#the hazel wood

Our Crooked Hearts

By Melissa Albert

Melissa Albert terrifies and inspires me in equal measure.

Her books have an otherworldly quality that gives you the sense that as you read them you are changing - or the world around you is changing, or perhaps, being revealed for what it truly is - and if you don’t stop, things will never be the same. Our Crooked Hearts is no exception.

I read Our Crooked Hearts late into the night while peering over my pages to make sure nothing was lurking in the shadows. Unspooling in dual narratives of a mother and daughter during their tumultuous teenage years as they discover themselves and their magic, Albert renders a world of misshapen motherhood, flailing youth, forging friendships, and just-this-side of possible witchcraft.

But if we’ve learned anything from The Hazel Wood, it’s that nothing is free. What I love most about Albert’s work is that there is nothing gratuitous or excessive. She manages to conjure fear, terror, sadness and rage - and it all serves a purpose. The characters are all flawed and flailing but not feckless; they strive to protect, to learn, to rectify, to save. This is evident in the conclusion of the book, which I won’t spoil for you here, but what I will share is wholly satisfying and positively positive. Yes, amidst a book that is terror incarnate, there is, dare I say, somehow, hope.

What is also remarkable about Albert is her ability to wield the written word. She is not only writing, she is crafting a new language. Her prose is like if Neil Gaiman and Maggie Stiefvater had a baby and it were raised by Patti Smith. She crashes words together and creates the most unlikely metaphors that make so much sense it hurts. She writes with the angst of a teenager but the wisdom of a beat poet and the heart of a goddess who still loves humanity. Her text is so palpable that in reading it, I feel like I am participating in a secret ritual that may in fact conjure actual magic. Her writing is the stuff of future lore, of fractured spells, of midnight swims in moon-bleeding waters. She is inventing a story and a form - and it’s the perfect love letter scrawled in black magic for the raging teen trapped inside of us all.

The Hazel Wood & The Night Country


By Melissa Albert

The Hazel Wood and its sequel, The Night Country, are stories I almost wish I could experience again for the first time. An exploration of the fairytale underworld, the tales follow Alice, a beleaguered, haunted teenager, as she lives a piece-meal life, constantly moving cross-country with her mom. The duo flees makeshift homes regularly, with bad luck always nipping at their heels.

 
Though Alice and her mom live modestly, Alice’s grandmother is world-renowned, the author of a sublimely notorious and equally hard-to-find compendium of fairy tales. After receiving word that the estranged grandmother has died, mother and daughter finally settle in NYC, sighing with relief that their bad luck is behind them. Finally, Alice has a chance at a normal life. 


But then, Alice’s mom goes missing and all clues point to the grandmother’s mansion, and beyond - to the morbid world of her concocted fairytales, tales that are starting to materialize on the streets of NY. 


The Hazel Wood is a gritty Brothers’ Grimm bumming a cigarette, a jaded teenager stuck on the dark side of a NYC daydream, a haunted subway ride. It’s the stuff of nightmares but more gruesome and modern than Grimm. Imbued with young adult emo, it is also surprisingly poetic - much like our teenage years. 

The Night Country follows in its footsteps, imagining a world that would make Mary Shelly shiver. 
Albert’s world is a fanatical escape for these dark times if you want to get away and indulge simultaneously.
 And for those hungry for more of Albert’s macabre marvels, the actual book of grandmother’s fairytales is slated to be released this winter. A book within a book. How apropos for a tale like this… Just take care you can separate story from reality. Fairytales are, after all, only make believe… aren’t they?

achilleius:

read in 2018—the hazel wood, melissa albert.

once upon a time there was a beautiful queen who thought words were stronger than anything. she used them to win love and money and gifts. she used them to carry her across the world.