Reviewed by James Phillips
Polly Crosby (Scholastic: 2024)
Everyone knows the timeless classics that are fairy tales, but their origins have always proved murky and evasive. Polly Crosby reimagines the very foundations of the characters we know and love so much in a feminist young adult retelling, worthy of any reader.
We follow the protagonist Nesta, a 16 year old girl, living with her grandma in the woods. She is enjoying a sheltered, peaceful childhood, with little warning of the dangers of the outside world, when the plot suddenly erupts into a true Bildungsroman, when her grandma is kidnapped.
This catalyst suddenly reveals her gift of being able to hear the ‘Clamouring’, an ability to hone in on the history of an object’s touch by listening to past contact, an ability passed down the female line. It is in this way that she has her calling to the city to rescue her grandma, despite having never left the protective oaks of her treasured forest. The tale weaves and winds as Nesta traverses a new cityscape, led by an evil dictator, Bellwether, whose regime suppresses women.
Nesta has to come to terms quickly with the shock realisation that the tales she grew up surrounded by, with strong and powerful women at their centre, are not the ones the world knows. Instead, Bellwether has twisted the stories to show women as weak, and men being relied upon. He enacts a law to ensure this book of ‘modern’ fairytales is in every household. Even these are enchanted, made from ancient magical trees, a crucial factor in consolidating his control. Is Nesta, strong-hearted and naive as she is, able to conquer this evil? But with Bellwether’s desperate greed for ultimate power bringing the city to breaking point, will she be in time, not only to rescue her grandma, but to stop him from achieving total domination? You’ll have to read to find out.
This young adult novel is one of pacy action and engaging world building. Crosby manages to reinterpret our own understandings of the fairy tales we are so intimate with, and question whether ours too have been changed over the ages. So, coming into the season where the nights are drawing in and rooms flicker in candle light, it’s a story to transport you to a world, perhaps not so different from our own, letting you enjoy a tale spun from the webs of those we know so well.
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