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Loading... Thistlefoot (2022)by GennaRose Nethercott
   No current Talk conversations about this book.  Lyssa_H | Dec 21, 2024 |   In this case, the house with chicken legs immediately became familiar to what I had fairly recently learned about in the folklore of Baba Yaga and the connection to Ukraine. In brief, as a stitching enthusiast, I found that many needleart patterns on Etsy are created by Eastern European artists and particularly from Ukraine. After Russia attacked Ukraine, starting a war against the civilian populations, the international Etsy community looked for ways to support the Ukrainian artists. I found a few, including StitchyPrincess who's store has some designs featuring Baba Yaga and some of the house with chicken legs (see: https://www.etsy.com/listing/873462869/baba-yaga-witch-cross-stitch-pattern?clic.... The Thistlefoot book flap description caught my interest in promising to bring some of the Ukrainian folklore about Baba Yaga to life and include a modern setting in the United States. Additionally, Thistlefoot was on the list as top Fantasy new book for 2022. I was hooked and bought the book. Thistlefoot did not disappoint; it is quite a page turner. First, we are introduced to the Yaga siblings in the modern day United States and learn a bit about their current lives. It is the inheritance of a mysterious package from Russia that connects them to the past and reveals that they are the great-great grandchildren of Baba Yaga herself. The inheritance is Thistlefoot - the ancestral Yaga family home with chicken legs. Its arrival in the United States starts them off on a new path of their lives, helps them to understand themselves and tap into the pain and trauma of ancestral memories. The story includes a great blend of magic, fantasy and folklore. Sometimes dark, GennaRose is able to connect the horrors of the real Jewish trauma that is carried forward to the present Jewish descendants. The book is definitely worth reading and I can see why it tops the list for new Fantasy in 2022. The book is so well written that it would be excellent on audiobooks. I haven’t listened to that edition, but would expect it to be delightful. I look forward to reading more from GennaRose Nethercott in the future. (  ) lauraklemme | Nov 21, 2024 | What a beautiful, heart-breaking, heart-warming story. I was hooked from the first 100 pages, curious abuot this brother and sister. Clearly they had abilities that I didn't understand and I craved to know more of what they could do. The house absolutely wove around my heart and I loved every moment of that chicken legged wonder. But the underlying current of this story, the rage and the cruelty, is so well done. It's a plague you can feel on every page and yet, you can see the love and the family and the devotion come through. There are things that are so ugly, they leave a scar after they are gone. This is the story of one such scar, but told with so much love and folklore that it is easy to read and easy to love and, absolutely, hands down, easy to read again and give 5 favorite stars for surprising me. I loved this one. I hope you pick it up and love it too! (  ) Trisha_Thomas | Nov 14, 2024 | Still, it's clever to set a Yaga story in the American West... the current west, with cell phones etc. Cheryl_in_CC_NV | Oct 18, 2024 | ) mythical_library | Oct 11, 2024 |
Steeped in the ancient tropes of folk tales and animated by a passionate belief in the vital role of storytelling, GennaRose Nethercott’s first novel builds on her work as a folklorist and poet. “Thistlefoot” updates the classic Slavic tale of Baba Yaga, a ferocious old woman who lives deep in the forest in a house standing on chicken legs. In Nethercott’s version, the building has been bequeathed to contemporary American siblings Bellatine and Isaac Yaga by their great-great-grandmother...There’s a lot of dense plotting to absorb while Thistlefoot fills us in about Baba Yaga and the grim fate of the shtetl’s Jewish inhabitants, in counterpoint with Isaac and Bellatine struggling through their own painful memories. The text is stuffed, perhaps overstuffed, with Nethercott’s thoughts on everything from antisemitism and class prejudice to the nature of identity and the mixed blessing of belonging to a community. Through it all, her central concern is how we preserve and understand the past through the stories we tell.... “Thistlefoot” is by no means a perfect novel, but it is something almost better: a book with so much on its mind that it bursts its seams to sprawl across genres and forms. Nethercott explores more ideas than her plot can comfortably contain, but serious readers will appreciate her ambition and commitment. Part ghost story, part font of wisdom, this gorgeously written novel takes a fantastical romp while cautioning readers to remember the