#BlogTour-‘Foxfire, Wolfskin and Other Stories of Shape-shifting Women’ by Sharon Blackie

About the book…

Drawing on myth and fairy tales found across Europe – from Croatia to Sweden, Ireland to Russia – Sharon Blackie brings to life women’s remarkable ability to transform themselves in the face of seemingly impossible circumstances.

These stories are about coming to terms with our animal natures, exploring the ways in which we might renegotiate our fractured relationship with the natural world, and uncovering the wildness – and wilderness – within.

Beautifully illustrated by Helen Nicholson, ‘Foxfire, Wolfskin, and other stories of Shape-shifting women’ is her first collection of short stories. All are either reimaginings of older tales, or contain characters, beings and motifs which appear in older tales

Huge thanks to Anne Cater of Random Things Tours for the blogtour invite and September publishing for my gifted review copy!

Compiled from myths and tales spanning the mainland of Europe, re-interpreted to center the feminine , ‘Foxfire..’ celebrates  the strength and power of women,with the bonus of an afterword which directs you to the origins of each tale.

Lushly illustrated by Helen Nicholson, the 13 tales are witchy, wild and wonderful, drawing natural comparisons to the doyenne of feminist short stories, Angela Carter, but I would also draw a direct link from Sharon Blackie, to the work of Marina Warner

Men ignore women, and by extension nature, at their peril-the maiden, the crone and the hag are all represented here in their different incarnations as fairy wives, werewolves, sprites and even the Welsh myth of Blodeuwedd-in ‘Flower-Face‘-from the Mabinogion.This is quite possibly my favourite of the tales, it is a story we have grown up being told from very young,as constant a presence in school lessons as that of Gelert. Here, however, this flower maiden,created to be a wife for an unworthy Prince, named Lleu, is given short shrift and doomed. As Blodeuwedd reminds King Gwydion, who tried to outsmart the curse placed on his son to never have a human wife, creating one from meadow seet, oak and broom is not a wise idea-

”My heart is made of oak,the sacred tree:the gateway to other worlds.Ancient,enduring,long-lived oak.It doesn’t know how to give up.It’s a hard old tree, the oak:so easy to resist the pests who try to bring it down.You made me from the tree of kings:from it,you fashioned the heart of a queen.Do you see now the strength of my heart,old man?Do you begin to understand your error?”

And this is the crux of the tales-recognise the value of the woman who chooses to be in your life, ignore this at your peril.

The raw, elemental energy that comes with the sacred feminine is not able to be pinned to a wall, as in ‘Wolfskin’, where a hunter conspires to catch a shape shifting woman’s pelt and keep her as his wife. This is never going to be a story which ends well…

‘The Snow Queen’ turns it’s origin tale on its head as the queen is presented as someone who has been wronged by Kai and Gerda, that the power of her ice was used to fuse what was broken-she was not incapable of feeling. I read it as an allegory of environmental destruction, the danger of the melting polar ice caps which will lower the temperature of the world creating natural disasters threatening animal and human life alike. In this story, Kai and Gerda return to ask for the Snow Queen’s help to reverse what is happening and bring back the cold and the ice to the earth.

‘Meeting Baba Yaga’ is a modern day reconstruction of the classic Russian story of a witch-clevelry retold using a narrator who finds their elemental self beyond reach of all the New Age ‘hippy-ness’ that they have consumed. The droll humour suggests to this reader that this is a deliberate,kindly mocking of those ‘daytrippers’ to the shamanic journey. In orer to live the life you have to commit, a one day course on Shamanism does not a shaman make. Authenticity and recognition of your powerful, witchy sources is key!I have always loved the decription of Baba Yaga living in a moving house supported by chicken legs.

I love that all stages of womanhood are represented here in all their guises, it is a natural successor to the fabulous ‘If Women Rose Rooted’. If that was a call to arms, a klaxon cry to women to recognise their raw and elemental power, these short stories are examples from across the world to show that it has always been so. Women have to reclaim their own power, no one will hand it to them willingly.

So,sisters, shall we fight?

About the author…

I was born in the north-east of England, a Celt through and through: my family and ancestry is both Scottish and Irish, and I was raised on an imaginatively rich diet of Irish myth, poetry, music and history. After studying psychology, I spent several years as an academic neuroscientist/ psychologist specialising in the field of anxiety and panic, and working at the Hôpital Pitié-Salpêtrière in Paris and the Institute of Neurology in London. After a few twists and turns, including some unwise years advising a tobacco company on smoking and health and safer cigarettes, and the acquisition of a master’s degree in Creative Writing, I moved to a croft in the north-west Highlands of Scotland. There I returned to my roots, in practice as a therapist specialising in narrative psychology, myth- and storytelling, as well as in other creative imagination techniques and clinical hypnotherapy. My passion during those years was, and still is, creating transformation in individuals and groups.

Links-http://sharonblackie.net/

Twitter @septemberbooks

@annecater