A New Russian Fairytale?

Jan 2019
The Bear and the Nightingale - Katherine Arden – Del Rey, 2017
* * *
This is a nicely written Russian folktale about Vasya, a young girl who can see spirits, as she grows up in a small village in a wood where Things are stirring. It reminded me a lot of Naomi Novik's Uprooted but with a more domestic focus. Given that the author is American, I was impressed by how Russian it felt, both in the heavily paternalistic social dynamics of the family and in the mediaeval politics (although this particular plot thread is dropped fairly early on, presumably to be picked up in sequels). The appearances of the spirits - domovoi, leshy, rusalka and dvorovoi - are handled in an excellently dream-like way.

There are a couple of flaws. The bad Christian versus good Pagan theme, exemplified by Father Konstantin, an overly zealous priest, and Anna, a stepmother who sees spirits but refuses to believe in them, is a little tedious. And the titular bear and nightingale were disappointing, with the former being a powerful but ill-defined antagonist with no real ursine qualities, and the latter not a bird at all. Arden uses existing folk traditions well, but isn't so good at inventing new ones.