Charlotte Kersten

“Blackest wish turn white like snow,
Bloodiest wish like blood outflow.”

Year published: 2001

Category: Adult fantasy (fairy tale retelling)

Summary: Arpazia is the aging queen who paces the halls of a warlord’s palace. Cold as winter, she has only one passion—for the mysterious hunter who courts the outlawed old gods of the woodland. Coira is the princess raised in the shadow of her mother’s hatred. Avoided by both her parents and half forgotten by her father’s court, she grows into womanhood alone . . . until the mirror speaks, and blood is spilled, and the forest claims her.

The tragic myth of the goddess Demeter and her daughter, Persephone, stolen by the king of the underworld, is woven together with the tale of Snow White to create a powerful story of mothers and daughters and the blood that binds them together, for good or ill. Black queen. White maid. Royal huntsman. Seven little folk who live in the forest. Come inside, sit by the fire, and listen to this fairy tale as you’ve never heard it told before.

My thoughts: This is an absolutely gorgeous, hideous retelling of Snow White. It’s beautiful and cruel in the way all of my favorite fairy tale retellings are, cutting right to the bloody heart of the classic tale. What I will say right off the bat is that this is not a read for the faint of heart. It is full of cruelty and violence – slavery, rape, torture, the abject dehumanization of women and people with dwarfism – and its ending is as harrowing as the rest of it. I can understand that some might find it to be way too much to handle, but while it was a difficult read for me, I am so glad that I pushed through.

The first of our two heroines is Arpazia, abducted, raped and made a queen and mother at fourteen. Her story is an awful one that is told with an incredible grace that makes it all the more heartrending- the time she spent lost in her “trances” of suffering and madness and helplessness, her ignorance of how to exist in the world or be with people and her grasping attempts to do these things. Her experience of being a mother is inextricably tied to the horror of her daughter’s conception so she blocks her daughter Coira from her mind; when she realizes that Coira exists and has grown into a beautiful young woman, she cannot stand the pain of identifying with her and hating her the way she hates her child-self, so she betrays her and sells her away; when she ventures out into the world, she tries to save and love her daughter at long last, but her love is a poisoned love.

Perhaps the most beautiful and painful part of her story is her desperate, obsessive love for the kind huntsman which is possibly the only good thing in her entire life – there are some incredibly beautiful scenes where she has visions of him after his death and he helps her see her life more clearly, treating her with the kindness and love and gentleness that no one else ever gave her. When she dies at the end of the book, Lee makes it very clear that she is leaving her lifetime of suffering behind to be with her huntsman in a peaceful death. I feel the same way about Arpazia’s death that I feel about the ending of The Pattern Scars by Caitlin Sweet- no, it does not fit a traditional empowerment narrative about survivorhood and living through trauma, and I understand the potential negative implications of writing a trauma narrative where the victim dies at the end. But all I can say is that these books make me feel that not every story featuring trauma has to have an optimistic moral; maybe it’s enough for some stories to be honest and beautiful in their pain. I think that very skilled authors, those with an incredibly delicate touch, can pull this off.

The book’s other protagonist is Arpazia’s daughter Coira. I found her to be much less interesting than Arpazia, mostly because she is so incredibly passive and closed-off to the world. I understand why she is the way she is, but she is still not very engaging to read about. I also feel that her romance with Hephasteon is somewhat abrupt and underdeveloped, but I do like how good they are to each other in a story filled with so much cruelty and violence and how they end the book embarking on a new journey filled with hope for the future.

This is an especially rich reading experience because of how the tale of Snow White is intertwined with the legend of Hades, Persephone and Demeter, the mythic identities of the Maiden, Mother, and Crone, and the conflict between pagan rites and Christianity. It feels like something of a moot point to say that Tanith Lee’s prose is absolutely exquisite, but I would feel remiss if I didn’t mention it. As a final point, I wanted to mention that I think this is a fascinatingly similar read to Black Wine by Candas Jane Dorsey- both are incredibly dark stories told with beautiful prose, and there is the dual narration of a mother’s story and her daughter’s story about their existences through sexual violence and slavery. And while the mother eventually succumbs to “madness” because of her suffering and dies, her daughter lives on to create a more hopeful future. With that in mind, those who enjoyed this book might also enjoy Black Wine, and vice verse.