R E A D I N G / The Orphan's Tale: In the Night Garden

“Never put your faith in a Prince. When you require a miracle, trust in a Witch.” - THE ORPHAN'S TALE: IN THE NIGHT GARDEN, Catherynne M. Valente After properly sitting down and shutting off the laptop, I managed to finally finish the rest of In the Night Garden. This is the second book that I have read from Valente, and in its overall presentation, it did not disappoint me. What I expected from the novel was the writer's unique and uncanny ability to string words together so beautifully that it became my food source. My stomach only craved her writing and my brain could only digest those sentences and question: how in the world did you come up with that? Did you gain your talent by selling your soul to the devil? The imagery of the tales were so vivid and rich, set in a place familiar to fairytales I've read as a kid, but also very different. Valente uses this to flip familiar and often damaging tropes and stereotypes towards female characters such as the damsel in distress, the beautiful dead queen, the woman reuniting with her long lost lover. This brought about engaging and different character dynamics. However, just as I want to continue praising how wonderful the novel was, there were some issues I found while reading it that lowered my opinion of the overall quality. First and foremost, the arc of the book itself resembles that of The Arabian Nightes: Tales from One Thousand and One Nights where the female character tells stories to the male character, and enticing them through it. Though I can't comment on how One Thousand and One Nights dealt with the actual present day arc, I had a sense through reading brief summaries that the actual characters themselves--Scheherazade and Shahryar--play a much larger role, especially in the content ratio of them versus the tales. The Prince and the orphan girl here however take a minimal amount of space compared to the stories, taking a backseat even though they were the main protagonists. Because of this, though the stories themselves were developed (perhaps overdeveloped), the actual framework for the tales fell incredibly flat, the characters static and seemingly unnecessary. Similarly, the tales themselves proved difficult to swallow as tales endlessly spiraled within one another. Minor characters were given grand plots and storylines when I didn't really want to read up on them, or thought their story needed to be told. Valente also used these minor tales to bridge the two main stories together. Though it was an interesting concept, it was poorly executed. The ending "connection" in its attempt to be a twist became contrived and poorly fleshed. I thought it was thrown in just to see how clever it could be. Lastly, though I praised her for this earlier, Valente in this particular work through her attempts at empowering her female characters seemed to be shaming others. Such things kept on being emphasized like beautiful women were weak and it was the ugly ones that truly held power. While its nice to see female empowerment, there shouldn't be a need to look down on femininity. Who said you can't be both beautiful and strong? Overall, the book was a great read. It definitely taught me the importance and strength in developing a character's background to secure that unique voice that they themselves carry. No one is the same, and we all have a tale to share. Ratings: ★★★☆☆ BUY IT HERE | AMAZON, BARNES AND NOBLE