silver tongue

How Naomi Novik breathed new life into Rumpelstiltskin

When it comes to conjuring beautiful fantasy worlds, American author Naomi Novik has been crowned queen. Her new novel, Spinning Silver, is a retelling of the Brothers Grimm fairytale Rumpelstiltskin. It introduces us to Miryem, the daughter of a money lender whose reputation for spinning silver into gold brings her to the attention of the king and an ice-skinned race called the Staryk.

“Spinning Silver stands against a watercolour background,” Novik tells Red Alert. “I think of it like the illustrations in one of the old Polish children’s books that my mother read to me, where each one felt like a small window into a mysterious and dangerous world. You didn’t know what was off the map and would never know until the story took you there.”

One of the greatest things about Novik’s last novel, the award-winning Uprooted, was the fierce friendship between its two female leads. Novik promises that there are similar bonds here. “My main protagonists, Miryem, Wanda and Irina, start out very much alone. Part of their journey is about how friendship and sisterhood form between them. Both of these things for me are about the ways women weave safety for themselves and how they’re stronger together than the sum of their parts.” KB