Nieve
- By Terry Griggs
- Illustrations by Alexander Griggs-Burr
- Biblioasis, 257 pages, $15.95
Evil often begins with small changes missed by all but the most astute. The heroine of Terry Griggs’ latest young adult novel, Nieve, has a keen eye. The changes she notices – spider webs on her face in the morning; black weeds in her garden; missing friends – are adding up, until soon her world has turned as fantastical – though more horrifying and realistic – as any dreamt by Alice.
Nieve hinges on the voice of its heroine. An observant girl, Nieve starts her own newspaper, blasts people with her stare and wishes she could snap her fingers better. She’s attached to her Gran and has parents who are professional sympathizers. Her life is as ordinary and quirky as anyone else’s.
Griggs plunges us into the weird, as a stranger Nieve meets in a ditch flings “a mass of tiny, black, wriggling things” from his hand. They soon turn into “a black shoot that grew twisting into a black stem and upon which immediately sprouted leathery leaves, then thorns, then a glossy, blackish-red flower that smelled like rotten meat.” The dark magic infiltrates Nieve’s town, her classroom and her family. Soon she’s following the trail (as someone – or something – follows her), trying to figure out what is behind the changes.
Nieve is packed with creepy thrills – especially once Nieve and the enigmatic Lias hook up and venture into the city – but the novel goes beyond these horrors into a fairy tale’s archetypal nightmare. A glossary containing “a rickle of words drawn mainly from the Scots language, including some names for supernatural beings taken from British Folklore” hints at the nefarious underworld Nieve, as one of the “cunning folk,” must enter to make life right again. Griggs spins and twists these obscure folkloric characters, to weave a tale both contemporary and timeless.
Accompanying the story are illustrations of some of the more unusual characters and scenes drawn by Alexander Griggs-Burr. Dusky and intricate, depictions such as that of sinister pharmacists Wormius and Ashe and a grinning septiclops are a worthy complement to Griggs’s sensuous prose.
Especially charming is Griggs’s attention to some smaller, key elements of Nieve’s journey. A patch of daylight, for instance, “skimmed onto [Nieve’s] hand, hovered briefly on her palm, then disappeared up her sleeve like a timorous mouse making a dash for safety. It didn’t tickle, as a mouse would scurrying up her arm, but she did feel a slight trace of warmth as it settled in the hollow of her shoulder.” Later, “vines thin as laces wound up and around of their own accord, fastening the shoes securely and comfortably.” Also, names like Lirk and Murdeth, not to mention Wormius and Ashe, suit their slippery characters well. Others more obscure, such as postmistress Mrs. Welty, have names that reward the attentive reader.
Nieve’s subtle awareness of itself as a story also adds texture to the reading experience. In the Black City “were decayed mansions of the sort Nieve sometimes read about in novels, safe in the company of fearless fictional children. She’d found the brooding menace of those houses thrilling and fun, while the very real menace the ones that lay behind these walls was not thrilling at all – and as for fun? How she wished she could take the Black City in her hands like a book and snap it shut, never to be opened again.”
Nieve is the first in a projected trilogy of novels. The books in the Cat’s Eye Corner Trilogy, Griggs’s other novels for young adults, have been nominated for multiple children’s writing awards. Terry Griggs is also the author of three novels for adults and a collection of short fiction and has received the Marian Engel Award in recognition of a distinguished body of work.
A rich start to the projected trilogy, Nieve is a frighteningly delightful fairy tale for our times and is in keeping with Terry Griggs’s particular, sharp, spirited style. Evocative of fantasy heroines from Alice to Coraline, Nieve makes her story her own. I can’t wait for the second instalment.
Sally Cooper is the author of the novels Tell Everything and Love Object.
