Loved it!
This book was excellent, unforgettable and will stay with me always.
Summary:
Without explanation, estranged siblings Bellatine and Isaac inherit a house on chicken legs from their great-great grandmother. It has been hibernating for 70 years and was sent from Ukraine to the U.S. where the siblings and their ancestors have resided since their great grandmother came here when she was twelve.
Bellatine believes she has cursed hands because they bring inanimate things, like the carcass of a dead deer, to life, causing excruciating pain. Isaac has the gift of replicating people as the "Chameleon King" and is always on the move, shaking people down. They haven't seen each other for six years when Thistlefoot arrives and reunites them.
Turning the house into a mobile stage, they take their parent's puppet show, "The Drowning Fool" on the road to make money, but they soon find out they are being followed by an evil Longshadow Man who wants to kill Thistlefoot and them. Crossing paths with others who have encountered the Longshadow Man, they join forces to learn more and discover that their great, great grandmother and her oldest chid were the only survivors of a pogrom that was perpetrated on their village in Ukraine (formelry Russia). They decide to try to stop the Longshadow Man by performing an exorcism, which works, but comes at a painfully high price.
Evaluation: I loved this book, despite the horrors it conveys, which are the recounted history of an actual pogrom that was carried out in the Ukrainian town, Rotmistrivka, (formely Russia). It is a book unlike any I have read before, mixing folklore, history and magic to comment on embodied trauma and how we honor the dead by remembering and retelling their stories. My favorite chapters were the ones narrated by Thistlefoot because she's irreverent, darkly humorous, and a mixture of rascally and crotchety that is completely disarmingly charming! I also appreciated how Nethercott normed a lesbian relationship and gender neutrality by using "they" for a character. A few questions go unanswered in the book such as why Baba Yaga directed in her will to wait 70 years to bequeath Thistlefoot to Isaac and Bellatine. I would have preferred an ending with one more spark of hope, but I can forgive Nethercott for her choice. I listened to this on Audible, and January LaVoy's narration was pretty near perfect.
Evaluation: I loved this book, despite the horrors it conveys, which are the recounted history of an actual pogrom that was carried out in the Ukrainian town, Rotmistrivka, (formely Russia). It is a book unlike any I have read before, mixing folklore, history and magic to comment on embodied trauma and how we honor the dead by remembering and retelling their stories. My favorite chapters were the ones narrated by Thistlefoot because she's irreverent, darkly humorous, and a mixture of rascally and crotchety that is completely disarmingly charming! I also appreciated how Nethercott normed a lesbian relationship and gender neutrality by using "they" for a character. A few questions go unanswered in the book such as why Baba Yaga directed in her will to wait 70 years to bequeath Thistlefoot to Isaac and Bellatine. I would have preferred an ending with one more spark of hope, but I can forgive Nethercott for her choice. I listened to this on Audible, and January LaVoy's narration was pretty near perfect.
