The Bitterwood Bible and Other Recountings

Well, this is how long I could keep away from Angela Slatter's stories. A bit more than a week, which I used to order a paperback copy of Of Sorrow and Such... now that I've read The Bitterwood Bible - which is a sort of prequel collection to Sourdough - I am even more in love with Slatter's style and ideas. I really hope that her Tor.com novella will expand her readership and get more of her stories into my hands.

THE BITTERWOOD BIBLE AND OTHER RECOUNTINGS
by Angela Slatter

Published by: Tartarus Press, 2014
Ebook: 280 pages
Short story collection
Illustrated by: Kathleen Jennings
My rating: 9,5/10

First sentence: The door is a rich red wood, heavily carved with improving scenes from the trials of Job.

Welcome back to the magic and pathos of Angela Slatter's exquisitely imagined tales.
The Bitterwood Bible and Other Recountings returns to the world of Sourdough and Other Stories (Tartarus, 2010), introducing readers to the tales that came before. Stories where coffin-makers work hard to keep the dead beneath; where a plague maiden steals away the children of an ungrateful village; where poison girls are schooled in the art of assassination; where pirates disappear from the seas; where families and the ties that bind them can both ruin and resurrect and where books carry forth fairy tales, forbidden knowledge and dangerous secrets.
The Bitterwood Bible and Other Recountings is enhanced by eighty-six pen-and-ink illustrations by artist Kathleen Jennings.

What is it about Angelas and fairy tales? In both forewords to Angela Slatter's two collections, she is mentioned in one breath with that other famous Angela who did fairy tales her own way, Angela Carter. While I'd say Carter is a tad darker, I understand the comparison. But because of what this Angela (Slatter, that is) does - namely, connecting all of her short stories and using them to paint one large picture of a time and place - I must admit, I actually prefer her over Angela Carter.

In The Bitterwood Bible, we see what things were like before the events of Sourdough (reviewed here). Familiar names pop up, well-known settings are used, and one object that was almost a gimmick in Sourdough becomes quite important in these new stories. Since Slatter continues the trend of taking fairy tales and myth and folklore, and using them to build her own stories on top of them, I hardly need to say I loved this collection. But it was striking how much the author has developed, how much more crafty her tales are. What little critique I may have had for Sourdough can't be repeated about Bitterwood. If there are twists to these new stories, such as in the first story "The coffin-maker's daughter", then these twists really hit home.

I am absolutely in love with "The Maiden in the Ice" which, apart from being a wonderful story in and of itself, ties in nicely with the first story in Sourdough and made me immediately want to re-read it. I haven't had the time yet but I believe that I will like that Sourdough story much more and see it in a very different light after reading "The Maiden in the Ice".

Her perfume is earthly, rich and dark, like rotted roses; a sweetness at first, then a potency, then grown too strong, and finally the hint of decay as she moves past the folk in the streets, those in the markets.

If you didn't think there could be a new and interesting way to update vampires, well, you are wrong! So wrong! Angela Slatter takes vampires and just... does strange and interesting things with them. Hers are neither only sexy and dark, nor purely tortured innocent-ish beings. They are a bit of everything and something different entirely. And they certainly don't sparkle. I'd say the vampire craze is mostly over and lots of readers may even go out of their way to avoid vampire stories, but lend me a bit of your trust and just try this one. It's really something else.

"St. Dymphna's School" merges seamlessly from one type of tale - at least the type I expected it to be - into quite another. It follows a heroine both determined to do what she came for, (almost) no matter the cost, and yet compassionate and understanding that the people surrounding her shouldn't be hurt just because they don't help her achieve her goals. In this tale, another character makes a reappearance from Sourdough, or more accurately - an appearance after being mentioned in Sourdough.

I said above that Slatter isn't quite as dark as Carter, but that doesn't mean that these stories are for children or light-hearted. There is one story that never explicitly mentions the terrible things that happen to its protagonist, but it will break your heart a hundred times over. Even stories with a quirkier, lighter tone manage to twist a knife in you at the end, leaving you filled with horror and shock.

"By the Weeping Gate" is the only story that's a bit slow to start but it wouldn't be in this collection if it didn't deliver the same powerful punch at the end that Slatter's other stories do. The last story in the collection presents almost a seamless sequel to "By the Weeping Gate" and not only ties these two stories together, but connects the entire book into one big whole beautiful thing.

If Sourdough was about the story of a place and the women living there over the course of several generations, then Bitterwood is about The Little Sisters of St. Florian, women who collect and preserve knowledge, who copy rare (and not so rare) books, some of them mundane, some dangerous, and what happens to their order. The recounting of their last days made me cry a little, as it combines powerful writing with a heart-wrenching story.

One last raving paragraph must go to illustrator Kathleen Jennings, whose work I knew from Catherynne Valente's The Bread We Eat in Dreams. The style is immediately recognisable and her little drawings are full of detail (albeit a little small on an e-reader). She did excellent work, choosing what to depict - sometimes objects, sometimes animals, and sometimes the characters. I was always a bit giggly when I swiped to the next page and saw an illustration come up. Really wonderfully done!

The longer I read this book, the more superlative my exlamations about it became. From "Hey, I really like this" I went quickly to "This is amazeballs" straight on to "I fucking adore everything Angela Slatter writes!!!" - I gather from other people's reviews that these are the natural stages of book love when reading Angela Slatter. I kept Of Sorrow and Such for last, because chronology, but you'll probably be seeing a review of it in December, despite all my well-laid plans for reading exactly what's on my challenge lists... sorry reading challenges.

Next year promises the publication of Slatter's first novel Vigil. I don't even know what it's about. All I know is that I need it yesterday, and the sequel too!

MY RATING: 9,5/10 - Oh my God, so close to perfection!