I know that I’ve written about her before, I tend to compose at least one post while reading anything by her (and I’ve read quite a few books by her since I impulsively and almost by accident brought one home from the library in 2010) but I just can’t help myself. That playfulness, it’s extraordinary. And I like her adult books, they are suggestive and complex and beautiful – but her Fairyland series, god. I so wish I had an English-speaking child to give them to, or better yet, read them aloud for. I think it would be such an incredible experience, enhanced by the sharing.
As it is, I read them by myself, borrowed from the library as soon as they’ve been bought in, melting already at the first paragraph:
Once upon a time, a girl named September told a great number of lies.
The trouble with lies is that they love company. Once you tell a single lie, that lie gets terribly excited and calls all its friends to visit. Soon you find yourself making room for them in every corner, turning down beds and lighting lamps to make them comfortable, feeding them and tidying them and mending them when they start to wear thin. This is most especially true if you tell a very large lie, as September did. A good, solid, beefy lie is too heavy to stand on its own. It needs smaller, quicker, more complicated lies to hold it up.
Catherynne M. Valente, of course. From The girl who soared over Fairyland and cut the moon in two.
Katja Malmborg 