Tough Morsels

I can understand, to a point, . . . that you were allowed to take two tiny children there. But how you managed to keep them there for so long, as they grew, is more of a mystery, for they did not belong there. Urdda did the natural thing and returned to life in search of her true future; Branza ought to have done the same. It is a great misshapement of things that she stayed so long - until the age of twenty-five! She has not had enough of a true life to even conceive of her own heart's desire. To spend her whole life within yours - tut! That is no kind of existence.

Most fairy tales have very dark undercurrents. Behind the magic and happily-ever-after there is murder, abuse, abandonment, and the macabre. Cinderella's stepsisters cut off parts of their feet to fit into the glass slipper. Hansel and Gretel are thrown out by the house by their stepmother and captured by a witch who fattens Hansel up for the oven. In one of the Grimm brothers' lesser-known tales, the Devil forces a man to chop off his beloved daughter's hands.

Although most of these fairy tales have been sanitized for modern children (particularly by Disney), their original versions are creatively fertile ground. The layers of allegory and symbolism, the cultural anxieties (for example, witches, wicked stepmothers, and female power), and elements of the fantastic have provided inspiration for countless scholars, writers, filmmakers, and artists, and will doubtlessly do so for the next several hundred years. Viewed through mature eyes, fairy tales can be surreal and frightening - a weird blend of innocence and horror. The image of beautiful, young Snow White fleeing into the dark woods from a huntsman who's been commanded to kill her and cut out her heart is a haunting one. (The huntsman brings the evil Queen the heart of a boar instead, and she devours it, thinking it was stepdaughter's.)

Margo Lanagan's Tender Morsels, a contemporary YA novel, is a feminist attempt to re-imagine the classic fairy tale form and focus on its symbolic and psychological aspects. In the beginning we have Liga, a poor, motherless teen abused by her father (as opposed to the clichéd and misogynist "wicked stepmother"). He is killed in an accident shortly after impregnating her for the second time, which results in Branza. While Branza is still an infant, Liga is gang-raped by a band of young men from the town. Her subsequent attempt to kill both herself and her child is interrupted by a "moon babby" who whisks Liga and Branza away to another world, a safe haven fashioned by Liga's own mind. Here she will give birth to Urdda, a product of the rape, and raise both daughters in a fantasy land where nothing bad ever happens, animals are gentle and fun-loving, and other humans are one-dimensional props. But reality eventually finds its way in, and the two sheltered girls may not be prepared for the "savage garden" that awaits them.

Tender Morsels is a story of trauma, coping mechanisms, sexuality, and the uneven relationship between men and women. Liga's literal and figurative withdrawal from the world threatens to suffocate her daughters and stunts her own emotional growth. Intruding on her hiding place are men in the form of bears, which represents a carnal nature that preys on female morsels. Magic is real and witches are benevolent. In fact, this make-believe power of magic is the only power women are able to wield in their own right, which speaks to the difficulties faced by real-life women in patriarchal societies. Overall, the premise of Tender Morsels is a good one, and I came into this book expecting to enjoy it.

Alas, that was not to be. I agree with Richard that the 432-page story is just way too long. The second half spends too much time in the real world when the focus should have been on the supernatural. Fairy tales are quick and to the point, and Tender Morsels comes across as a fairy tale stretched past its limit. I'm thinking of something like Heart of Darkness or Carlos Fuentes's Aura or Mercè Rodoreda's Death in Spring, as novels that may be short but are also dark, rich, and deeply metaphorical. The reader is engulfed in the story but it ends before the atmosphere becomes stale and too much is revealed or explained. They're more intense that way. Tender Morsels could've easily lost about two hundred pages - spend less time on Bear Day, for instance, and the infodump from Miss Dance.

Plus, the dialect - i.e. "littlee-man" and bab/babby - is half-hearted and ridiculous.

I'm also bothered by Tender Morsels being categorized as Young Adult fiction (where my local library had it shelved) and marketed as such. (Frances, a children's librarian, has raised similar concerns.) Since I usually don't read YA, I'm not sure what, if any, limitations there are on teen literature. But still, this is a novel with incest, forced abortion, gang rape, sodomy, and borderline bestiality. I've read Henry Miller and William Burroughs and even I almost couldn't get past the rape scene (luckily, it's a fade-out) and was seriously weirded out by a certain episode involving Branza and a man-bear. I don't know if Margo Lanagan actually wrote this as YA or if that comes from the publisher, but I really feel that Tender Morsels would have been much better off as a book for adults. In fact, I think it would have stronger resonance with grown women who have children of their own.

In conclusion, I have to say that this book was a disappointment. I can see what Margo Lanagan was trying to do and it was a great idea, but she drags it out until it got to the point where I was just skimming. There is, however, one thing that one thing Lanagan did get right but which other reviewers have criticized her for.

