It was a very nice trip.
It reminded me of Melissa Albert’s series on Hinterland, except for less dark-fairy-tale twists and heavy atmopshere. In both cases, there is a story of a girl whose kinswoman has produced a cult fantasy novel to stay far from the public afterwards. And in both cases, there is a supernatural mystery to it. And honestly, I prefer the way Goldstein handles it.
The author had her debut in 1980’s and you can see it. There are problems to Ivory Apples, such as a sketchy and tokenistic portrayal of Latin-American people. There is also that notion that a single father would be never as good as a mother, even if he tries. So, some things aren’t up to the more or less recent social changes here. But there are also many positive elements in this novel, and many which are simply funny and engaging. There is, I’d say, a very realistic feeling of things going wrong, and of frustration – when Ivy, the protagonist, finds herself and her sisters under “protection” of Kate Burden, a psychotic fan of Ivory Apples. Which is the only book written by Ivy’s aunt Maeve, known under the pen-name of Adela Madden. The question is: who helped Adela in writing, and does the town from the novel really exist? Are those two questions connected? Within the course of the story, it soon becomes obvious what the answer is.
I was but a child in the early 2000’s, and not from the US at all, but I can feel a lot of the atmosphere back then as Goldstein describes it. The internet developing into the form we know today, eating outside your house becoming more popular, all those details in the novel remind me of my own childhood.
Of course that the book contains some elements which are too optimistic or unrealistic. For example, Ivy becomes a homeless person out of her own choice, and she avoids rape and other kinds of violence because of help of her muse, Piper. In real life, women are more endangered by sexual violence, and I think that the message on it shouldn’t be like “magical protection Deus Ex Machina”. The whole thing with Ivy’s homelessness is, anyway, described as a kind of an adventure, and this message is problematic as well. The part when the protagonist is reunited with her aunt and starts a quiet life at her home, though, resonates with dreams of many persons, I think. Ivy helps her aunt, makes money by writing muse-inspired poetry, and doesn’t need to go to the college. I mean, who of us has never dreamt of earning money through unconventional means and being left at peace from the demands of the society? This part, I suppose, evokes more dreams than descriptions of the muses, and of the magical town Adela Madden has created. It’s a fantasy on its own, a fantasy about leading a life which is ordinary and unusual at once.
Still, the speculative parts of the novel are equally interesting. There’s an atmosphere of a fairy tale, and it’s even nice that it doesn’t take the twist of a dark retelling. Muses, magical towns, illusions, enchanted groves—it’s perfectly sufficient. Also, it is clear that this book is a love-letter to the very genre of fantasy. The website about Adela Madden where fans interpret her novel and share the wildest conspiracy theories? Our culture built around ASoIaF matches it so well!
The book is up to our times by introducing LGBT characters, too. I was a bit afraid, actually, seeing that the protagonist is bisexual. Because I’ve read already the attempts of authors from Goldstein’s generation, such as Philip Pullman, to introduce queer characters in their recent novels, and it was often somewhat awkward and tokenistic. In Ivory Apples, though, it is all but tokenism. The themes of self-denial, homophobia, and accepting oneself are handled pretty deftly here. And the love story between Ivy and Judith, an investigator, is just believable and absorbing. Really, I wish we had more representation of lesbian and bisexual women like this!
To sum up, I liked the novel a lot, and I am going to read more works by Lisa Goldstein. She’s like Patricia A. MacKillipp, it seems to me, but more into our mundane world. And honestly, it’s more an advantage than anything else.
Left Hand of Fiction 