Deerskin

I'm in the English honor society at my school, Sigma Tau Delta (STD and yes, we joke about that). We had a book sale on Saturday, and as you can imagine, the members were some of the first people grabbing books. I was hoping to find something interesting and I certainly did. I was emptying a box and saw Deerskin by Robin McKinley. I immediately grabbed it. I'd been wanting to read it for a while now but the library doesn't have it. So you can imagine how excited I was when I found it.

There is an author's note in the front of the book:

"There is a story by Charles Perrault called Donkeyskin which, because of its subject matter, is often not included in collections of Perrault's fairy tales. Or, if it does appear, it does so in a bowdlerized state. The original Donkeyskin is where Deerskin began." 

And it's quite understandable why the story is not common. It's worse than the original Grimms' fairy tales. One reviewer called the book a fairy tale for adults, which I think is a very accurate description. 

Lissar is the daughter of a handsome king and the most beautiful woman in the seven kingdoms. The people were so enamored of the king and queen that Lissar was fairly neglected. She rarely saw her parents and even her nursemaid was her nursemaid so she could be close to the queen. Then the queen died and people remembered the potential uses of Lissar. She is 15 when her mother dies, and a prince from the sixth kingdom sends her a puppy to help her in her grief. For the next 2 years, Ash is Lissar's closest companion. During these 2 yeas Lissar is trying to decide who she is and who she can be. On her 17 birthday there is a ball in her honor and people realize that she has come to greatly resemble her mother. Including her father, who had promised his wife he would only marry someone as beautiful as she was. He gets the great idea that he's going to marry Lissar four days after her birthday. It gets worse. She locks herself in her room with Ash, refusing to marry her father. On the night they were to be married, her father breaks into her room, almost kills Ash, beats Lissar, and then rapes her. Yep. Definitely a fairy tale for adults.

Lissar and Ash escape the next morning and travel for many days before finding a cabin in the woods. They spend the winter there. Lissar has blocked out any memories of her life before she ran away, which woks until she realizes she's pregnant. The stress and horror cause a miscarriage. She is visited in a dream by the Moonwoman, who takes away her memories and gives her time to heal (you learn later that five years passed during Lissar's dream). Lissar and Ash are also transformed to be unrecognizable; Ash with a longer coat and Lissar with white hair, black eyes, and a white deerskin dress.

Lissar and Ash travel and find themselves, although they don't know it yet, in the country Ash was born in. Lissar gets a job in the kennels, working to save a litter of 6 motherless puppies. She becomes friends with Ossin, the prince who sent her Ash. It isn't until Ossin begs her to attend a ball that she begins to remember who she really is. She's once again horrified and confused. And then at the ball Ossin asks her to marry him. She runs again, taking Ash and the 6 dogs she saved with her. They end up at the cabin again and by the end of winter she realizes she has to return. And she does right as Ossin's sister is about to be married to her father. Lissar and Ash lose their disguises and she reveals the kind of man her father has become. Then she runs again, ashamed of her past, but this time Ossin chases her.

Ossin: "I let you leave me the first time because I thought that was what you wanted - that what you wanted didn't include me."

Lissar: "I do want you. But it does not matter. I am...not whole. I am hurt...in ways you cannot see, and that I cannot explain, even to myself, but only know that they are there, and a part of me, as much as my hand and eyes and breath are a part of me."

Ossin: "I do not believe there is anything so wrong with you. You are fair in my eyes and you lie fair on my heart."

Once again, McKinley has written a wonderful novel. However, I have never despised one of her characters as much as I despise Lissar's parents and the people of their kingdom. McKinley just has a way with words that I love. And it doesn't hurt that Deerskin takes place in the same world as The Blue Sword, which I adore. I loved McKinley's foray into fairy tales for adults. We need fairy tales just as much as children do, and whether she is rewriting existing fairy tales or creating her own, McKinley has a gift for fairy tales.