<SPOILER ALERT>

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It's the marriage at the end between Branza and David Ramstrong, one of the few good male characters. Liga was in love with him herself, but due to the disparity between the flow of time in the real world and the other-world, she is forty years old at the close of the story. In traditional societies, obviously, young men usually do not marry women old enough to be their mothers. Furthermore, as Emily noted, it's another illustration of how Liga's own coping mechanisms have damaged her life. She's spent so much time in Fantasy Land that she's missed out on a lot and nearly caused her daughters to do the same. I can understand why other readers objected, but not all fairy tales can have fairy-tale endings.

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</SPOILER ALERT>

Alisa Libby's The Blood Confession sounds like another questionable YA fairy-tale revamp. It's based on the legend of Snow White and the real-life Countess Elizabeth Báthory, who liked to bathe in the blood of young girls to preserve her beauty. It actually does look like a compelling read, but not for the kids!

Since no one likes my music (*sigh*), I resisted posting Forever Slave's "In the Forest" here even though that song is just perfect for a story like Tender Morsels.

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Tender Morsels was our Unstructured Group Read for the month of May. Please feel free to join us at any time! You can find a complete book list here.

Other May participants include:

Emily
Frances
Jill
Richard
Sarah

Past selections:

April: Georges Perec, Life: A User's Manual
March: Tennessee Williams, The Night of the Iguana

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Poor Lost Doggy (And Also: The Paradox of Modernity)

"Stories are about time. But looking's a present-tense activity. We live in an age where everything's got to be now, because consumerism's based on change. Images seem complicit with that somehow."

Michelle de Kretser's The Lost Dog is a character study concerning a lost dog, a professor writing a book on Henry James, the elusive artist he loves, and a multitude of interlocking themes. It is a quiet book that achieves just the right balance: it is leisurely and meditative without being boring, and moves steadily without becoming so fast-paced that the reader ends up skimming, too excited to reach the Big Reveal to focus on the art of the prose itself. I hate when that happens.

It is a deeply poignant book, beginning with the Professor Tom's beloved elderly dog disappearing in the Australian backwoods. De Kretser's writing is restrained but effective, sure to tug at the heartstrings of any dog lover. Tom's desire to find his pet quickly unfolds into an introspective exploration of what Marx melodramatically called "the dead hand of the past" that must be exorcised from humanity's collective consciousness if we ever want to be free of its oppressive grip. Still, modernity is a paradox: nothing dates itself quicker than the present. (Kind of like that Hollywood Undead song: "Tomorrow's rock stars fade today!") What is now is past scarcely a second later. The movement in art, literature, and music actually called "Modernism" flourished between roughly 1890 to 1950. The past. It's over, replaced by postmodernism, which some argue evolved into post-postmodernism or post-millenialism or noosphere sometime in the 1990s.

We try to detach ourselves from the animal, from nature, from all vestiges of primitive history, which is nevertheless preserved in specially designated spaces, including parks and certain countries. One day Tom came across his ex-wife sharing photos of their trip to Tom's native India. Her friend was dismayed to see a Christian cross in an Indian home. It just doesn't belong there. "To be eclectic is a Western privilege," Tom concluded,

as was the authentication of cultural artifacts. The real India was the flutter of sari, a perfumed dish, a skull-chained goddess. Difference, readily identified, was easily corralled. Likeness was more subtly unnerving.

It is the historical narrative of Australia, and the United States, and also Canada: Western civilization ruthlessly pushed aside "primitive" natives and built itself up into a gleaming modern metropolis. It is often said that Europeans scoff at Americans (Australians too?) for being a "people without a history." But what is history? Because Aborigines and Native Americans were pushed aside, does that mean they are permanently out of national mind? No, because the past does not die. It becomes the present.

Modernity/postmodernity/post-postmodernity exists for the now. What is now is real. The past is old-fashioned, out-moded - or so we like to think.

Nelly the artist - and by extension, Tom - is haunted by the collapse of her first marriage and the unsolved puzzle surrounding it. Tom is rudely reminded of the passage of time as his mother succumbs to the deterioration of old age. Nelly takes gleaming modernity and makes art out of everyday detritus and the old-but-not-yet-nostalgic. Her paintings are a search for meaning in the fleeting, fickle world of fashion, fads, and advertising. "Art exists because there are realities that exceed words." Everyone uses images nowadays - in fact, a fascination with simulacra (or "hyperreality") is a prominent tenet of postmodernism. But most of these images - and their social context - are merely ethereal. What is left at the end? Urged by the media, we buy and buy, but to what do we hang on?

The Lost Dog is about a lost dog and much, much more. It is a wonderfully complex book to be savored and pondered. It is the kind of book where you mark passages that stand alone as individual thoughts. It is a book to be re-read.

A big thanks to Claire! Here is her review.