A dark, feminist retelling of The Children of Lir told in Sullivan's hypnotic prose.
A retelling of the favourite Irish fairytale The Children of Lir. Aife marries Lir, a king with four children by his previous wife. Jealous of his affection for his children, the witch Aife turns them into swans for 900 years. Retold through the voice of Aife, Savage Her Reply is unsettling and dark, feminist and fierce, yet nuanced in its exploration of the guilt of a complex character.
Voiced in Sullivan's trademark rich, lyrical prose as developed in Tangleweed and Brine - the multiple award-winner which established Sullivan as the queen of witchy YA. Another dark & witchy feminist fairytale from the author of Tangleweed and Brine.
Savage Her Reply is a beautiful, haunting new version of The Children of Lir, destined to join Michael Scott's Song of the Children of Lir as a seminal version of this story. I'm not doing a full review as we have an interview here, but I'll say that I loved it, that it's beautifully Irish without being incomprehensible to people from around the world, that the illustrations are fabulous and the little calligrams are wonderful, that this is a book that you need to read.
Deirdre Sullivan, the author, kindly joined me to answer a couple of questions about this wonderful book.
Can you tell us a little bit about your beliefs and how they influenced the story?
I’m a very ad hoc person. I am spiritual, I do believe that there’s more to us than meets the eye and that our hearts are complicated things and things we can’t always control, and I think that we need to care for each other and that we have a duty to do that, and to listen to each other. I have little rituals I do, I like hagstones, I collect hagstones if I’m on a beach. I bless myself if a fire engine with its sirens on or an ambulance goes past; I’m not a practising Catholic anymore but that’s something I was taught to do from childhood and I do think it’s nice to take a moment, so if I find a better way to do that I will. I cling to little rituals, like - two relatives passed away while we were in this strange space where you can’t attend funerals and I lit candles in the window for them, and that gave me the sense I was doing something for them when you can’t really do anything. So I think we all have a need to nourish that emotional and that deeply human part of us, and we have a hunger for some kind of spirituality but I don’t think it should be forced on anyone, I think you have to build your own and find what works for you.
Are there any folk tales you think you’d never retell? They don’t interest you, you can’t see the hook or any other reason?
The first one that came to mind is Cinderella, but I have retold that! I wouldn’t do it as a novel, but it’s in Tangleweed and Brine. There are probably ones I wouldn’t touch, but I’d never say never. There’s different points in your life when you’re drawn to different things. And I think all of us are finding out things about what we’re capable of or what the world can do to us all of the time and I don’t think I would rule anything out. I would say that I would be very very surprised if I was to hop into a folk tale like Jack and the Beanstalk or the Brave Little Tailor, those ones with young male protagonists coming into their own and being rewarded with princesses. I don’t think I would want to tell them from a male perspective. I’d want to find a woman in the corner or something.
This is a very personal question so please feel free to not answer, but do you have a favourite Tarot card, crystal or other piece of equipment you’re drawn to?
I do have some things that I do. I have my Tarot cards. I was kind of drawn to the High priestess the year before last, and now, currently, I’m kind of drawn to the Empress and the Tower, it varies. They’re a story and each one will resonate differently with you at different points in your life. The deck I use is the Morgan Greer. I was kind of surprised. It’s kind of an 70s, 80s looking one, but it was a tactile thing. I’d seen it on line and I hadn’t really been drawn to the images. But at the Edinburgh Book Festival last year, I went into a little shop and they had all the tarot cards out so you could touch them and feel them, and when I touched it I was just like “This feels really nice in my hand.” Like from a sensory point of view, it’s the right shape, it’s the right size. And as i worked with it I’ve gotten to like it more and more. It’s the one that I take around with me in my handbag.
I also have this, and for people who enjoy myths and retellings it’s quite a beautiful one. It’s the Mythic Tarot, which is illustrated by Tricia Newell. Each of the suits is a different myth, so the meanings are a little bit different, but they’re beautiful. Reading the book kind of grounds you in myths and mythic characters, so it’s been a nice learning experience for me.
(For the curious - and Deirdre, forgive me if I get these wrong, I’m still very much a beginner - the High Priestess is about curiosity and hidden secrets; The Empress is about nurturing and intuition; the Tower is about destruction, but it’s a reminder that good things can come from bad if we learn from what caused the destruction. An excellent card for these times!)
