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Set in an alternate version of St. Petersburg in the first half of the twentieth century, Marya Morevna, a clever child of the revolution, is transformed into the beautiful bride of Koschei the Deathless, a menacing overlord.
I started this book great guns and then for some reason I just stopped reading it. It languished on the end table, sad and neglected. Then last week I picked it back up and just ripped through the last 2/3 and it was amazing. Why on earth did I stop reading it?
This is a gorgeous, gorgeous book. Lush and so alive with stories and myths. I loved it. ( )
Beautifully written but hella weird. Cathrynne Valente is a supreme word-smith but sometimes I have no idea what she is talking about. Still, it was an interesting venture. ( )
I have very mixed feelings about this book. On the one hand, I am sure this book was brilliant. On the other hand, brilliance didn't hold my attention very well. I think a major problem is that I didn't know the Russian folktale that this book was based off of, and I spent a good portion of the book feeling like the person at the party who wasn't getting the inside joke. I love fairy and folk tale retellings, but a great portion of my enjoyment of such stories is me seeing how the original tales are twisted into something new and wonderful. I did not get that enjoyment from this book.
By itself, I found the story very good, the prose delicious at times, and the characters fascinating but lifeless. I could not get myself to care about Marya, which was ultimately what kept me from even giving the book 3 stars.
I also really wanted a glossary in the back for Russian terms and characters. (The epilogue lost all its punch when I couldn't remember who one of the characters was, who appeared briefly mid-way through.)
I am going to declare this an aberration and try more of Valente's books because I have heard such fabulous things about her - so fabulous, in fact, that I actually have most of her books in my possession. It's a shame this was the first one I picked up. ( )
Deathless performs the highest function of a problematic novel. It reveals more about the writer's technique and strengths than a polished, impregnable work might.
Another intricate fantasy from Valente, based on what feels like the entire panoply of Russian folktales. ...scenes, people, myths and history intertwine. It's dazzling but intensely self-involved.
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From the year nineteen forty I look out on everything as if from a high tower As if bidding farewell To that from which I long ago parted. As if crossing myself And descending beneath dark arches. —Anna Akhmatova
Dedica
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For Dmitri, who spirited me away from a dark place
Incipit
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Woodsmoke hung heavy and golden on the shorn wheat, the earth bristling like an old, bald woman.
Citazioni
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In a city by the sea which was once called St. Petersburg, then Petrograd, then Leningrad, then, much later, St. Petersburg again, there stood a long, thin house on a long, thin street. By a long, thin window, a child in a pale blue dress and pale green slippers waited for a bird to marry her.
“That's how you get deathless, volchitsa. Walk the same tale over and over, until you wear a groove in the world, until even if you vanished, the tale would keep turning, keep playing, like a phonograph, and you'd have to get up again, even with a bullet through your eye, to play your part and say your lines.”
The rapt pupil will be forgiven for assuming the Tsar of Death to be wicked and the Tsar of Life to be virtuous. Let the truth be told: There is no virtue anywhere. Life is sly and unscrupulous, a blackguard, wolfish, severe. In service to itself, it will commit any offence. So, too, is Death possessed of infinite strategies and a gaunt nature- but also mercy, also grace and tenderness. In his own country, Death can be kind.
Morality is more dependent on the state of one's stomach than of one's nation.
Death is not like that. [...] You will live as you live anywhere. With difficulty, and grief. Yes, you are dead. And I and my family and everyone, always, forever. All dead like stones. But what does it matter? You still have to go to work in the morning. You still have to live.
Ultime parole
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She did not waver in her path, toward a place underground, down, down into the merciful dark, in a basement where a man with black curls flecked with starry silver would say her name like a confession; and in the place where their hands would touch, Marya Morevna could already see diamonds and black enamel swelling huge and gravid, yolk seeping from their skin like light.
Set in an alternate version of St. Petersburg in the first half of the twentieth century, Marya Morevna, a clever child of the revolution, is transformed into the beautiful bride of Koschei the Deathless, a menacing overlord.
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4
This is a gorgeous, gorgeous book. Lush and so alive with stories and myths. I loved it. (