Cover: Flavia Sorrentino
‘A snow-white lie. Scarlet-cloaked, with sharp teeth and yellow eyes.’ (p 75)
Wilder than Fairy Tale
Cerrie Burnell is a talented writer across a range of genres and for different ages. Her last MG novel, The Ice Bear Miracle, was a very fine book, but her latest, Wilder than Midnight, is something else. It is a little masterpiece; a joyous, lyrical romp into and beyond Fairy Tales, lifting tradition gloriously, magically into our own time - and back into timelessness.
For a start (although it is no small thing) Cerrie Burnell finds a rich, immersive language which totally conjures the magic of a fairy-tale world , without ever falling into the ‘Victorian’ heaviness of many traditional versions. Page after page is pure joy to read, replete with almost poetic construction and cadence, lush with the evocation of nature, and the magical mystery of storytelling.
‘. . . her wolves were singing. She joined their moonlit call, her voice raw with the melody of the forest - the burn of the wind and lilt of the river and the deathly nights of winter.’ (p 145)
Magic beyond spells
Although Cerrie Burrell’s book does not contain magic in the Harry Potter sense, it is thoroughly magical. Its magic is the magic of story, of Fairy Tale. But she does not simply retell or even rework traditional tales. Rather she takes elements of these well known stories - sometimes clear references, sometimes wickedly playful borrowings, sometimes little more than oblique hints - and reimagines them into a complex multi-layered narrative that simply fizzes with life and excitement. Often, she does not so much draw from traditional tales as constructs a narrative from which traditional tales could derive. It is all very clever - and totally captivating.
Her tapestry of fantasy is woven from the narrative strands of three girls, each having at least a degree of origin in different tales, but crisscrossing in quite wonderful ways that enliven, illuminate and often undermine our expectations. As a consequence the story is in no way predictable, beyond even its being unpredictable.
‘Aurelia tipped into that new reality: a different understanding of the world. All at once, her thoughts rushed together, then drew apart in a different order,’ (p 205)
As with the character, so the whole narrative. It is brilliantly clever.
Look again, think again
And within this are explored characters and themes that are one hundred per cent contemporary and relevant; Wild Rose, raised by wolves, is at one with the forest; Aurelia is determined to escape the constraints in which she has been imprisoned; Saffy is conquering her own timidity to discover what her world has truly to offer. Here is girl power par excellence. Here is wildness and freedom, oneness with nature to almost rival Katya Belsen’s October. Here is determination not to be limited by oppressive convention. But, more than anything, here is celebration of the lack of limitation of so-called disability. The potential to defy expectations and make your own destiny.
Because of her one short, handless arm, Wild Rose is rejected by her own parents and by the village at large, branded with the ‘Mark of the Witch’. But, through this fictional embodiment, she conveys the passionate message ‘I am not a Label’ just as compellingly and just as as convincingly as the real-life examples in this author’s wonderful non-fiction book of that title.
Here Cerrie Burnell again proves herself to be a powerful advocate for the ‘disabled’, all those who should not feel limited by labels given to them by others. She is, simultaneously, the most gifted of writers and it is a combination truly to be treasured. Clearly this is a story that means a great deal to her. It is her story. But, thanks to her fearlessness in sharing it, it becomes our story too. Through it, many will learn to fear difference less and to love wildness more.
‘Living was more than just running and breathing,’ she writes. ‘To really live, you had to find bliss in the unrestful dark,’ (p 79)
May we all learn to find bliss in the unrestful dark, in all the beautiful midnight wildness in our world - through life and hope, through nature and through appreciation of the unlimited ability of the ‘disabled’.