It’s taken me weeks to finish this book, not because it is terribly long, or because it’s not well-written (in fact, it is very well-written), but because parts of it were so grim and I wasn’t in a state of mind at that time to deal with it in large doses. Also, I should mention that although I felt this description was too long to go in the monthly reading thread, as reviews go, it is too short to do full justice to the complexities of the plot and characters.
Estranged brother and sister Isaac and Bellatine Yaga are brought back together when they learn that a relative they never heard of back in the Ukraine has died and left them a legacy. As it turns out, their great-grandmother’s name may be more familiar to many of us here than it was to them. Yes, she was the legendary witch Baba Yaga, and their inheritance is the house on chicken legs. Thistlefoot is the name that Bellatine gives to the house, but the Russian Thistle, a type of tumbleweed, is also used as a symbol for the Jewish diaspora. But there is more to the witch's legacy than that, for they have also inherited the enmity of a mysterious being known as the Longshadow Man, who pursues them as they cross much of America in their walking house.
In this book, Baba Yaga is Jewish, as the details of the story make clear. Folklore concerning the witch and her fantastical house are woven throughout the novel—stories which are told by the house itself. Some of those stories take different shapes and are later retold in different forms—which is something that happens to folklore in reality. But as powerful a witch as Baba Yaga was, she had not the power to repel an army bent on wiping out a community of harmless villagers merely to cleanse the Russian Empire of the “stain” of their presence. Thus, her story is set for heart-wrenching tragedy.
Isaac and Bellatine are only half-Jewish, do not appear to practice any religion, know little of their family history before or since coming to America, but as the author asserts: there are elements of ancestral memory, memories of tragedy, grief, and harm, memories of who hates you simply for who your ancestors were, that are carried deep within blood and muscle and bone. The Yaga siblings do not know who or what the Longshadow Man is (late in the story he tells Bellatine that he is not a what but a when) but they instinctively distrust him. And it becomes increasingly clear that whatever else he is, he is a personification of hatred of the “other.” Though he is bent on completing what was begun during the pogrom that wiped out the village, by killing the Yagas and destroying their magical house, he uses his powers to hugely multiply hatred of any group that those he wishes to manipulate resent or fear, causing them to commit monstrous deeds of violence, which they don't remember afterwards.
This book succeeds very well as a fantasy novel. Along with the strands of folklore woven throughout, the younger Yagas each possess a special power. While Isaac uses his to con people (when we first meet him he is a street hustler in New Orleans), Bellatine fears to use her still greater power ever since she once used it and the result went gruesomely wrong. Nor is the story all dread and disaster, there is a fair bit of humor in the novel as well, because of the collection of eccentric people they meet.
But is also a book with a purpose, one which is especially timely. It’s about memory and bearing witness, not just to the horrors of the past, but to the lives, customs, and cultures of those who have suffered. As such, perhaps one needs to be born and raised within a persecuted race or culture (which I was not) to deeply and entirely understand the message of this book. However, there are profound truths here of the sort that it is better to recognize no matter how dimly than not to recognize them at all—certainly better than to deny them because we would prefer that they weren’t true.
Estranged brother and sister Isaac and Bellatine Yaga are brought back together when they learn that a relative they never heard of back in the Ukraine has died and left them a legacy. As it turns out, their great-grandmother’s name may be more familiar to many of us here than it was to them. Yes, she was the legendary witch Baba Yaga, and their inheritance is the house on chicken legs. Thistlefoot is the name that Bellatine gives to the house, but the Russian Thistle, a type of tumbleweed, is also used as a symbol for the Jewish diaspora. But there is more to the witch's legacy than that, for they have also inherited the enmity of a mysterious being known as the Longshadow Man, who pursues them as they cross much of America in their walking house.
In this book, Baba Yaga is Jewish, as the details of the story make clear. Folklore concerning the witch and her fantastical house are woven throughout the novel—stories which are told by the house itself. Some of those stories take different shapes and are later retold in different forms—which is something that happens to folklore in reality. But as powerful a witch as Baba Yaga was, she had not the power to repel an army bent on wiping out a community of harmless villagers merely to cleanse the Russian Empire of the “stain” of their presence. Thus, her story is set for heart-wrenching tragedy.
Isaac and Bellatine are only half-Jewish, do not appear to practice any religion, know little of their family history before or since coming to America, but as the author asserts: there are elements of ancestral memory, memories of tragedy, grief, and harm, memories of who hates you simply for who your ancestors were, that are carried deep within blood and muscle and bone. The Yaga siblings do not know who or what the Longshadow Man is (late in the story he tells Bellatine that he is not a what but a when) but they instinctively distrust him. And it becomes increasingly clear that whatever else he is, he is a personification of hatred of the “other.” Though he is bent on completing what was begun during the pogrom that wiped out the village, by killing the Yagas and destroying their magical house, he uses his powers to hugely multiply hatred of any group that those he wishes to manipulate resent or fear, causing them to commit monstrous deeds of violence, which they don't remember afterwards.
This book succeeds very well as a fantasy novel. Along with the strands of folklore woven throughout, the younger Yagas each possess a special power. While Isaac uses his to con people (when we first meet him he is a street hustler in New Orleans), Bellatine fears to use her still greater power ever since she once used it and the result went gruesomely wrong. Nor is the story all dread and disaster, there is a fair bit of humor in the novel as well, because of the collection of eccentric people they meet.
But is also a book with a purpose, one which is especially timely. It’s about memory and bearing witness, not just to the horrors of the past, but to the lives, customs, and cultures of those who have suffered. As such, perhaps one needs to be born and raised within a persecuted race or culture (which I was not) to deeply and entirely understand the message of this book. However, there are profound truths here of the sort that it is better to recognize no matter how dimly than not to recognize them at all—certainly better than to deny them because we would prefer that they weren’t true.
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