“Crying makes him feel a fool, but he is weeping now, unstoppably. It’s so performative. Who does he do this all for? Oh, what is the meaning? (He does not know about us yet, of course, reader. And though I’m no angel, I must say I have been mistaken for one, my feathers being so lovely and white.)”
Clare Pollard, The Modern Fairies, pg. 147
We all know of fairytales, Mother Goose stories as they are sometimes called. Donkey-Skin, Bluebeard, Little Red Riding Hood — the list goes on, weaving outlandish elements into otherwise mundane existences. But what really makes a story good is a good storyteller, and we find (or hope to find) one in Charles Perrault, recently-made ex-secretary of the Academy of Inscriptions and Belles-Lettres. Perrault was once laboring under Louis XIV’s wrathful eye, and now is seeking meaning in the literary scenes of the French aristocracy, hoping to avoid further scrutiny from the Sun King’s spies.
In a Parisian parlor far from the prying eyes of the French court, Perrault comes into the salon of Madame D’Aulnoy, searching to charm an assorted cast of France’s finest and most infamous characters. Largely consisting of women with secrets of their own, D’Aulnoy summons the literati to discuss everything from philosophy to politics. But the fantastical stories told, switching from Perrault to the surrounding cast, might hit closer to home than Perrault and the others realize with the salon’s assorted company. In order to navigate the shark-infested waters of scandal and intrigue, each storyteller needs to measure their tongue, lest a wolf in grandmother’s clothing might just appear to tear the salon apart.
Pollard conjures up a mix of obscene, luscious, darkly humorous and sordid descriptions to simultaneously repulse and entrance us. Historical fiction with a wink to the camera, fourth wall breaks as our characters fall to their knees, the soap-operatic levels of scandal that bemuse and besmirch the good name of our various favorites. Interlacing fantasy with reality, romance with regalia (and all the bureaucracy that goes along with it), Pollard creates a novel for the ages, timeless.
If you’ve read Empty Theatre by Jac Jemc, or Little by Edward Carey, and your seeking out an irreverent take on the power of storytelling in a decadent time period, The Modern Fairies is your next read. Fairtytales might just turn out to be true in this tongue-in cheek romp by Clare Pollard.
Publicity photo, credit: Sophie Davidson
Categories: Books and More
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