Weekly Reader: Mother: A Mother Gothel Tale (Witches of Grimm Book One) by C.M. Adler; Rapunzel Revisited Into A Tale of Feminist Solidarity

 

Weekly Reader: Mother: A Mother Gothel Tale (Witches of Grimm Book One) by C.M. Adler; Rapunzel Revisited Into A Tale of Feminist Solidarity

By Julie Sara Porter

Bookworm Reviews

Spoilers: Similar to Liz Butcher's Never Never, C.M. Adler's Mother takes a familiar story and turns it around to subvert our notions of heroism and villainy. This time the story that gets a facelift is Rapunzel. The central focus in this version is that of a loving mother and a loyal daughter.

Cerelia is on the run with an infant baby in tow. She is a witch and is running from judgemental villagers. She escapes into a forest and builds a cottage with a vast magical garden in which she grows herbs and flowers which are not only used for healing, food, and lotions but also to appease the fairies that hang around.

Meanwhile, Maia, a young servant girl, is pregnant and imprisoned. The weak willed father of her child goes along with his family as they accuse her of witchcraft. Longing for escape, Maia appeals to a spirit named Rumple, to help free her. Rumple Six, the goblin, says that she will be freed and have blood for blood in exchange for her unborn baby. Desperate, Maia agrees so she manages to escape into the forest right into Cerelia's garden.

Mother not only changes the perspective of Rapunzel but gives us a fantasy novella with two strong female leads that carry the theme of the solidarity of women. Cerelia lives an independent life caring for her garden and her familiars like the feisty spider, Xee, and leaves food and other gifts for the fairies that help her magically protect her home. She performs various magic like merging her soul with the forest and having second sight. Both abilities prove helpful to aid Maia.

Maia's involvement in magic is by pure accident to escape from her jailers. She stumbles onto a power that she doesn't comprehend and gets figuratively burned by it. Cerelia is able to show Maia a better way of channeling that magic into something more focused and less self destructive. Cerelia becomes a guide to help Maia find her inner personal power as they become a coven of two.

Besides helping each other in witchcraft, Cerelia and Maia form a familial bond which is emphasized by Maia's name for her: Gothel (German for godmother.) Maia explains that she never felt a close connection with any of the women in the village. Cerelia lost her child and feels that ache despite her independence. She wants someone to share that life with and she has that in Maia. They are mother and daughter, teacher and student, mentor and protegee, best friends. As for Rapunzel, well the young lady with the extra long hair does arrive and is welcomed into this charmed circle.

Mother does a lot to improve the witch characters in The Brothers Grimm's fairy tales. It will be interesting to see what Adler does with the other witch characters.

New Book Alert: Never Never by Liz Butcher; Fear, Screams, and Pixy Dust Make Modern Day Peter Pan Story

  New Book Alert: Never Never by Liz Butcher; Fear, Screams, and Pixy Dust Make Modern Day Peter Pan Story

By Julie Sara Porter

 Bookworm Reviews

Spoilers: It's always interesting to take an alternate version of a story: to change a romance into a stalker thriller, to subvert heroes and villains. One story that produces many different interpretations is Sir James Barrie's Peter Pan. To some the story of the Boy Who Wouldn't Grow Up in the magical island of Neverland is a child's fantasy fulfillment of a land where adventures can be found and children can never grow up and never die. However,to some it is a creepy thought that veers towards horror of this seemingly eternally youthful sociopath kid abducting other kids and foolishly leading them into potential danger.

 Some have even postulated the theory that Peter Pan is an Angel of Death and comes to sickly children to take them to their form of Heaven (and the Darling children hovered between life and death and returned to life by deciding to leave Neverland).

Actually, there is some truth to this theory in that Barrie was inspired by the death of his younger brother to create the story of a boy who wouldn't grow up. He later dedicated his work to the Llewelyn Davies Boys, five brothers whom he adopted after the death of their parents. So the tale of Peter Pan is surrounded by death even in his genesis so there may be some truth to the horror.

Liz Butcher's novel, Never Never reveals the potential horror that the Pan story could mean. Wendy Darling, the heroine of the original story is now grown up and a  police detective. She is suffering from flashbacks of her abduction as a child which was not pleasurable or fantastic. Instead she is trying to rebuild her life with her daughter, Jane and girlfriend, Lily. Unfortunately, her kidnapping comes to the forefront after the death of her mother and confrontation with her brothers, John and Michael. Also a teenage girl has been kidnapped and her abduction parallels Wendy's perfectly right down to her nightmares of a creepy boy with bright green eyes hiding in the shadows. Wendy is forced to confront her memories of her kidnapper, the sadistic creature called Pan.

Never Never does a great job of transforming the kid's fantasy into an adult's horror. The characters are there: The Darling children, Peter Pan, Captain Hook but something isn't quite right. The promises of adventure and eternal youth become less enticing from a nightmarish creature with hypnotic green eyes. That's not even getting into the real reason that Pan kidnaps which is revealed in a very frightening passage when Wendy finds herself in Pan's lair once more. He's not a mischievous thoughtless forever young boy instead he is a demonic figure who destroys those he takes.

In fact every character goes through a modern more complex transformation that causes us to rethink the original story. Wendy was once seen as a daydreaming maternal figure. She is now a  wounded embittered assault survivor, still maternal but willing to fight to protect her daughter and the missing children. John and Michael aren't as explored but they also carry the scars of their sister's abduction and are trying to keep what remains of their family intact.

Even Neverland's residents Captain Hook and Tiger Lily are given new outlooks as Hook's connection to Pan is explored more in depth.  Lily is seen as someone who would rather forget her old life to focus on the one that she longs for with Wendy and Jane. Tinkerbell is also present, a mix of the ball of light from the original play and the saucy minx from the film productions. She finally has a lot to say and is just waiting for a chance to express herself.

 Never Never gives us a familiar story and presents it in a new terrifying way. It shows that one person's fantastic dream might be another person's frightening nightmare.