SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: The Sisters of the Winter Wood by Rena Rossner

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: The Sisters of the Winter Wood by Rena Rossner https://t.co/f9kxPie4vh Short Review: 5.5 out of 10 (1/3)

— garik16 (@garik16) November 15, 2018

Short Review (cont): In Eastern Europe, Jewish sisters Liba & Laya struggle to figure who they are when they learn their fantastical origins, as forces begin to align against the Jews of their village. Okay plot with some weird choices make this not live up to potential (2/3)

— garik16 (@garik16) November 15, 2018

Sisters of the Winter Wood is......interesting.  On the surface its a fantasy book that seems designed to appeal to me - it's a story of two Jewish sisters in circa 1900 Eastern Europe, combining events that actually happened in this location with fairy tale and fantasy stories.  And its certainly not a hard book to read quickly - the book contains 91 "chapters" but I managed to read through them dozens at a time (it helps that some of them are as short as a single page).

But the execution of its ideas - well I don't really think it works.  The book tries an interesting formatting gimmick with half of its chapters without ever explaining why it does so, and while I can guess the reasoning, the result is a bit of dissonance from the other half of the book. The book's story conclusion also I'm not really sure works in a satisfying fashion.  In short Sisters of the Winter Wood might be worth a try, but I wouldn't recommend it that highly.


----------------------------------------------Plot Summary-------------------------------------------
Sisters Liba and Laya live with their Mami (Mother) and Tati (Father) in a house in the forest on the edge of Dubossary.  Liba admires her father, a Chasidic Jew learned enough to be a Rebbe, and wishes she could go to school with the boys studying Torah.  At the same time, she worries that even the Jews in this mixed town don't except her convert mother and of the fact that, at age 18 she hasn't been promised to anyone yet for marriage.  15 year old Liba on the other hand has little interest in Jewish traditions, though she isn't quite sure why that is and why Tati is so accepting of that.  Liba just wishes to be free, even if that means kissing a boy or not quite following her father's religious ways.

Still, despite their differences, both Liba and Laya love and care for each other almost above all else.

But when Mami and Tati have to leave them alone in town due to a messenger arriving with news that Tati's father is dying, the two sisters learn that their family is not what it seems - their Tati is secretly a bear and their Mami is a swan....and Liba (bear) and Laya (swan) also have the ability to transform into those same animals.  Now left alone, and confused about their own identities, the sisters find themselves in a town where people are disappearing, mysterious strangers are arriving, and a non-Jewish populace that's beginning to place the blame upon the Jews.  In the midst of this, can the two sisters find a way to protect each other and to be happy....without destroying their love for each other in the process?
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Sisters of the Winter Wood is interesting in that the author tries to do a lot of things in this tale that takes a real historical story (the early 20th century pogroms in Eastern Europe and Dubossary's temporary fighting off of one) and marry it to a fantastical story based upon classic tales.  For one, the book alternates first person point of views - each chapter switches off between Liba and Laya's points of view, with the chapters ranging from as short as a single page to being a bit longer (but never too long).  Liba's viewpoint chapters are fairly conventional in form, written in normal prose, as she sees the world and things happening around her.

By contrast, Laya's chapters are not normal, and are written in text that is no longer than seven or eight-ish words per line, as if they're written in verse or poetry.  They're not written in verse or poetry of any form though, just short lines.  There's no explanation given for this stylistic choice, although I'd guess it was to echo the fact that Laya's point of view is a lot more floaty and less down to earth than Liba's, with her cherishing freedom and simplicity as opposed to religious codes and whatnot.  Still, I don't really think the formatting was really needed to demonstrate that - the sisters' two voices are so very distinct on their own already it'd be hard not to see it just from the text if laid out normally.  The formatting didn't annoy me (as I know it did one reviewer I read), but it's a bit weird.

More of an issue is that Laya and Liba's chapters often don't quite sync up properly, with Laya taking actions in Liba's chapters, and making comments, that don't seem in character with Laya's own viewpoint (at one point seemingly Laya rejects Liba extremely harshly and the end of Liba's chapter and then the next chapter of Liba's POV acts as if it never happened).  The different viewpoints make it very clear how different the sisters are, so they're successful in that regard, but I wish they'd sync up better or retell what happens in one viewpoint in the other at times - the story is pretty much always chronological, so even though we alternate viewpoints we never see the same event from different pairs of eyes, which is a loss.

Mind you, the story works decently well overall, as a tale of two sisters who love each other despite their differences, of how their discovery of true natures hidden from themselves all these years tests them, and how they act when faced with strange events occurring on the outside as well.  Part of the story may be predictable (gee, one sister is suddenly infatuated with a strange boy who gives her fruit for free, I wonder what could be going on here), but it all works out reasonably well to a reasonable conclusion, barring one point:

So about that one point.  This is arguably the most personal thing I've ever put into these reviews, but well, part of the interest in this book I had was that it dealt with Jewish protagonists in a Jewish community, as I'm Jewish myself.  The author is also Jewish with connections to the US and Israel, and a family history in the area that serves as the book's setting.  Now, I'm not incredibly religious (I belong to the Conservative Judaism movement in the US, keep kosher, but do not observe Shabbas), but my Jewish identity is rather an important part of who I am.

So, with that said, this is a book where one of our characters, raised by a converted Jewish mother, has two love interests, neither of whom is Jewish.  Her family is observant (her father is Chasidic) and yet in the end they come to accept that she's going to end up with one of them.  Intermarriage is an issue in the Jewish community - more so for some than others of course, but the issue is treated here as if it's the least important issue of that character's actions (which arguably it is, due to the drama involved) and its treated as not an issue in the end, something that has to be based upon who that character is.  In essence, it's a nature vs nurture thing that seems to suggest that this character, through the circumstances of her birth, is not going to be Jewish despite her raising, which is.....ugh and thus intermarriage is okay.

Again, this is not something that I suspect will bother any non-Jewish readers, and this issue does come up in other books (the fantasy Jew equivalent in a book I liked, Last Song Before Night, also has exclusively non-Jewish love interests), but it hits more home and more wrongly here in a book with actual fully built Jewish communities at its center.

Anyhow, that issue aside, Sisters of the Winter Wood is an interesting debut book for its author which tries a really interesting melding together of a classical fantasy story with real historical events, but which has enough issues that I can't really recommend it.