further thoughts on “The Onion Girl”

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Charles de Lint, fantasy

I think the following two quotes from a review by PopMatters.com that I found on Charles de Lint’s website do a fine job of summing up both what I like and what I don’t like about “The Onion Girl.” (Note: I’ve left the quotes as they appeared on the website, typos and all.)

However, despite the somewhat darker themes of The Onion Girl, the appeal of the book is much the same as with de Lint’s previous work: the theme of magic existing side-by-side with the modern world. The theme of a hidden dimension to life, is what mythologist Joseph Campbell called the fundamental theme of mythology no wonder, then, that de Lint eschews the label “urban fantasy” for his own description: “mythic fiction.” As Jilly tells a homeless girl she’s taking care of, “‘If there’s no magic, there’s no meaning. Without magic or call it wonder, mystery, natural wisdom nothing has any depth. It’s all just surface.” Later, a spirit tells Jilly that “it is so easy for your people to forget that everything has a spirit That magic and mystery are a part of your lives, not something to store away in a child’s bedroom, or to use as an escape from your lives.

There are weak points, in The Onion Girl as with the original Newford short stories: the theme of child abuse is revisited too often, the plots seem to take a long time to get anywhere, and the characters do seem to fall into the categories of the Skeptic and the Believer. More to the point, the theme of a hidden dimension to the world, and of confronting the existence of magic, may grow tiresome, but that theme is why I read de Lint, (as well as Gaiman). Stone-cold rationalist as I seem to be, I don’t want to live in a world without magic, without wonder. Like Jill Sobule says in a song, “I’d love to see a miracle once before I die.” De Lint’s stories make you believe in miracles, and The Onion Girl is no exception.

I agree with the PopMatters review and found the returning to themes and scenes of child abuse excessive and one of major weak points of The Onion Girl. And the junkie-hooker treatment that follows. I remember wondering while reading why so many novels seem to think that that is the only route an abused child can go down, and wishing that they’d stop with this already.

And the more I thought on it, the more I agree that the characters tend to fall into archetypes. There was character development, however, and there were female characters that talked of things other than boyfriends and make-up. When I had written about well-developed characters in my earlier post there was a twingling in my thoughts, but I couldn’t place it, and so what I typed stayed. I should have thought longer about it.

Lo at Goodreads mentioned that her favorite character was the sister – this prompted me to do some thinking. She describes Raylene as a “spunky girl who’s had a lot of shit thrown in her fan, but she fights back with the aid of her closest friend, Pinky Miller. Also, Raylene is the one intelligent female in this book – it’s her best trait. She can easily solve problems and manipulate her way out of a sticky situation just on her astuteness.” Though Raylene is not a “nice girl” – she cons people for a living (most of the novel, she does get a “real job” and sticks with it for quite some time) – she is smart and doesn’t take other people’s shit. She stands up for herself. Traits that are sadly lacking in many female characters, especially abused ones. Plus, she’s got a knife. It just would have been a refreshing change if she hadn’t been a criminal as well. At least she wasn’t a prostitute.

Lo described “The Onion Girl” as “a dark light-hearted book.” I think that’s a great description. She recommended it for preteens and dreamers.

What I liked most about the novel, the “theme of a hidden dimension to life” as PopMatters’ calls it, is why I was so taken in. It’s a theme I would like to read about and discuss in more depth. It’s a theme I think is terribly important. I feel like this idea is responsible for a large part of who I am and why I think the way I think. So to see it prominently displayed in a novel, and one with a female protagonist as well, really pushed my buttons.

There were a few places where I felt de Lint was a bit didactic. I don’t feel he was overly so, but enough that it broke the story-telling spell and I came out of the world of the novel to think that this might sound preachy to some readers. Of course that has been the major complaint about some novels that I particularly love for their themes and visions of how the world could be but isn’t (Woman on the Edge of Time comes to mind immediately). Perhaps that is a tendency for novels that are strongly theme-driven rather than character-driven.

