Reading Journal 2024: Thornhedge
Author: T. Kingfisher
A fascinating, and very brief at just over 100 pages long, reimagining of the aged fairy tale, Sleeping Beauty. Characters are swapped and reshaped in ways that turn the story upside down and and sideways and backwards, so much so that it makes the unfolding tale nearly impossible to predict. And in so doing, it allows its voice to challenge our conceptions and assumptions at the same time, exploring themes of good and evil, and how such notions frame our tendency to judge the exterior rather than to allow ourselves and hear and see those internal realities that lie hidden beneath the surface, or beyond the thornhedge. As the book suggests, this is just as true of ourselves as it is of the world we live in, both in a material and a spiritual sense.
In this sense, T. Kingfisher has written more of a myth than a fairytale, one that challenges some of our modern trappings and resistance to a reality framed by more than simply one side of the Thornhedge. Myths are important, and necessary, because they challenge our tightly guarded conceptions of reality and epistimology. The minute we decide that this is what reality must be, is the very moment reality, should we be willing to see and hear, bears itself out as something not content to simply exist within our manufactured restraints. Thus why one of the central characters in this story is a seeker, and the other a protector. It is when these worlds collide that the hedges can be cleared away and greater realities allowed to break in, which brings with it danger and struggle, especially when it comes to our firm grasp on reality, but also beauty and great reward.
The Stories of my Life 