violence and inequity of the past—even when forgetting seems preferable....With echoes of Isaac Bashevis Singer and Sholem Aleichem, as well as Buddhist and Christian overtones, the Yagas unearth their past. They learn they come from people who dreamed and believed, who brought with them to America “languages, folded into the suitcases of their tongues.” They realize they must tell the story of Gedenkrovka, Russia, where a pogrom destroyed its Jewish inhabitants. Despite its serious subject matter, this novel contains delights on every page. The author displays a capacious imagination, providing an entertaining, colorful read while grappling with subjects of utmost importance to today’s turbulent world. This book blooms from a fairy tale to a panoptic story that defies space and time, brimming with creativity, wisdom, and love. Nethercott’s dark, difficult fiction debut (after the poetry collection The Lumberjack’s Dove) offers a heartbreaking reinterpretation of the myth of Baba Yaga.... Nethercott’s ambitious attempt to write the next American Gods falters in its handling of evil. The characters themselves point out that the villain talks like a Nazi from an Indiana Jones movie, which cheapens the examination of racism and mob mentality—especially in the context of depictions of horrific antisemtism witnessed by the house (including a graphic infant murder in a Russian pogrom). Still, fans of thorny, contemporary retellings of folklore will appreciate Nethercott’s take on the theme of inherited trauma. AwardsDistinctionsNotable Lists
"The Yaga siblings--Bellatine, a young woodworker, and Isaac, a wayfaring street performer and con artist--have been estranged since childhood, separated both by resentment and by wide miles of American highway. But when they learn that they are to receive a mysterious inheritance, the siblings are reunited--only to discover that their bequest isn't land or money, but something far stranger: a sentient house on chicken legs. Thistlefoot, as the house is called, has arrived from the Yagas' ancestral home in Russia--but not alone. A sinister figure known only as the Longshadow Man has tracked it to American shores, bearing with him violent secrets from the past: fiery memories that have hidden in Isaac and Bellatine's blood for generations. As the Yaga siblings embark with Thistlefoot on a final cross-country tour of their family's traveling theater show, the Longshadow Man follows in relentless pursuit, seeding destruction in his wake. Ultimately, time, magic, and legacy must collide--erupting in a powerful conflagration to determine who gets to remember the past and craft a new future"-- No library descriptions found. |
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 Google Books — Loading...GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)813.6Literature American literature in English American fiction in English 2000-LC ClassificationRatingAverage: (4.02)
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Wikipedia in English
5
If you're into Jewish/Russian history and legend, especially pre-Holocaust Eastern European Jewish history, I cannot recommend this book enough. This book is kind of based on the legend of Baba Yaga and her house with chicken legs from Russian lore, but it's also about so much more. The immigrant experience. Intergenerational trauma and how it messes up families. Pogroms (attacks on Jews) and antisemitism. Memory.
Despite the at-times heavy subject matter, it can be kind of funny at parts, and the house with chicken legs, a narrator, is very well-written. It speaks Yiddish in theory, and the way Nethercott communicated that is great. It is the most Jewish house voice I have ever read. Which isn't a very big group, but I think it'll be holding that title for a long time. "Forgive my appearance, my shutters crooked as an old zayde's teeth, my fine walls dripping with paint. I am a work in progress, as are we all, yes?...Would you begrudge an old house it's nature? Of course you wouldn't." I can hear that voice and all the stereotypical Jewish grandma traits that might follow it: "Not like Moishele. Would you believe it, he didn't become a doctor! No, no, no, he became some artist! An artist! I worked so hard, yes? He was raised right, yes? So he listens to his mame when she tells him to become a doctor, yes? No! And does he call his poor mame and tell her how her grandchildren, Yosele--he just became a bar mitzvah--and Mirele and Rivkele and Yankele and little Ruthie are doing? No! Oy, Moishele...he's a nogoodnik. Not like Esther Goldberg's kids. Yossie became a scientist and Mendele became a doctor and Mordy became a lawyer - and all she does is kvetch!"
The book isn't super Jewish, but if you happen to know about Jewish history and culture, or if it's your family's history - as it is mine - you'll probably get more out of it than if you don't. (