5/22/2023 0 Comments Among Others by Jo Walton![]() ![]() They are untamed, uncivilised, and unpredictable. Though she'd like them to be Tolkien's Elves, they aren't gracious and powerful, but frustrated, marginal, somehow diminished. Mori, the protagonist and narrator of the novel, has always seen and known the fairies. ![]() This one was grey, very gnarly indeed, and well over towards the hideous part of the spectrum." Walton's descriptions suggest that the great illustrator Arthur Rackham was one of the people who could see them: "In the same way that oak trees have acorns and hand-shaped leaves, and hazels have hazelnuts and little curved leaves, most fairies are gnarly and grey or green or brown, and there's generally something hairy about them somewhere. They don't, however, fit conventional notions of what a fairy looks like: they aren't the tall, fair ones who carry you off under the hill, nor yet the tiny Peaseblossoms and sprites the Victorians loved, and they are most definitely not Tinker Bell. ![]() In that, they play in modern industrial England something like their role in the folklore of the past. They aren't visible to everyone, yet can affect the lives of people who don't see, or don't believe in them. T his beautifully titled novel is, I suppose, a fairy tale, since there are fairies in it, or, anyhow, beings called fairies. ![]()
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