'Tangleweed and Brine' : A Guest Post
'Tangleweed
and Brine' is the latest novel from the bewitching Deirdre Sullivan.
I read (and blogged about) her painfully stunning YA 'Needlework' this time last year,
and some of her perfectly pieced together paragraphs within that
story of a hideously abused young woman, fighting demons and yearning
for a new life spent making art on others' skin, still sit in the
corners of my mind to this day.
This
gorgeous new hardback is 'A
collection of twelve dark, feminist retellings of traditional
fairytales are given a witchy makeover, not for the faint-hearted,
from one of Ireland's leading writers for young people. You make
candles from stubs of other candles. You like light in your room to
read. Gillian wants thick warm yellow fabric, soft as butter. Lila
prefers cold. All icy blues. Their dresses made to measure. No
expense spared. And dancing slippers. One night's wear and out the
door like ash. You can't even borrow their cast-offs. You wear a pair
of boots got from a child. Of sturdy stuff, that keeps the water out
and gets you around' (so says Goodreads).
I studied fairytales – the traditional, and the twisted – when I was doing my BA in Creative Writing. Our assignment at the end of that Textual Intervention module was to write a creative piece, and I bloody loved making my own bizarre world and inventing creatures and characters within it. I also loved actually studying Angela Carter and her ilk of white witches – and let me tell you, the delightfully wicked Deirdre could totally join those ranks. Her way with words is like no other author, she is utterly incomparable.
Yes,
I am a Deirdre fangirl.
So
imagine my elation when I was given the opportunity to share
something written by this literary heroine!?
Below
is her piece about bodies, and image. (So fitting for this blog,
right?!)
Enjoy!
* *** *
Tangleweed and Brine is
about fairy-tales. Old, dark stories that lodge in our hearts and
throats. That teach us lessons. What it is we want. What women look
like. You can’t discount the drawings in a book. Slender, soft
princesses. Crowns and gowns. Impossibly beautiful. And not in the
way of people you encounter in real life. Waists smaller than necks,
eyes saucer-big, breasts full and legs that ended in the smallest
wisp of foot. This is what the people who get happy endings look
like.
It isn’t true of course.
When I was a little girl, my
mother didn’t wear make-up. She lacked the mobility to touch her
own face. This was good and bad thing. Good, because her skin is very
clear and very smooth. Bad, for obvious reasons. Limits. Itchy noses.
I never thought of her body as different. There was a swing to the
way she walked, got up. It suited her. My mother is full of energy.
Always doing, planning things to do. She never met a challenge she
didn’t face.
Bodies weren’t shameful in my
house. They were functional. They needed to be kept clean, cared for,
nourished. But they didn’t need to look a certain way. I loved to
wear nice dresses as a child. Real floofy ones with skirts that
twirled like peonies when I danced. I had short hair because my
mother couldn’t brush it, comb it. It was very curly, and I had a
sensitive scalp. Even with a bowl-cut I would sob when bristles tore
my tangles apart. I once had a hairdresser break a hairbrush on my
hair. The handle came apart, the top stayed put. My hair is stronger
than a lot of things.
I wonder if my short hair was
what made me aggressively feminine, loving dresses, wanting little
shoes and little bags, crying when my parents threw out a Tinkerbell
make-up set I’d been given for my birthday. I was often mistaken
for a little boy when I wore trousers. Never a lad. Always a “little
boy.” I looked like an angelic little douche. I liked stories where
girls disguised themselves as boys. Viola in Twelfth Night.
George in The Famous Five. Though, George didn’t want to be
girl and people were always reminding her that she was one. I would
have loved that. I hated sports and bravery.
I was twelve years old when I
began to grow my hair out. I was old enough to take care of it
myself. To decide that’s what I wanted. Twelve was an interesting
year in terms of hair. One day, I was wearing a short denim
mini-dress I loved. The son of a family friend looked me up and down
and told me I “needed a waxing appointment”. I looked down at my
legs and felt ashamed. I hadn’t noticed all the hair before, but
now it was a carpet, was a forest. Thick and dark, unwanted and
unwelcome. I hadn’t known that leg hair was a bad thing. My
mother’s legs were not as fuzzed as mine, but they were lightly
sprinkled with soft hair.
And I was used to that.
I didn’t know.
I never felt comfortable with
bare legs again. I wear tights, and if I’m in the pool or at the
beach, I try not to look at my legs. They’re chicken-skin bumpy,
and no matter how often or close I shave, I always miss a spot. It’s
never perfect. I am never perfect. I stopped loving my swimming
lessons after that. My body wasn’t a body. It was an exhibit. On
display.
It
wasn’t functional. It was decorative. My teen years were when I
began to pluck my eyebrows into sleep dark sperm and coat my face and
mouth with pound shop make-up. Not every day. I still do not wear
make-up every day. It feels like putting cream on a scone. Not always
necessary, but it does make the whole thing a bit more fancy. I
wonder if my mother made me that way. Her rebellious body teaching
mine that there’s not one proper way to be in the world. You do not
have to be a certain shape, a certain shade.
When
I tell stories, I think about the body a lot. Not the physical
attributes of my characters, but how they take up space. You can be
very small inside the world and still feel much too big. You can be
large and still feel very small, inconsequential. It is very easy for
a woman to feel both those things, and all at once. In my writing, I
often come back to The Little Mermaid, her unruly body not
appropriate to catch a prince. And once she changed, her form was
still imperfect. She couldn’t speak, the witch cut out her tongue.
That made her pitiable. She had no voice. She had no agency. And was
in chronic pain. Sharpened and blunted at once, she was denied the
happily ever after.
Of
course she was.
She
couldn’t fit into it.
I
don’t think anyone can fit into the shape the world expects. They
grow and shrink, they fall ill or get healthy. It’s like a pair of
jeans you close like a full suitcase round your body. A dress you
push your back-fat in to zip. It taunts you, if you let it. And we
all have our things. We all have those. But I think growing up with
the small shoulders and round hips of a strong disabled woman as my
caregiver built a resilience in me. A core of seeing through the
nonsense. Not in a she’s-my-hero way. Sometimes she is, and other
times she isn’t. She’s a person and I am a person.
We
need to listen to each others’ voices, and experiences.
Resist
the urge to hate the shape we are and love the shape we could be.
The
shape we could be is a lure.
A
lie.
* *** *
'Tangleweed
and Brine' will be appearing on shelves in September.
You
can find it at Waterstones, on Amazon or in The Book Depository.
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