Naomi Novik: Spinning Silver

Naomi Novik’s Spinning Silver is a fascinating meld of a number of myths and fairy tales, all clustered around the themes of sacrifice and salvation, bargains and negotiations, and the balance between winter, the bringer of cold and death, and spring, the time of rebirth and growth. These themes are explored through the lives of three very different women - Irina, the unloved daughter of a duke, Miryem, the industrious daughter of a hapless moneylender, and Wanda, a peasant girl with a brutal father. All three women are outsiders, Irina and Wanda because of the dynamics of their dysfunctional families, Miryem because she takes over her father’s business - and because she is a Jew.

The novel is set in a secondary world that draws deeply on Russian history, culture and folklore, and Novik makes this into a rich setting for her characters.

I admit to a bit of difficulty getting into the novel, because in general, Russian myth and culture does not stir me the way some other source cultures do, but once I was committed to the story of these three women, I was hooked. Another marvelous tale from Novik.