Ghastly Grandeur, Ghostly Games

Neil Gaiman has rightly said that 'Once upon a time' lives forever. There is something about fairy tales that stays with us long after childhood is over. I am always game for a fairy tale retelling and this year fuelled by a fellow book lover's  fantasy fiction fixation, I have been reading more of them than I would have otherwise. When I heard of a Bluebeard retelling set in pre-Civil war Mississippi, I couldn’t wait to get my hands on it. Unlike the Sleeping Beauty, Cinderella, and Beauty and the Beast spin-offs which are splattered all over the publishing horizon, Goodreads has less than 20 books listed under Bluebeard retellings. Add to this, a morbid fascination for the creepiest wife-slayer of all times and I was sold on reading Jane Nickerson’s debut novel.

Image Source- Wikipedia

Once upon a time there was a dirty old man who had a fetish for red-headed girls. He kept marrying them and getting angry at them cos’ they wouldn’t be his pet zombies. Then one day, the wheels of justice turned. A whip of a girl with strands of bronze and gold, aided by ‘Sisters’, managed to drive him to his deserving fate. As he lay, shocked and wounded, his only thought was he should have left this one alone!

The plot of Strands of Bronze and Gold revolves around seventeen year old Sophie Petheram who loses her father and immediately gains an invitation from her Godfather Bernard Cressac to visit the magnificent Wyndriven Abbey. Behind the grandeur of Cressac's home, though, lurk dark secrets that threaten Sophie’s safety and maybe even her life. Will Sophie be able to look beyond the ornate decorations, the lavish furnishings, and the luxurious living at the danger that resides in the abbey? Will she able to rise above the influence of the much older and debonair Bernard? What secrets are buried in the desecrated chapel? What happened to all the previous wives of Cressac? Can Sophie unlock forbidden doors and dare to step inside to bring the truth to light?

Beautifully written, the story of Sophie’s stay at the ancient abbey enchanted me with its evocative descriptions of place, geography, and atmosphere. Having read the fairy tale of Bluebeard as a child, it was not suspense that kept me glued to the book but the language. The sentences sinuously glided into my imagination and easily conjured up the vivid characters, elusive phantoms, and historical setting. The writing style is perfectly suited to gothic tales with supernatural overtones and derives its strength from a lush but accessible prose. Having said that, the incredibly slow pace of the book does dispel the magic of the writing, to an extent, as the frustration of nothing much happening in more than half the book gnaws at the pleasure of losing yourself in the language.

Wyndriven Abbey is as much a character as the humans who inhabit it. Transplanted, stone by stone, from England to Mississippi, it is a 300 year old abbey with history breathing through its very walls.

“The magnificence of the building whooshed at me like a blast of icy wind. Wyndriven Abbey loomed in the center of spreading lawns and gardens and terraces as though it had stood in that spot for centuries. It was toothed with crenellations and spiky with pinnacles and spires and turrets, the setting sun rosily staining the stone and lighting fires in a myriad of mullioned windows.”

I longed to tour the abbey and discover the obscure fate of its former residents.

Sophie is quite a silly girl for most of the book but does redeem herself later with the courage, resolve, and fortitude she shows when she sets out to seek justice for Cressac’s wives. 

I see-sawed between feeling extreme annoyance at her dense ostrich-with-head-in-the-sand behaviour and forgiving her for her youth. I had to keep reminding myself she was a sheltered, wildly imaginative, spoilt seventeen year old and not yet an adult. Kudos to the author, however, for bringing a fresh, funny, and frank voice to life so successfully, the impact of which is much greater due to the first person narrative.

“In my imaginary meeting with M. de Cressac, I had worn a gown of emerald green silk with jet beads embroidered in the skirt that clicked as I walked. I could hear it. I could feel it- the weight of the beads. I looked down. Surprise! Still ugly black bombazine. Never had I imagined I would meet my guardian swathed in a fabric so dark and dull it swallowed the light of every room.”

“In spite of my long-held belief that I was destined for luxury, it was still hard to change the habits of a lifetime.”

Her curiosity is a welcome trait as we know early on that her survival lies in not just finding out the truth but also escaping in time to avoid a miserable future.

“I wished she hadn’t stopped. I loved knowing things.”

I found her impromptu 'imagining herself in love' with Cressac and making ready excuses for his much objectionable behavior quite irritating especially when she wears foreign outfits 'sparse of material' for him and also engages in talk of underdrawers justifying the conversation as one of worldly sophistication. Why would you want to accept lewd talk from a man old enough to be your father?! I wanted to shake her into realising she was making a fool of herself in her infatuation with Cressac and found myself completely agreeing with him when he berates her, towards the end, for her blinkered vision.

“You are a naïve little goose, you know. At first it was refreshing, but after a time it wearies.”

It’s not that odd things weren’t happening from the time she stepped into the abbey, it’s just that she stubbornly refused to see them!

 “Hints of this had nagged me through the months, but I had squelched them before they ever came to surface. How could any normal mind comprehend such evil?”

When I had finally given up on her, she rose like a phoenix from the ashes and won my respect for deciding to expose Cressac’s reality.

“If I were called upon to be a brave person, I would be a brave person.”

Bluebeard. Image Source- Wikipedia.

Bernard Cressac, unlike Sophie, has no redeeming qualities that could make me feel sorry for him at any point of time. You would think a person for whom marital co-existence (note that I stay away from using the word bliss here, it would be too far-fetched a state for someone like him) has always been an elusive state (married 4 times!), he would leave well alone and resign to a solitary life. But no, none of that stops him from looking for a yet another fifth wife! That he does so in his teenage ward, though, was enough to make me taste bile. His treatment of his former wives, and slaves on his plantation raised ickiness to a new level. Disgusting vile reptile. I was hoping for and anticipating a nasty end for him with inhuman relish. It was poetic justice that Sophie, whom he felt he was fated to be with, lead him to what he deserved.

‘Bernard liked to say that fate had brought us together, that I was “meant” to come to him. Perhaps, to this end, I was.’

Gordon Stone, a vicar, whom Sophie meets while walking in the woods surrounding Wyndriven Abbey and promptly falls in love with, is a largely absent character and I could not help but wish he had played a stronger role in helping Sophie escape Bernard’s clutches.

“How could I have not known what was going on? How could I have left you to fight alone?”

Exactly, Gordon! I needn’t say more.

Sophie’s family also left me wanting. As adult elder siblings they should have been able to protect her better, and not banked on her impending marriage to bail them out of their financial troubles. Sophie agreed to marry Cressac only to save her family from financial ruin and it wasn’t surprising to see her succumb to an emotional burden of this magnitude.

The story exposes, at a surface level, the harsh and cruel treatment meted out to slaves by plantation owners, their risky attempts to escape via the Underground Railroad, and the support accorded to them by those more feeling of their tormented existence. 

Recommended to all those who like mansion-dominated, gothic-flavored fantasy fiction, Strands of Bronze and Gold is a welcome addition to dark fairy tale retellings.