Recent Reads--"The Uncertain Places"

"The Uncertain Places" by Lisa Goldstein is a book that unfortuntally doesn't quite live up to the promise of its summary. A description of this book certainly hightlights its strengths--this is a story that works with fairy tale tropes in such a way that seems imaginative rather than derivative. The tale follows a young man in the early 1970s who is pulled into a family that have made a bargain with the fey for good luck and kind fortune. In exchange for a girl each generation falling asleep for seven years (the "bondmaid"), members of the family are granted lives that fall into place with ease where no one ever so much as accidentally breaks a glass or needs to make a reservation. Their businesses and dreams prosper--the family vineyard survived Prohibition and one of the sisters at the heart of the story sees her star rise as an actress. Interestingly though, the family's romantic relationships do no run as smoothly as the rest of their lives.

The story of the family bargaining away years of their daughter's wakeful lives was said to have almost made it into the Grimms' collection before being suppressed by the faeries themselves. The write up of the lost fairy tale is very fine and will likely have you pulling down your copy of "The Complete Works of the Brothers Grimm" to see if you can find the story of the Bondmaid in its pages. But sadly the entire book is written in a style that, while coming across as simple and elegant in short piece, does not hold up as well for an entire novel. Most notably the characters are weirdly flat and lacking in individual voice. For a book that ends by lamenting the "magic" of the 1960s and early 1970s the characters come across as oddly cold. We get no true hints of the impassioned conversations the narrator refers to and I was never convinced that hippy/immediate post hippy California in any way held a candle to Wonderland.

I sound like I'm being hard on this book and I realize that many of my issues are at least partly my own fault. I think that this is a book that would work best if read in one or two sittings and my personal circumstances forced me to spread my reading of it out over a couple of weeks. In chasing after a new baby I found myself in much the same zombified state as the sleeping bondmaids and I wasn't able to supply the nuances of character from my own imagination the way I have been in the more rested times of my life. I think that this is a book that is certainly worth returning to when I'm mentally able to take some of the hints suggested in the story and really let my mind run wild with them.

For there are plenty of hints of greatness here. I mean, if the idea of Prohibition-era bootleggers set upon by faery pirates doesn't set your heart racing just a bit I have to wonder why you would be reading this sort of fantasy novel in the first place. And the scenes with Those People--the odd cleaners who sneak through houses in the dark of night were properly creepy and disturbingly believable. I also have to commend the author for not making the entire book about rescuing the "princess." Though the book sets up the wakening of the current bondmaid as the driving force at the start. This is a story that tackles the "okay dog, you caught the car, now what" aspect of what happens *after* the goal of the quest has been achieved. It doesn't shy away from the fact that while those who touch magic in this world may pay a price, there is also a price for turning your back on magic as well.

As a whole though this is one of those good books that misses out on being truly great. The ideas presented here are powerful, but the bland characters keep it from sparking to life as it might have. I'd still recommend it to those who enjoy fairy tales and I would indeed like to read it again.