By Sara Hailstone
The residue of my reading experience with Rena Rossner’s The Sisters of the Winter Wood was an “aha” moment after finishing the novel and reading of the book’s historical rootedness in the author’s Jewish family history, and the intertextuality of folklore blended with the fantasy genre. In a historical note following the story Rossner records that “On March 20, 1903, the body of a young Christian Ukrainian boy named Mikhail Rybachenko was found drained of blood in the garden of a Jewish man named Yossl Filler in the shtetl of Dubossary, on the border between the Ukraine and Moldova.” This event resulted in over 1,300 pogroms, attacks on Jewish persons in the Ukraine. Rossner has personal ties to this history. “As a result of the pogrom in Dubossary, my great-uncle, Abraham Krovetz, made his way to America via Ellis Island in 1905.” The extension of this narrative is that during World War II the Nazis exterminated the remaining Jewish people of Dubossary and buried all 6,000 in a mass grave. Rossner writes, “Every family member of mine who did not make it to America from 1903 to 1912 was slaughtered by the Nazis in 1940, together with the rest of the Jews of the town. Only 100 to 150 Jews from Dubossary survived.” So, as a debut novel in 2018, The Sisters of the Winter Wood is grounded in historical, biographical, and literary elements of truth, fantasy, and fiction.
The story depicts the coming-of-age and fantastical loss of innocence of two sisters, Laya and Liba, who live close to the village of Dubossary with their parents. Despite the novel’s intriguing idea of combining history with a re-imagining of Christina Rossetti’s “Goblin Market,” the literary parallels suffer from the pacing of the plot. Before the parents are called away from their homestead to the deathbed of grandfather-rabbi with the intention to achieve familial reconciliation, the reader is shown rather quickly that both parents shapeshift.
The mother is a swan and the father is a bear, and there is family history of separation between the swan and bear lineage. The sisters are left alone to process the reality of shapeshifting, family truths of parental heritage, and their own changing existences of human into animal—Laya will become a swan like her mother, and Liba will grow into a bear like her father. I wanted to fall into this fantasy environment like I would with elements of magic realism in literary fiction, but the writing did not enable me too. I finished the story knowing I do not fully believe or am convinced. I think if these details were revealed slowly with a more integrated backstory, the shapeshifting wouldn’t feel rushed or artificially inserted.
When I first picked up the novel I was interested in the evident shift in narrative point-of-view between the two sisters in both prose and poetry sections. I was excited for the poetry sections. The textual style reflects the sister’s personalities. Prose is detailed and reveals observation, emotional intelligence and deep thought with Liba, the older sister. The poetry sections flow with pockets of air and space around them. One text of underbrush fit for a bear. One text of air fit for a swan to fly. I wanted the poetry to inspire and captivate me, but I found while reading that these sections were sentence fragments. I wanted lyrical poetry with imagery, metaphor, and a deeper message. One strength of the writing style is Rossner’s language that achieves interconnectivity between the sisters and nature. These descriptions were poetic and convincing.
I suggest that in attempting to achieve a cross-genre text of history, fiction, and fantasy, Rossner could have written a creative nonfiction text combining historical records and direct literary references to “Goblin Market.” An intertextual product could possibly achieve her desire to integrate the history of atrocity of the Jewish people of Dubossary, her family history, literary references and the sensuality of “Goblin Market,” and the author’s Russian/Romanian/Moldavian/Ukrainian heritage. Overall, in making a connection to Jewish suffering, scapegoating, and shapeshifting, a point of existence could be mastered of other worlds/realities, hidden dimensions, and capacities that could close the gaps in the narrative to make it more believable. The novel needs a firmer understanding of a magic system, worldbuilding, and a power structure or system of government in flushing out who holds power within this world.
Thank you to Hachette Book Group for the complimentary copy in exchange for an honest review.