Paying Your Debts to Keep the Wolf Away: Naomi Novik's Spinning Silver
A year and a half ago, I read and fell in love with Naomi Novik's Uprooted , a mostly new fairy tale for adults that draws inspiration from Novik's Eastern European heritage and my own favorite fairy tale, "Beauty and the Beast." Last year, Novik released a sister book, Spinning Silver , and I finally got around to reading it. Spinning Silver does not take place in the same universe as Uprooted , but it feels very similar (magic systems aside). The narration is nuanced and varied; each of the ultimately six narrators has their own voice and diction (the audiobook is spectacularly performed by Lisa Flanagan). The story is openly a "Rumpelstiltskin" retelling; Miryem's opening narration brings the story to the forefront and sets it in opposition to her own. The story about the miller's daughter, she tells us, is one that people began to tell to cast the moneylender (a Jew) in a demonic light in order to get out of their debts. Miryem knows t...