved. That was less fairytale but was set in a remote traditional village and followed a young girl who had lost her voice. I hadn’t thought about that book in years, I found it quite powerful at the time.

Overall I recommend this, especially if you like adult fairy tale stories like Naomi Novik’s Uprooted or Spinning Silver. This one is written in a more traditional manner (and it does get very dark in its content) but it had me gripped, and I think it’s a rare and quite special read.

You can read this review and more on my blog.

# REVIEW SUMMARY
## I LIKED
- A powerful, and quite dark, adult fairy tale that manages to be satisfying and compelling.
- Characters felt well-balanced and demonstrated a breadth of issues in such a harsh patriarchal society for both genders.
- Very atmospheric and I enjoyed the magical elements mixed in with very raw real-world issues.
- The slowly building rage of the female villagers was satisfying, as was the conclusion.

## I DIDN’T LIKE
- Minor niggle is that I felt quite confused in the forest cabin bit!

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A slightly whimsical but extremely enjoyable tale about a young girl called Neva, who is adopted by a clockmaker after her parents are killed when a disaster happens during the Frost Fair of 1789. It appears she can predict the weather but to enable her to do so in public, she takes on a male disguise and forecasts the meteorological conditions from inside an automaton, built by the clockmaker. “It can be very dangerous to be ahead of your time, especially if you’re a woman.”

This is an show more atmospheric story and it’s beautifully written. I thought it had a Dickensian vibe at times. There are certainly some Dickensian sounding characters. Ebenezer Ratchet for one! The descriptions are wonderful. There’s a definite sense of time and place, although with a little magic and hint of the supernatural thrown in. The author brought it all to life for me, I almost thought I was there walking alongside these marvellous characters. I was totally immersed in Neva’s story and was gripped from beginning to end. A real page turner! A captivating and engaging read which I would recommend to those who enjoy a combination of the historical and fantasy genres. show less

This was a recommendation from a 7th grader whose taste I share, and she was not wrong. (Note to self: next time she needs a book, foist Gardner's [b:Maggot Moon|15798757|Maggot Moon|Sally Gardner|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1351213402s/15798757.jpg|19697088] upon her -- it's a weird-ass book that I can never get anyone to read, but I kind of love it and the author connection may work, even though story-wise it's a much stranger sell than than this one. Anyway.)

I loved its straight-up show more Britishness: you really feel you are in another country; it's not "translated" for American audiences the way Harry Potter is, and even I with my longtime Anglophilia stumbled over bits of slang or cultural expectations. I maintain that it's good for kids to feel the tiniest bit confused by a book's language or emotional plotting, and this seems on just the right level for American 7th-10th grade mind-opening confusion.

I am always pleased to find a slightly odd, thought-provoking book that nevertheless has an easy pitch: "A kid finds a secret door that leads to London of 100 years ago, and uses it to figure out mysteries about his family's past!" I know the kids who'll be all over that, and you do, too.

I found it really interesting that the "correct ending" was to close the door (with an opening for a sequel), but with some characters on the "wrong" side of it. Screw you, 19th century, I'm wearing jeans and having a career, said the young woman -- and screw you, 21st century, I'm staying in the place where I can make money and have a future, said the young man from a cold and impoverished family. I wouldn't have bought it had they chosen otherwise, though I suspect that's the more typical ending of a story like this. show less

Born in 1643 to a wealthy London merchant and his beautiful wife, Coriander Hobbie was raised in a loving and affectionate home, knowing only happiness until the day a mysteriously alluring pair of silver shoes was delivered to her house beside the Thames. This strange gift, which her mother refused to allow her to wear, introduced the first note of disquiet into Coriander's life, and was the beginning of a series of strange events that would bring her great heartache, and involve her in show more dangerous adventures in both the mortal world and in the fairy world existing alongside it. Having lost her mother early in the book, Coriander moves back and forth between the two worlds, contending with an abusive and scheming Puritan stepmother - the horrible Maude Leggs, ugly, ignorant, and shrill, is seen as a wise choice for her father, whose Royalist sympathies had put him at risk from the repressive forces of the Commonwealth - her stepmother's maniacal preacher friend, Arise Fell; and the evil Fairy Queen Rosmore, whose cunning schemes are all aimed at stealing the powerful shadow that once belonged to Coriander's mother...

This work of historical fantasy, which alternates between Commonwealth and Restoration England, and a magical fairy world existing alongside our own, was chosen as the October selection for The Children's Fiction Book-Club to which I belong, and I am very happy to have finally read it, as I have owned a copy since it was first published in 2005. That said, while I found I, Coriander an enjoyable read in many ways - I thought the writing itself was lovely, and that Coriander made for an engaging heroine - it had some significant problems. From a storytelling perspective, I thought the sections of the book that occurred in the mortal world were far more convincing than those that occurred in the fairy world. Rosmore, for all that she is the true author of Coriander's misery, is never as fully realized a character as Maud, while Coriander's romance with Tycho had a distinctly tacked-on feeling to it, when compared to the relationship between Hester and Gabriel Appleby.

Unfortunately, while Maud Leggs and Arise Fell were marvelously realized villains, from the storytelling perspective - just the sort of repulsive characters one loves to hate! - their depiction raises troubling questions of historical inaccuracy and bias. I have no quarrel with a critical depiction of the Puritans - they were often zealots, bringing persecution to bear upon those with whom they disagreed, and their notion of culture (what was and wasn't 'godly') was appalling - but Gardner's aim is more than a little off here, potentially leaving young readers with some mistaken ideas. Like many other Reform-based Protestant sects (as opposed to both Catholics and Anglicans of this period), the Puritans placed great emphasis on the individual's relationship with the divine, unmediated by the clergy. To encourage this, they promoted education - the idea being that everyone should be able to read the Bible for themselves - and female literacy rose under their aegis. The exact opposite impression is created in the story, however, through the depiction of Maud and Arise, and their hostility toward women learning. Similarly, although the Puritans arose in response to a worldview every bit as repressive as their own, this is not the impression created by the story at all, which leaves readers with the impression that the monarchy (jubilantly welcomed back at the end of the book) was somehow benevolent.

I don't know that these glaring errors really ruined the book for me - although I did laugh out loud, when reading the historical afterword, to see Quakers described as a 'radical sect' and classified with the Puritans! - but then, I feel equipped to perceive them. It troubles me that young readers, perhaps not as informed about this period, might not be. For this reason, I really wavered in my rating. Three stars represents my enjoyment of the writing. If I were rating for historical accuracy, on the other hand, I might give the book only one. show less