I recently reread Widdershins, the 11th book in Charles de Lint’s Newford series (published 2006). At 560 pages, it’s a hefty tome. I fell in love with it in chapter one when Lizzie Mahone’s car runs out of gas at a lonely crossroads in the middle of the night. Of course, you know when you’re stranded after midnight at a crossroads near an “enormous old elm tree, half dead by a lightning strike” that something extraordinary is going to happen. For Lizzie, it’s a savage attack by bogans, nasty-pants faeries with sewer-mouths whose evil plans include stealing her car.
Fortunately for Lizzie, Grey, one of the corbae (bird) cousins, arrives serendipitously and saves her. But the bogans have been hunting and left their kill in the trunk of her car. Lizzie can’t stand to see the butchered deer, so buries the pieces under the tree, then gets her fiddle and plays a lament to honour the deer’s spirit. This touching act draws the attention of Walks-With-Dreams AKA Walker, who we discover is the father of Anwatan, the butchered deer. To repay Lizzie for her kindness, Walker tells Lizzie to call on him if she’s ever in need. Well, it doesn’t take long before Lizzie’s in need.
I tell you this because the rest of this massive story plays off these different types of creatures—the humans (Lizzie and her friends), the Indigenous animal people, and the Settler faeries who invaded this land with the Europeans.
Politics is rampant and the plot and its connections complex. At its core is the conflict between the settler fae and the Indigenous animal people who call themselves cousins. A massive war is brewing, fueled by the vengeful Odawa, a cousin from the salmon clan who Grey accidentally blinded by pecking out his eyes one day. He thought Odawa was dead. Odawa betrays the animal people and joins up with the fae who refer to the Indigenous cousins disrespectfully as “Green Bree” or “pluikers.”
Meanwhile, triggered by Anwatan’s murder, Minisino and his buffalo soldiers rise up in solidarity to revenge past injustices inflicted on their ancestors by the settlers. This story is an anthropomorphic retelling of North American history. Even Lucius, the Raven who created the world, makes an appearance at the height of the conflict.
But it’s not all about faeries, transforming animals, and politics. At its heart is the ongoing love story between Jilly Coppercorn and Geordie Riddell begun in The Onion Girl (2001). Jilly’s story is dark. In order to heal and release the past horrors that are stuck deep in her subconscious to become whole, Jilly must face her childhood abuser. A lengthy piece of this book takes place within Jilly’s mind or as de Lint calls it her “heart home”. Lizzie ends up in there with her, and the pedophile who abused Jilly joins them, as horrific as he was back then. When Del turns them both back into little girls and magically makes Lizzie’s mouth disappear from her face, it seems hopeless.
As I said, this book is dark and deep, but ends with a glimmer of hope and understanding. Charles de Lint says,
“I’m a writer and this is what I do no matter what name we put to it. Year by year, the world is turning into a darker and stranger place than any of us could want. This is the only thing I do that has potential to shine a little further than my immediate surroundings. For me, each story is a little candle held up to the dark of night, trying to illuminate the hope for a better world where we all respect and care for each other.”
Along with light, Charles de Lint pours his musician’s soul into his characters. Lizzie and her cousin Siobhan play fiddle in a Celtic band. When Siobhan is pushed down the stairs by a vengeful bogan and sprains her arm, Geordie steps in to help. Reading this book inspired me to take up playing fiddle. I play piano and some guitar, but I’ve longed to fiddle all my life. Geordie says:
“Music needs to live and breathe; it’s only pure when it’s performed live with nothing hidden – neither its virtuosity nor the inevitable mistakes that come when you try to push it into some new, as yet unexplored place. It’s improvisational jazz. It’s the jam, the session. The best music is played on street corners and pubs, in kitchens, and on porches, in the backrooms of concert halls and in the corner of a field, behind the stage, at a music festival. It’s played for the joy and the sadness and the connection it makes between listeners and players.”
I get it. I’ve heard it. I want it.
Some people disparage fantasy just on principle. They don’t understand the scope and complexity of art that’s caught up by a label created by marketers. I love how Charles de Lint gets around that.
“I now call my work ‘mythic fiction,’ a term created with my friend, Terri Windling, when we were sitting around talking, trying to figure out what to call what we write. She is a wonderful writer, and her fiction travels along similar roads to what I do. MaryAnn often says that Terri and I were twins in a past life; we have a lot of the same sensibilities.
“We liked the term ‘mythic fiction,’ which fits perfectly. ‘Urban fantasy’ doesn’t work because a lot of what I do isn’t set in an urban setting. ‘Contemporary fantasy’ could work, but it’s kind of boring and doesn’t really say much. Besides, in 50 years you won’t be able to call my books ‘contemporary’ fantasy. ‘Mythic fiction’ works because it has broader resonances and alludes to the heart of this fiction, which is, of course, myth. It has the right tonality because these are stories that have modern sensibilities, dealing with contemporary people and issues, but they utilize the material of folklore, fairy tale, and myth to help illuminate that. It also omits the word ‘fantasy’ — a term for which people have too many preconceptions. I’m not trying to knock fantasy, because I love good fantasy and have had great support from the fantasy community throughout my career, which I very much appreciate. But I’m trying to engage an even broader audience — people who normally don’t read fantasy, who get scared by the word fantasy or by those types of covers. I think a lot of people who don’t like fantasy just haven’t had the chance to have the right book put in front of them.”
I agree completely. I also write mythic fiction. My books are rarely set in urban areas, so I’ve stopped saying I write “urban fantasy” although sometimes I still get stuck there as do all stories that are contemporary but venture into the realm of mythic creatures and the supernatural. My witches seek the wild places faeries frequent and dance under a mythic moon, so yes, it’s more mythic fiction than anything else.
The only thing I don’t understand about this book is the cover art. A church steeple and floating women? It’s a little too Practical Magic for me. Widdershins means to travel in a counterclockwise motion. Witches dance widdershins to unravel a spell or a circle they’ve cast. I understand what this means to the story. Jilly Coppercorn travels backward to unravel the spell cast over her mind by her abusive brother. She must untangle her future from her past. But the cover art? I think the artist never actually read the manuscript, and just went with what they knew about the word.
This book is so much more than its cover. So don’t let that scare you off. Venture into the mythic fiction of Charles de Lint. You’ll be captured by the first chapter. You might even get inspired to play the fiddle like Cape Breton legend, Natalie McMaster.
