MOONWISE, by Greer Ilene Gilman
A book probably unique in the annals of genre fantasy, Moonwise is poetic, visionary, complex, with symbolism and wordplay that weaves and bends and circles around like an old-fashioned country dance, where repetitive words and images alternate with stunningly original use of language. The characters seem to move in a dream, and their internal and external dialogues are often disjointed, with symbol piled on symbol, allusion on allusion.
The story layered under all this symbolism is roughly this: Sylvie and Ariane are friends who spent a large portion of their adolescence collaborating on the creation of imaginary worlds, a complicated mythology, and a set of magical laws. When Ariane returns to Sylvie's home for a visit many years later, the two are swept up in the old magic again, only this time it is all too real. Sylvie vanishes, and Ariane sets out in search of her. The two wander separately through the fantastic landscape of a winter wood, which seems to be the essence and embodiment of all seasonal myths and rituals -- both the traditional ones and those the two girls have invented. Witches and demons haunt the wood, but there are encounters with less threatening folk as well: a nameless waif, a farmwife and her children, a tinker who appears to have been snatched out of a different time. There are a number of tasks and conditions the young women meet and must fulfill along the way, although much of the time they appear to be in the dark about exactly what is expected of them -- partly because the meanings of things keep shifting, or at least keep revealing new faces.
What makes Moonwise so unusual is the fact that it exists in a grey area between prose and poetry; without rhyme, meter, or any set patterns, it is very dense in its imagery, and the story is subordinated to the words far more than the other way around. It is not the sort of book that you read in a few sittings. Like a Worm Ouroboros or a Gormenghast, it is, I think, one of those novels that it is easier to admire than to love (although if you do fall in love, you're not likely to fall out again, knowing that you may never find anything remotely similar to take its place). Sometimes it is almost too clever, too self-conscious, and because of this it may wear on the reader's patience -- but in smaller doses it can be an altogether bewitching and extraordinary experience.
For example, a meeting with the Wild Hunt:
She found Craobh just beyond a stony stream, sprawled shuddering, her hair and face splashed red with fallen leaves. Her eyes were blind and bright. Ariane knelt beside her. Touching the child's face with trembling fingers, she saw the rade of huntsmen she had blindly routed: raven-cloaked, or pale as dying suns, their bodies bitter white as frost, flint-clear, and flecked with dark immortal blood that rained like crystal on the earth. They carried knives of bronze or stone; their harness was of writhen metal, gold and grey-black, veined with crimson, of the lightborn blood inlaid; night-fiery, like a turmoil of windwyrms. They were crowned with iron, wrought as thorns; and pale as its flower sprang the foam from goat-rough horses, cruelly spurred.
Of this description of the witch-goddess Annis:
Annis strode down from the high fells, from the stone-law, the hoar lands: a shrunk black figure, blind, shadowless. The light behind her of the lastborn sun was bright as scissors, blunted on her rock. Souls winced and glinted in her hair. She came and came forever, black as the afterimage of fire, as the denial of the sun, a scar within the eye.
One has to admire Gilman for daring to set such a challenge for her readers, marvel that her publishers were ever willing to take a chance on such an unusual book. It had quite a vogue in its day but unfortunately, even in these reprint happy days, there has been no new edition. The mixture of obscure allusions to ballads, fairy tales, and folklore (the book is like a master course in British folkways) with pop culture references that were familiar to everyone back in the early 90's, has probably lost some of its appeal. Additionally, frequent archaicisms and passages of rustic dialect can make for difficult reading. But there is so much beauty in the language, and such magic throughout, that any reader who is up for something completely out of the ordinary, for a demanding book obviously conceived and written on the author's own terms, would do well to seek out Moonwise and give it a chance to weave its (sometimes maddeningly eccentric) spell.
A book probably unique in the annals of genre fantasy, Moonwise is poetic, visionary, complex, with symbolism and wordplay that weaves and bends and circles around like an old-fashioned country dance, where repetitive words and images alternate with stunningly original use of language. The characters seem to move in a dream, and their internal and external dialogues are often disjointed, with symbol piled on symbol, allusion on allusion.
The story layered under all this symbolism is roughly this: Sylvie and Ariane are friends who spent a large portion of their adolescence collaborating on the creation of imaginary worlds, a complicated mythology, and a set of magical laws. When Ariane returns to Sylvie's home for a visit many years later, the two are swept up in the old magic again, only this time it is all too real. Sylvie vanishes, and Ariane sets out in search of her. The two wander separately through the fantastic landscape of a winter wood, which seems to be the essence and embodiment of all seasonal myths and rituals -- both the traditional ones and those the two girls have invented. Witches and demons haunt the wood, but there are encounters with less threatening folk as well: a nameless waif, a farmwife and her children, a tinker who appears to have been snatched out of a different time. There are a number of tasks and conditions the young women meet and must fulfill along the way, although much of the time they appear to be in the dark about exactly what is expected of them -- partly because the meanings of things keep shifting, or at least keep revealing new faces.
What makes Moonwise so unusual is the fact that it exists in a grey area between prose and poetry; without rhyme, meter, or any set patterns, it is very dense in its imagery, and the story is subordinated to the words far more than the other way around. It is not the sort of book that you read in a few sittings. Like a Worm Ouroboros or a Gormenghast, it is, I think, one of those novels that it is easier to admire than to love (although if you do fall in love, you're not likely to fall out again, knowing that you may never find anything remotely similar to take its place). Sometimes it is almost too clever, too self-conscious, and because of this it may wear on the reader's patience -- but in smaller doses it can be an altogether bewitching and extraordinary experience.
For example, a meeting with the Wild Hunt:
She found Craobh just beyond a stony stream, sprawled shuddering, her hair and face splashed red with fallen leaves. Her eyes were blind and bright. Ariane knelt beside her. Touching the child's face with trembling fingers, she saw the rade of huntsmen she had blindly routed: raven-cloaked, or pale as dying suns, their bodies bitter white as frost, flint-clear, and flecked with dark immortal blood that rained like crystal on the earth. They carried knives of bronze or stone; their harness was of writhen metal, gold and grey-black, veined with crimson, of the lightborn blood inlaid; night-fiery, like a turmoil of windwyrms. They were crowned with iron, wrought as thorns; and pale as its flower sprang the foam from goat-rough horses, cruelly spurred.
Of this description of the witch-goddess Annis:
Annis strode down from the high fells, from the stone-law, the hoar lands: a shrunk black figure, blind, shadowless. The light behind her of the lastborn sun was bright as scissors, blunted on her rock. Souls winced and glinted in her hair. She came and came forever, black as the afterimage of fire, as the denial of the sun, a scar within the eye.
One has to admire Gilman for daring to set such a challenge for her readers, marvel that her publishers were ever willing to take a chance on such an unusual book. It had quite a vogue in its day but unfortunately, even in these reprint happy days, there has been no new edition. The mixture of obscure allusions to ballads, fairy tales, and folklore (the book is like a master course in British folkways) with pop culture references that were familiar to everyone back in the early 90's, has probably lost some of its appeal. Additionally, frequent archaicisms and passages of rustic dialect can make for difficult reading. But there is so much beauty in the language, and such magic throughout, that any reader who is up for something completely out of the ordinary, for a demanding book obviously conceived and written on the author's own terms, would do well to seek out Moonwise and give it a chance to weave its (sometimes maddeningly eccentric) spell.
