Review: The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making by Catherynne M. Valente
Overview:
Rating: 2 out of 5.
This book had so much promise, and it totally disappointed me! The writing is truly whimsical, but the pacing of the story and the development of the main character were not there for me.
Content Warning:
The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making contains child abuse, death, xenophobia, and body horror.
Book Description:
The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making is a middle grade fantasy novel. The main character, September, is a 12-year-old girl who is happily swept away from her home in Omaha, Nebraska to the mythical Fairyland. Upon her arrival, she loses a shoe, meets a wyvern, and enlists in a quest to retrieve a wooden spoon. However, her fantastical journey is soon interrupted by an evil queen who wants to use September for her own twisted purposes. September must try to defeat the queen without hurting her newly made friends or losing herself in the process.
On the Author’s Writing Style:
The aesthetic of this book can best be described as A Series of Unfortunate Events meets Alice in Wonderland, but with faeries. We’ve got a self-aware narrator, objects and concepts that are personified, and various metaphors and witty quips that relay the larger themes of growing up. It’s magical and whimsical and makes you want to dress for tea. Valente clearly had loads of fun playing with words and I, as the reader, found myself chuckling at her cleverness more than once. At the end of the day, it was the overall style and authorial craftsmanship of this book that really stood out to me.
On the Flow of the Story:
This book was either way too fast or way too slow, except for maybe the last 50 pages. The beginning particularly felt like a slap in the face. Valente jumps right into the story without much explanation or context, and it is beyond confusing: a green wind picks up a little girl on a giant cat and they’re attempting to pass longitude and latitude to get to Fairyland… I mean, WHAT?!? It did not rub me the right way, folks! I was in a sour mood for at least the next five chapters. Plus, even when I did eventually gain a foothold on the story, it became incredibly slow and meandering. The text is about 250 pages long, but the middle felt like 400. It took me ages to get through chapters and I kept putting it down because it could not capture my attention at all.
On the Main Character:
Much like Alice in Wonderland, The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making focuses far more on the oddities of the magical setting than it does on the development of the main character. As someone who lives for the relatability of stories, this was a very hard read for me. I did not feel attached to or invested in September at all. She was so overshadowed by the fantastical elements of the Fairyland that I quickly lost her and, consequentially, the central conflict of the story, behind quirky creatures and fancy words.