East

East by Edith Pattou

Rose has always been different. Since the day she was born, it was clear she had a special fate. Her superstitious mother keeps the unusual circumstances of Rose's birth a secret, hoping to prevent her adventurous daughter from leaving home . . . but she can't suppress Rose's true nature forever.

So when a white bear shows up one cold autumn evening and asks teenage Rose to come away with it - in exchange for health and prosperity for her ailing family - she readily agrees.

Rose travels on the bear's broad back to a distant and empty castle, where she is nightly joined by a mysterious stranger. In discovering his identity, she loses her heart - and finds her purpose - and realizes her journey has only just begun.

I am a big fan of reconceptualized fairy tales. Beauty, by Robin McKinley, that one Zel by Donna Jo Napoli, the Shannon Hale Goose Girl ones, the Gail Carson Levine ones, especially Ella Enchanted, Daughter of the Forest by Marillier, some other ones . . . I can't say that I love all of them, but I do enjoy them more often than not. So East fit right in - it's based off that Norwegian fairy tale where the girl has to search for this guy east of the sun and west of the moon. In the fairy tale, she is often depicted as riding on the East Wind, West Wind, South Wind, North Wind, etc., but here she takes more terrestrial transportation.

In this version, Rose is destined to be a traveler, but because it was foretold that she would die under an avalanche of snow and ice, Rose's mother decides to lie to Rose in order to keep her close, ironically providing the impetus for Rose to leave when she discovers the lie. Ain't destiny a b? Just when you do everything to subvert it, you realize you're actually what causes it to happen!

So Rose leaves with the Bear, and betrays him, and sets herself to following him to rescue the Bear from the trolls who live east of the sun and west of the moon. As fairy tales go, this one has more depth than most. Pattou does a good job of getting you invested in the relationship between Rose and the Ice Bear, which is both difficult and essential to the book. Difficult, because Rose and the Ice Bear cannot really talk to each other, and the Bear only appears in his human form in the dead of night. Despite these setbacks, Pattou shows them communicating, through action and atmosphere, but mostly through Rose's thoughts. I could feel the connection between Rose and the Bear even though it was scarcely verbalized. It's a good thing I felt it too, or else the entire rest of the book would have been me going, "So wait, why does she feel the need to hit up the frozen north to go looking for this ex-bear?"

The parts of Rose traveling were my favs - she winds up in France after the fracas and reclaiming of the bear by the Troll Queen, travels to a seaport where she gets passage to Norway on the viking booze cruise, sails through a storm and ends up charting a course to Greenland. Of course, she also sends her family a letter, which I appreciated because I dislike stories where the main character gets out of a long confinement, and then just sets off without informing the worried family that they're okay. Consideration only takes a couple minutes, folks. Once in Greenland, she hooks up with the shaman Malmo and journeys ever northward to find the trolls. The trip through Greenland was incredible - the descriptions of ice forests and snow storms lasting days on end was really evocative. In fact, side note, all the descriptions and scenes were really well done - the sense of hushed stillness in the French castle, the brisk air and liveliness of Rose's home in Norway, the bitter chill and jagged edges of the troll landscape, everything set the tone for the book in just a few words. Additionally, the way the book is set out, even though Rose often seems set apart from the other characters, emotionally or physically, it is not until she gets to the land of trolls that she really feels "alone". She does find an ally there eventually, but it's an important emotional cue that Pattou hits to set the stage for the final section of the book.

Rose's arrival in troll-landia also precipitates what appears to be her first second thoughts about the whole process. I found it believable that after all this, when she's finally within reach of her goal, she gets pulled up short and has to say to herself, "What if he really doesn't want to leave?" It's a good thing she thinks of this eventually, because it would be pretty heavy-handed of her to storm the castle, be all, "You're coming with me now," to this guy who just wants to marry the Queen who has been in love with him for three lifetimes.

Speaking of the Troll Queen, she's such a tragic figure here - she defies her father and her people to go after the man she loves, and waits for him to be hers for a hundred and fifty years. Unfortunately, she also kidnapped this guy, poisoned him, and put up every possible roadblock to his getting out of the arrangement. Then she brings down some righteous wrath when she finds out he's leaving her. It was sad to me, because she obviously longs for this guy, maybe even loves him, but her love is sick and twisted, it poisons. It's like a fish loving a bird - doomed from the very beginning. I felt sorry for her, because yeah, she's a terrible person, who kidnaps people to make them slaves and throws them into a snow pit when they've outlived their usefulness. . . . okay, when I put it like that it sounds really bad. But I did feel badly for her, she's got such tunnel vision, and I think it speaks well of Pattou that she made me sympathize with this awful character.

Everything manages to wrap itself up, grand fairy-tale style, and you get that warm cozy feeling when you've finished it. It's a meatier book than other fairy tale adaptations I've read, although at the same time it feels easier, because it's told through short perspective chapters, which go very quickly. It's not the grandest-written book I've ever read, but it is very enjoyable, and very evocative.

There were a few nitpicks I had - the book's opening is of someone finding Rose's stuff, and hearing the voices and sounds of the story. Whatever happened to that? It was never mentioned again for the rest of the book, and why was this person hearing voices? That was weird - I don't think it added anything to the story. And Ned's "hearing" of his sister's call of distress was obviously, deus ex machina, but that didn't bother me as much, even though it had as little explanation as the other.

One other thing I wanted to add - this book is full of women. Rose, her mother, the French woman who rescues her, the Troll Queen, Malmo the shaman - all these women impel the plot and are key characters. In many (european type) fairy tales, the tension often comes from a battle between the heroine and an older scheming woman, so being female-centric is not unusual, but here the older archetype is somewhat softened - those who create the problems for Rose do not necessarily mean to hurt her, and the women who help her add a lot to the story.

And, just as a fun aside, my old version of the fairy tale (in the Reader's Digest Anthology The World's Best Fairy Tales aka The Awesome Edition) says very specifically that this takes place "late on a Thursday evening in autumn." Like, shit no, random talking polar bears do not come up to you asking for your youngest daughter on Wednesdays, that is a Thursday occurance. Get it together.