Review: Spinning Silver, by Naomi Novik

Russ Allbery eagle at eyrie.org
Sun Aug 18 20:10:26 PDT 2019


Spinning Silver
by Naomi Novik

Publisher: Del Rey
Copyright: 2018
ISBN:      0-399-18100-8
Format:    Kindle
Pages:     465

Miryem is the daughter of the village moneylender and the granddaughter
(via her mother) of a well-respected moneylender in the city. Her
grandfather is good at his job. Her father is not. He's always willing
to loan the money out, but collecting it is another matter, and the
village knows that and takes advantage of it. Each year is harder than
the one before, in part because they have less and less money and in
part because the winter is getting harsher and colder. When Miryem's
mother falls ill, that's the last straw: she takes her father's ledger
and goes to collect the money her family is rightfully owed.

Rather to her surprise, she's good at the job in all the ways her
father is not. Daring born of desperation turns into persistent, cold
anger at the way her family had been taken advantage of. She's good
with numbers, has an eye for investments, and is willing to be firm and
harden her heart where her father was not. Her success leads to good
food, a warmer home, and her mother's recovery. It also leads to the
attention of the Staryk.

The Staryk are the elves of Novik's world. They claim everything white
in the forest, travel their own mysterious ice road, and raid villages
when they choose. And, one night, one of the Staryk comes to Miryem's
house and leaves a small bag of Staryk silver coins, challenging her to
turn them into the gold the Staryk value so highly.

This is just the start of Spinning Silver, and Miryem is only one of a
broadening cast. She demands the service of Wanda and her younger
brother as payment for their father's debt, to the delight (hidden from
Miryem) of them both since this provides a way to escape their abusive
father. The Staryk silver becomes jewelry with surprising magical
powers, which Miryem sells to the local duke for his daughter. The
duke's daughter, in turn, draws the attention of the czar, who she met
as a child when she found him torturing squirrels. And Miryem finds
herself caught up in the world of the Staryk, which works according to
rules that she can barely understand and may be a trap that she cannot
escape.

Novik makes a risky technical choice in this book and pulls it off
beautifully: the entirety of Spinning Silver is written in first person
with frequently shifting narrators that are not signaled outside of the
text. I think there were five different narrators in total, and I may
be forgetting some. Despite that, I was never confused for more than a
paragraph about who was speaking due to Novik's command of the
differing voices. Novik uses this to great effect to show the inner
emotions and motivations of the characters without resorting to the
distancing effect of wandering third-person.

That's important for this novel because these characters are not
emotionally forthcoming. They can't be. Each of them is operating under
sharp constraints that make too much emotion unsafe: Wanda and her
brother are abused, the Duke's daughter is valuable primarily as a
political pawn and later is juggling the frightening attention of the
czar, and Miryem is carefully preserving an icy core of anger against
her parents' ineffectual empathy and is trying to navigate the perilous
and trap-filled world of the Staryk. The caution and occasional
coldness of the characters does require the reader do some work to
extrapolate emotions, but I thought the overall effect worked.

Miryem's family is, of course, Jewish. The nature of village
interactions with moneylenders make that obvious before the book
explicitly states it. I thought Novik built some interesting contrasts
between Miryem's navigation of the surrounding anti-Semitism and her
navigation of the rules of the Staryk, which start off as far more
alien than village life but become more systematic and comprehensible
than the pervasive anti-Semitism as Miryem learns more. But I was
particularly happy that Novik includes the good as well as the bad of
Jewish culture among unforgiving neighbors: a powerful sense of family,
household religious practices, Jewish weddings, and a cautious but very
deep warmth that provides the emotional core for the last part of the
book.

Novik also pulls off a rare feat in the plot structure by transforming
most of the apparent villains into sympathetic characters and, unlike
The Song of Ice and Fire, does this without making everyone awful. The
Staryk, the duke, and even the czar are obvious villains on first
appearances, but in each case the truth is more complicated and more
interesting. The plot of Spinning Silver is satisfyingly complex and
ever-changing, with just the right eventual payoffs for being a good
(but cautious and smart!) person.

There were places when Spinning Silver got a bit bleak, such as when
the story lingered a bit too long on Miryem trying and failing to
navigate the Staryk world while getting herself in deeper and deeper,
but her core of righteous anger and the protagonists' careful use of
all the leverage that they have carried me through. The ending is
entirely satisfying and well worth the journey. Recommended.

Rating: 8 out of 10

Reviewed: 2019-08-18

URL: https://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/reviews/books/0-399-18100-8.html

-- 
Russ Allbery (eagle at eyrie.org)              <http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>


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