Thank you so much for your time and your intriguing answers, Deirdre. I've really enjoyed this, and I can't wait to start selling the book when it comes out!
Savage her Reply publishes on the 1st October, 2020.
Savage Her Reply is a beautiful, haunting new version of The Children of Lir, destined to join Michael Scott's Song of the Children of Lir as a seminal version of this story. I'm not doing a full review as we have an interview here, but I'll say that I loved it, that it's beautifully Irish without being incomprehensible to people from around the world, that the illustrations are fabulous and the little calligrams are wonderful, that this is a book that you need to read.
Deirdre Sullivan, the author, kindly joined me to answer a couple of questions about this wonderful book.
Can you tell us a little bit about your beliefs and how they influenced the story?
I’m a very ad hoc person. I am spiritual, I do believe that there’s more to us than meets the eye and that our hearts are complicated things and things we can’t always control, and I think that we need to care for each other and that we have a duty to do that, and to listen to each other. I have little rituals I do, I like hagstones, I collect hagstones if I’m on a beach. I bless myself if a fire engine with its sirens on or an ambulance goes past; I’m not a practising Catholic anymore but that’s something I was taught to do from childhood and I do think it’s nice to take a moment, so if I find a better way to do that I will. I cling to little rituals, like - two relatives passed away while we were in this strange space where you can’t attend funerals and I lit candles in the window for them, and that gave me the sense I was doing something for them when you can’t really do anything. So I think we all have a need to nourish that emotional and that deeply human part of us, and we have a hunger for some kind of spirituality but I don’t think it should be forced on anyone, I think you have to build your own and find what works for you.
Are there any folk tales you think you’d never retell? They don’t interest you, you can’t see the hook or any other reason?
The first one that came to mind is Cinderella, but I have retold that! I wouldn’t do it as a novel, but it’s in Tangleweed and Brine. There are probably ones I wouldn’t touch, but I’d never say never. There’s different points in your life when you’re drawn to different things. And I think all of us are finding out things about what we’re capable of or what the world can do to us all of the time and I don’t think I would rule anything out. I would say that I would be very very surprised if I was to hop into a folk tale like Jack and the Beanstalk or the Brave Little Tailor, those ones with young male protagonists coming into their own and being rewarded with princesses. I don’t think I would want to tell them from a male perspective. I’d want to find a woman in the corner or something.
This is a very personal question so please feel free to not answer, but do you have a favourite Tarot card, crystal or other piece of equipment you’re drawn to?
I do have some things that I do. I have my Tarot cards. I was kind of drawn to the High priestess the year before last, and now, currently, I’m kind of drawn to the Empress and the Tower, it varies. They’re a story and each one will resonate differently with you at different points in your life. The deck I use is the Morgan Greer. I was kind of surprised. It’s kind of an 70s, 80s looking one, but it was a tactile thing. I’d seen it on line and I hadn’t really been drawn to the images. But at the Edinburgh Book Festival last year, I went into a little shop and they had all the tarot cards out so you could touch them and feel them, and when I touched it I was just like “This feels really nice in my hand.” Like from a sensory point of view, it’s the right shape, it’s the right size. And as i worked with it I’ve gotten to like it more and more. It’s the one that I take around with me in my handbag.
I also have this, and for people who enjoy myths and retellings it’s quite a beautiful one. It’s the Mythic Tarot, which is illustrated by Tricia Newell. Each of the suits is a different myth, so the meanings are a little bit different, but they’re beautiful. Reading the book kind of grounds you in myths and mythic characters, so it’s been a nice learning experience for me.
(For the curious - and Deirdre, forgive me if I get these wrong, I’m still very much a beginner - the High Priestess is about curiosity and hidden secrets; The Empress is about nurturing and intuition; the Tower is about destruction, but it’s a reminder that good things can come from bad if we learn from what caused the destruction. An excellent card for these times!)
Thank you so much for your time and your intriguing answers, Deirdre. I've really enjoyed this, and I can't wait to start selling the book when it comes out!
Savage her Reply publishes on the 1st October, 2020.
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