If there’s one thing I love, it’s a good retelling. I love seeing a familiar story twisted into something new, and I enjoy discovering all of the creative ways authors make these classic tales fresh and unique. I love Cinder, and Goose Girl and so many other books that retell these stories in their own ways. There are definitely some fairytales that get retold over and over more than any other, like Beauty and the Beast, or Cinderella. And some get almost no love at all. Which is why I was so excited to discover Spinning Silver, which is a retelling of Rumplestiltskin.
“Miryem is the daughter and granddaughter of moneylenders… but her father isn’t a very good one. Free to lend and reluctant to collect, he has loaned out most of his wife’s dowry and left the family on the edge of poverty–until Miryem steps in. Hardening her heart against her fellow villagers’ pleas, she sets out to collect what is owed–and finds herself more than up to the task. When her grandfather loans her a pouch of silver pennies, she brings it back full of gold.
But having the reputation of being able to change silver to gold can be more trouble than it’s worth–especially when her fate becomes tangled with the cold creatures that haunt the wood, and whose king has learned of her reputation and wants to exploit it for reasons Miryem cannot understand.”
There are so many amazing things about this book. It blends the real world and fantasy beautifully throughout. The country the characters live in is definitely not a real place, and obviously magic isn’t real in our world, but this book is also partially populated with Jews which are very definitely meant to be the Jews of our world, down to some familiar aspects of their religion bleeding through into the book.
One thing Spinning Silver does really well is dive into its characters and pick them out in all shades of grey. There are characters who are cold and cruel, but with reasons and nobility behind it, there are characters who appear as shallow and vain, but have a deeper backstory, and just in general, there’s is more to every situation than meets the eye, which I definitely appreciate.
I also love the three main female characters, Miryem, Irena and Wanda. They’re all strong and smart and they build their own power using their wits and bravery, rather than needing to be typical kick butt fantasy females. In fact, I don’t think there was a cliche fantasy female in sight in these books. I love a good sword wielding heroine as much as anyone, but it’s always refreshing to see female characters with strengths beyond just the physical.
My only criticisms come from the actual writing. I couldn’t quite get comfortable with the writing style. it was very beautiful, but it also kept me at arms length, a little formal and on its best manners, and I just wanted to get close to it and enjoy a good read. The other major problem I had was that, while there were five point of view characters, it was nigh on impossible to tell who was narrating at any one time. They all sounded exactly the same, and there’s no name at the start of a new section, so often it took me a good three or four pages to even figure out we’d changed characters, let along whose point of view we’d actually switched to.
But, with all that being said, Spinning Silver is a beautiful and imaginative book. It’s one of those retellings that builds out its world so much and puts its own spin on the original tale so well that it doesn’t become constrained by the story it’s based off but instead turns it into something beautifully unique that you really want to come back for more. Spinning Silver is one of the most unique and well retold tales I’ve had the luck to discover recently, and if you haven’t checked it out yet, I would absolutely recommend that you give it a try.
Have you read Spinning Silver? Have you ever read another retelling of Rumplestiltskin? What’s one story you really wish was retold more often in fiction? What is the best retelling you’ve ever read?
