Review by Booklist Review
O'Neill (When We Lost Our Heads, 2022) presents a dark fairy tale set in a tiny European country, Elysia, which renounces its pantheistic, forest-dwelling ways to build a thriving artistic culture centered in the Capital. But with the rise of an authoritarian leader in Europe, the Enemy seeks to reclaim the land and Elysia's artists come under attack, including the country's foremost feminist writer, Clara Bottom. As the Enemy occupation encroaches, Clara places her 14-year-old daughter, Sofia, on a train evacuating children to the countryside. Sofia, who has long understood that she takes second place to her mother's art, recognizes Clara's true motivation: her new memoir is hidden inside Sofia's suitcase. When Enemy soldiers divert the train, Sofia escapes to the woods, but her mother's manuscript is lost. Hoping to recover it, she sets off in search of the fabled Black Market, accompanied by Goose, a self-professed "public intellectual" who is a talking goose. The pair encounters collaborators, soldiers, and refugees, as well as vestiges of Elysia's past, including elf trees and anthropomorphic fog. Like the heroines of her favorite folktales, Sofia navigates her own adolescence along with the treacherous landscape, emerging from the woods with a hard-won sense of self. O'Neill's feminist fairy tale will appeal to fans of Kelly Link and Karen Russell.
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
O'Neill (When We Lost Our Heads) conjures a haunting fantasy set in the war-torn country of Elysia. Sofia, the 14-year-old daughter of renowned writer Clara Bottom, is tasked with smuggling her mother's latest manuscript out of the capital as enemy forces invade. But when the evacuation train mysteriously halts in a forest, Sofia loses the manuscript and must navigate a war-ravaged landscape in search of it. As she struggles to blend in as a peasant to avoid unwanted attention, she befriends a talking goose and encounters survivors of a brutal occupation. All the while, Sofia grapples with whether to prioritize her own survival or the artistic legacy her mother has entrusted to her. O'Neill masterfully blends moments of whimsy with the grim realities of war, exploring themes of art, loyalty, and the complexities of mother-daughter relationships. The lush prose and fantastical elements draw readers into a magical and heartbreaking world. Like the best fairy tales, the result feels both timeless and painfully relevant. Agent: Claudia Ballard, WME. (Jan.)
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Review by Kirkus Book Review
A young girl becomes a refugee in her own land in this fairy tale--adjacent bildungsroman. When war comes to the small, idiosyncratic country of Elysia, no one is quite surprised, but neither are they prepared. For Sofia Bottom-Zier, the pampered young daughter of Elysian's leading intellectual, the time between the Enemy's invasion of their country's borders and their inevitable march on the Capital has been a pleasurable interlude of intrigue, drama, and a renewed closeness to her difficult and mercurial mother, Clara. This comes to an end when the Enemy announces that they will allow all Elysian children safe passage out of the Capital on a special train, and Clara hastens to make sure Sofia is on it. Sofia's safety is not Clara's primary concern, however. Her much larger goal is to smuggle out the manuscript she has written and concealed inside Sofia's suitcase, which she hopes will convey to the Western world that the country of Elysia is worth saving. "Of course the book is more important than you," Clara tells her daughter. "It's my memoir, yes. But it's more important than me. It's the celebration of an Elysian life. What are any of us except expendable during a war? It's the idea of freedom that has to be saved." With that admonition ringing in her ears, Sofia boards the Children's Train heading toward the vague safety of "the countryside." It soon becomes clear, however, that the Enemy has no intention of rescuing the children, and is instead shipping them to their executions. Sofia escapes, but in the commotion, she loses track of the suitcase with her mother's manuscript inside. Accompanied by the Goose, a "public intellectual" who is also an actual goose with big dreams of a future in the Capital, Sofia sets off across the war-torn landscape of her erstwhile country in search of the Black Market--a near-mythical place where everything "illegal and forbidden and delightful ended up," including, Sofia hopes, her mother's manuscript, and the country's potential salvation. The novel is told in fairy tale cadence and peppered with sophisticated animals, sensitive objects, and the enduring magic of folklore forests; its raw power lies in the way it blends the realities of war with the equally trenchant realities of its child narrator's perspective as she navigates her suddenly irredeemable world. A powerful novel--heartbreaking, magical, and real. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
