Margo Lanagan has been acknowledged for some time as one of Australia's leading writers of fantasy, with awards for her collected short stories. Her first full-length novel builds on the qualities which have distinguished her shorter works, allowing her to develop further the themes which intrigue her.
Lanagan's work is set in an imagined medieval society in which the 'mudwife' Annie - a combination of midwife, herbalist and magic-maker - has the ability to move people between alternative worlds, prompted by an individual's longing for something beyond their current experience. When first we meet Liga, the impoverished, motherless, teenage heroine of this complex novel, she is unknowingly aborting her child, incestuously conceived against her will. She lives in fear of the repeated invasions of her body, and the inevitable abortions, but when her father's death leaves her pregnant for a third time, their child, Branza can survive. Liga is subsequently gang-raped by some of the village boys, and in despair she tries to kill Branza, but encounters a magical baby which transports her back to her cottage which now exists in a different time-dimension, as if old society had been purged of its evil and decay, but essentially emotionless. Here she lives for several years in peace with Branza and her second child, Urdda, born of the rape. There they are visited by tame bears, in fact boys engaged in a ritual from the village in its other time-dimension, transported as bears. With them the women develop complex, loving, but non-sexual relationships, though they are unaware of their human origin. Eventually however, the headstrong Urdda returns to that village, her mother and sister follow in pursuit, and resolution is found, though one that is far from the traditional 'happy-ever-after'.
The narrative moves between various characters, in each time-dimension, sometimes in the first-person, sometimes reported. Lanagan changes her readers' viewpoint by this, and allows them to experience the feelings of one character while also seeing how others' perceive them, particularly through the different views presented by and about Dought, the dwarf and catalyst of many events in the narrative. Lanagan's is a fantasy/fairy-tale, with elements in Branza and Urdda of Snow White and Rose Red, and in Liga's experience, references to Perrault's Donkeyskin themes of an escape from incest facilitated by a godmother-figure, and the magical importance of jewels. Lanagan reverses the social setting of that story, and incorporates themes from many other fairy and folk-tales, weaving a many-layered text which, like traditional fairy-tale, addresses age-old social and psychological trauma. In Liga and her daughters she shows that, although it is possible to escape these traumas (in the mind, represented here as an alternative existence), into a safe world, at some point a return to reality - but not a perfect, totally resolved situation - is necessary.
Lanagan's novel is often brutal, frightening, and bewildering, a challenging narrative, and as such possibly best suited for older teenage readers. It grips the reader from the outset, and as it is read, layer upon layer of psychological and intertextual meaning can be unpicked and analyzed. It is certainly an immensely powerful contribution to both fairy-tale and fantasy genres.