So, I liked the theme of a hidden dimension to life; female characters not going on about boyfriends and make-up; a character whose childhood fantasy reminded me of my own; a strong, if violently criminal, female character in Raylene. I did not like the repetitive use of child abuse; the abused girl who turns into a junkie-hooker; the almost complete lack of negative emotions on Jilly’s part (other than self-pity for her broken body, no anger at her abusers whatsoever – odd).

Mixed review despite my earlier excitement for “The Onion Girl.” I was totally taken by the theme and the dreamlands. Maybe I wanted it to be more of where I go and where I come from than it was.

Initial Reaction to Charles de Lint’s “The Onion Girl”

Tags

Charles de Lint, speculative fiction

I’ve finished reading Charles de Lint’s novel The Onion Girl (at Goodreads, at Charles de Lint’s site). Just over 500 pages and I read it in only a handful of sittings. I pretty much gobbled this book down. Why? It has many of the topics and emotions that have filled my world and my dreams since I was a child.

On the second page of The Onion Girl we are introduced to “a little girl who wished… she could find some way to cross over into whatever worlds might lie beyond this one, those wonderful worlds that she read about in stories” (page 14). I gave a little cry when I read that. “She would tap at the back of closets and always look very carefully down rabbit holes” (14). That describes me as a child. In this novel, it’s Jilly, our main character, remembering her childhood.

The novel begins with a hit and run that has left Jilly in a coma and suffering from severe bodily damage. Half her body is paralyzed and many bones are broken. She may or may not regain control of her body, she may or may not walk again. More importantly for Jilly, she may or may not paint again. She’s an artist, a painter, in her late thirties (about). She paints fantastical characters, goblins and gnomes and faeries, in modern urban settings, often in run-down, junked-out places like abandoned warehouses, trashed alleys. Her stories and paintings of faeries are what kept her spirit alive, what kept her human during her traumatic childhood. Now she’s faced with the possibility of never painting again.

Jilly learns that she must face her past and heal those old emotional wounds before she can heal herself physically in the present. This requires more than just Jilly. It involves the little sister she left behind when she ran away from home to escape the abuse. A sister, Raylene, who faced the same abuse but dealt with it and her approach to life in a very different way. Jilly created support and community, art and healing. She invited people in. Raylene turned to conning and manipulation. She pushed most everyone aside, or down if it helped her steal a buck or two.

de Lint’s novel takes place as much in the otherworld, also known as the spiritworld, the dreamlands, manidò-akì, as in this world, also termed consensual reality, or The World As It Is. “I’ve always been aware of the otherworld, of spirits that exist in that twilight place that lies in the corner of our eyes…” says Jilly, “whispers and flickering shadows, here one moment, gone the instant we turn our heads for a closer look” (page 14). As have I.

And I, like Jilly “wanted to be the kid who gets to cross over into the magical kingdom….” and that even as “a child I knew it wasn’t simply escape that lay on the far side… an understanding hidden in the marrow of my bones… telling me that by crossing over, I’d be coming home” (page 60). I read that and my eyes teared up. Someone wrote about and described “the wonder, the mystery, the beauty” of that other world I dreamed about so desperately. This author described the feeling I had of yearning, of sad remembrance for a place I have only been to in dreams. How could I have not read any of his books before?

There’s plenty at stake. Characters are well-developed and have emotional arcs and learning curves that are believable. Not everyone is wholly likeable or wholly unlikeable. Pacing is great, the plot is engaging and full of tension. There’s philosophy and world-views, there’s psychology, there are a variety of cultures at play. The dreamlands aren’t wholly a European western construction. And there’s multiple voices, which I enjoyed. Jilly is the main character and narrator, but much of the novel is narrated by her sister, Raylene, and other important characters. A well woven tale.

Note: this novel includes topics that might be triggering for some people: child abuse (including sexual abuse), prostitution, drug addiction.