Showing posts with label Laura Lavelle. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Laura Lavelle. Show all posts

Thursday, January 3, 2019

Review: "Book of One Hundred Riddles of the Fairy Bellaria" by Charles Leland

"The Book of One Hundred Riddles of the Fairy Bellaria features the Scheherazade-like fairy goddess Bellaria: powerful and mysterious, courageous and clever, goddess of spring, flowers, love, fate, and death. In this story, Bellaria engages in a duel of wits with an evil king, a deathmatch of one hundred riddles. Each riddle is spoken as a rhyme and illustrated by an original engraving in the arts and crafts style. This book is a beautiful reintroduction to Leland and his pioneering design. " 
[From the book blurb]

Brady-Handy Photograph Collection, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. (Digital File Number: LC-DIG-cwpbh-01563)
Charles Godfrey Leland, 1853
Review by: Laura Lavelle

You probably don’t recognize the name of Charles Godfrey Leland. He was a moderately popular American writer in the 19th century who is finally getting some recognition for his devotion to preserving the Other. His life’s passion was studying the tales, rituals, and religions of underrepresented peoples. He started his career writing books on gypsies and Native Americans but spent his final days in Italy learning about Etruscan myths and lore. The Book of One Hundred Riddles came from his time spent with the Italian witch/fortune teller Maddalena.

Though it is not a strict retelling of any one particular story, the entire book pulls together familiar elements of fairy tales and mythology. Bellaria herself is modeled after an obscure Etruscan goddess known as Alpan, who is an unusual sort of Venus/Persephone hybrid. She is both a protector of graves and also associated with fertility and springtime. The images we can find of Alpan often depict her with wings, no clothing, and carrying a bouquet. By the nineteenth century, this goddess had become known in Tuscany as the fairy La Bellaria — or, “Beautiful One of the Air.”



Depiction of Alpan
Although Leland’s Bellaria is clearly presented as a wise fairy queen, she is largely a mysterious figure whose nature and past aren’t directly spelled out. The main plot centers on the evil King Ruggero challenging her to a duel to the death. But the King’s duel is a battle of wits, not weapons.  As a supporter of women’s rights, it’s no surprise that Leland would write his fairy queen as an empowering woman who earns the King’s rage as she continues answering each of his tricky riddles with ease. She is like an Italian Scheherazade, from One Thousand and One Nights (an undoubtedly intentional parallel considering the similarity of the books’ titles). As events progress, Leland takes every opportunity to weave pieces of Bellaria’s backstory throughout the narrative. In classic fairy tale fashion, there are several prophecies that do not come to fruition until the end.

Overall, The Book of One Hundred Riddles of the Fairy Bellaria is a masterpiece of poetry and prose, accompanied by drawings by the author himself.  Though elements have been pulled from several texts, it reads as an authentic fairy tale from start to finish.  This book was a breath of fresh air for any reader — a light story about a brilliant woman and her battle of wits against a tyrant.  And though we may never know why the author chose to end the book the way he did (sorry, but we won’t spoil it!), it certainly brought the text around in full circle and closed it off with a nice flourish.

More info about The Book of One Hundred Riddles of the Fairy Bellaria can be found at the University of Minnesota Press site HERE. (https://www.upress.umn.edu/book-division/books/the-book-of-one-hundred-riddles-of-the-fairy)

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Laura Lavelle is a writer from Queens, New York, working in the genres of fantasy, horror, and science fiction with young and new adult themes.  She studied English at Queens College where she won a Silverstein-Peiser award in Fiction before graduating with her bachelor’s degree. However, when she’s not writing she can be found curled up with a book and a cat, hoping that something magical will happen. https://lauralsbookblog.blogspot.com/

Saturday, August 11, 2018

Review of "The Hawkman", a Retelling of Grimm's "Bearskin"


“In France and Germany, the protagonist is a veteran, starving for lack of work after the war; in Italy, he is a woodsman, wounded by an accident inherent in his profession.  In Spain, he is a pirate, shipwrecked after a poorly deliberated decision. In all places, he is a man who has lost his faith in God, and makes no secret of his apostasy.”

