I can especially recommend the old Soviet films, they enchanted me so much. When I was a child, I loved the films about Jack Frost and the Witch Baba-Yaga and couldn’t get enough of them. I have read many stories about western European cultures, as well as cultures from the Asian continents, but I have never dealt with Russian myths and was even more pleased to read a Russian-influenced story here. When something dark spreads through the woods, only she seems able to drive it away. She alone can see the spirits that protect her home. However, for the young, wild Vasilisa, these are far more than fairy tales. Life in the cold and in the remoteness is mostly not so easy for the family and only the evenings filled with forbidden stories about old magic can provide warmth in front of the stove. She grows up with her brothers, sister and father in a village on the edge of the wilderness.
She tells her husband to look after Vasilisa. When Vasilisa Vladimirovich is born, in a village on the edge of the wilderness, far in the north of Russia, her mother dies. I would rather die tomorrow in the forest than live a hundred years of the life appointed me. I would walk into the jaws of hell itself, if it were a path of my own choosing. I must be a man’s servant and a mare for his pleasure, or I must hide myself behind walls and surrender my flesh to a cold, silent god. “Vasya a clever, stalwart girl determined to forge her own path in a time when women had few choices.All my life,” she said, “I have been told ‘go’ and ‘come.’ I am told how I will live, and I am told how I must die. “Arden’s debut novel has the cadence of a beautiful fairy tale but is darker and more lyrical.” The Bear and the Nightingale is a wonderfully layered novel of family and the harsh wonders of deep winter magic.” “An extraordinary retelling of a very old tale. an immersive, earthy story of folk magic, faith, and hubris, peopled with vivid, dynamic characters, particularly clever, brave Vasya, who outsmarts men and demons alike to save her family.”
#The bear and the nightingale full
Kirkus Reviews (starred review) ( Read full review) ★ “Arden has shaped a world that neatly straddles the seen and the unseen, where readers will hear echoes of stories from childhood while recognizing the imagination that has transformed old material into something fresh.” Publishers Weekly (starred review) ( Read full review)
#The bear and the nightingale free
with an irresistible heroine who wants only to be free of the bonds placed on her gender and claim her own fate.” will enchant readers from the first page. This is the image that got me writing in the first place.
Essay Chapter 1, First DraftĪn early scribble of the first chapter. What Marina was doing before she came in out of the rain in Chapter 1.
As the village’s defenses weaken and evil from the forest creeps nearer, Vasilisa must call upon dangerous gifts she has long concealed-to protect her family from a threat sprung to life from her nurse’s most frightening tales. And indeed, misfortune begins to stalk the village.īut Vasya’s stepmother only grows harsher, determined to remake the village to her liking and to groom her rebellious stepdaughter for marriage or a convent. Fiercely devout, Vasya’s stepmother forbids her family from honoring their household spirits, but Vasya fears what this may bring.
Then Vasya’s widowed father brings home a new wife from Moscow. Wise Russians fear him, for he claims unwary souls, and they honor the spirits that protect their homes from evil. Above all, Vasya loves the story of Frost, the blue-eyed winter demon. Winter lasts most of the year at the edge of the Russian wilderness, and in the long nights, Vasilisa and her siblings love to gather by the fire to listen to their nurse’s fairy tales. Amazon’s #1 pick for the year’s best science fiction and fantasy in 2017
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