OOT Review: The Castle Behind Thorns by Merrie Haskell

So I am a great fan of Merrie and Janet even did an interview with her. Today I step out of theme (OOT) to review Merrie’s latest offering to readers.

Hardcover, 336 pages
Published by Katherine Tegan Books, May 27th, 2014
Source: Edelweiss

Merrie Haskell writes wondrous middle grade fiction and her newest offering, The Castle Behind Thorns, is just as readable and evocative as the other two. Like her previous novels, The Castle Behind Thorns, too, retells, in its own way, a fairy tale, this time Sleeping Beauty. It is a direct retelling as Haskell chooses which elements of the “original” story she wants to tell and which one she wants to either get rid of or subvert.

The story begins with Sand, an aspiring blacksmith, waking up in a fireplace in the castle behind the thorns. The story is set in the French countryside which is the location of the castle. As Sand walks around taking inventory of everything remaining in the castle that has been in the background his entire life, he finds out that everything in the castle has been sundered. Torn in two. Even the small thing has been halved. Nothing grows in the castle or gets older. But what Sand doesn’t know is that as walks around, he is changing things. Sand is effectively trapped in the castle because the thorny bramble refuses to let him pass and when the long dead princess of the castle, Perrote, comes back to life, Sand’s predicament becomes even more dire.

There are many reasons to love this book but I think for me the biggest reason is the strength of the narrative. If I had to elaborate on it, I would say that there is a quietness about the story; there is no melodrama to the lives Sand and Perrote lead. There is beautiful introspective quality about the novel that I find difficult to articulate. Sand grows as a person, finds his limits and then surpasses them. His desire to be a blacksmith is against his father’s desire for him to be a scholar and in the vacuum afforded to him by the isolation of the castle, he is able to understand his father. Haskell captures Perrote’s fey quality perfectly and in her reflections about death and what it meant to not exist, we learn what it was to exist. She, too, comes to terms with who she was and how she was. Perrote’s personality subverts entrenched ideas about what a princess is and should be like. However, Haskell constructs Perrote as more than an opposite to what Disney says fairy tale princesses are like; instead, she is an engaging mix of young and old voices. Her vulnerabilities are relatable as are Sands. Their friendship, when it finally solidifies is satisfying and though there is no romance, there is a definition potential for it and we do see glimmers of it by the end. Nothing overt but just a hint.

The plot is complex and layered and contains twists that I didn’t see coming. Haskell ties Perrote’s story to Sand’s narrative in a very clever way while maintaining the logic. I appreciated that. If you are looking for something slower, more contemplative, this is the book for you. I heartily recommend it.