– Miss Eva Williams, “The Hawkman.”

After finishing Jane Rosenberg LaForge’s The Hawkman, I find myself still enamored by her lyrical prose, sifting through words to determine if what I read had really been written. Surely an ending so powerful could not exist?  Of course, it does.

As a retelling of the lesser known Grimm story Bearskin, here’s a quick summary of the fairy tale for those not already familiar: A desperate man makes a pact with the devil. If he can avoid bathing or praying for seven years and sleeps in a bearskin, then the devil will give him limitless wealth. Instead of the disaster you’d expect from such a bargain, the man’s kindness and generosity ultimately win him a bride and, once the seven years are up, they live happily ever after...except for the bride’s two sisters. Since they originally shunned our hero, they are later so full of regret that they kill themselves, netting the devil two souls and making him feel like the winner of the arrangement. Basically, it’s a monstrous bridegroom story, but steps away from tradition by using the man’s perspective instead of the woman’s.  

LaForge’s novel sets this fairy tale during World War I. Michael is an Irish prisoner of war who has been held in German work camps for years. He is finally coming out the other side, but is a broken shell of a man. He falls into himself, withdrawing from a society that shuns him, until he builds the persona of the Hawkman around himself.  When he first meets Miss Eva Williams, he is more beast than human. She brings him back to her cottage in Bridgetonne, England in hopes of helping him heal. Eva is a professor, an American, a writer, and a believer in the fantastical. Much like the bride from the fairy tale, when she sees the Hawkman, she is able to see the man beneath the creature.

What draws you in - aside from the lyricism of the writing itself - is the idea that this story starts with a death. Though, when you think about it, aren’t the greatest love stories those that are actually tragedies in disguise? Whether it be the lovers themselves, or the villain, or even a friend, we find that love and death are often inextricably entwined. This story’s death forces the reader to backpedal and unpack while gripping our seat the entire time. We hope that maybe things will change or that all is not what it seems.  But, of course, it is.

As the story progresses, its layers are slowly peeled back. The town of Bridgetonne takes on a life of its own, as described by the Hawkman’s first encounter with it:

“Bridgetonne was not without other misfits: old maids who, in an earlier time, might have been mistaken for witches, and bachelors who, likewise, would have been called out as warlocks.  But by no means was the village haunted.”

It soon becomes clear that there is more than one transformation in this novel. The town itself shifts from loathing the Hawkman and fearing his presence--even writing him off as a degenerate due to his heritage and situation--to respecting him and taking him in so that he will always have a home. Of course, as the original fairy tale suggests, the devil does indeed take two souls for himself.  For, even though each person the Hawkman touches is changed, there is always one who will be against him. And as he changes into something more man than not, it is as if his transformation causes a change within Miss Williams. She slowly shifts from caretaker, to friend, to lover, and finally to something more in the end.

This novel is a story of love and of overcoming social norms. It is a story of magical realism, of hope and loss, and a story of overcoming trauma. All this is wrapped tightly into a ball and leveled out into a complete journey filled with pain and joy. But, most importantly, it is a story about two people from different backgrounds finding themselves being pieced together until they fit like perfectly aligned puzzle pieces. And when you zoom out to see how these two pieces connect with the other interlocking elements inside the novel, you’ll see how they form a work of art. Much like a painting, this novel rewards those who take the time to contemplate its brush strokes and hold onto its memory even when you walk away.

For fans of beautifully written fairy tales where the language bleeds magic onto the pages like Naomi Novik’s Uprooted and those who enjoy a heartbreaking story about war and the consequences it has on the human soul, The Hawkman will be sure to capture and enrapture, and, when it is done, leave you craving more.



Laura Lavelle is a writer from Queens, New York, working in the genres of fantasy, horror, and science fiction with young and new adult themes.  She studied English at Queens College where she won a Silverstein-Peiser award in Fiction before graduating with her bachelor’s degree. However, when she’s not writing she can be found curled up with a book and a cat, hoping that something magical will happen.