photo by D.J. Jones
photo by D.J. Jones |
Eileen's award-winning "Grey Isles" trilogy is set in bronze-age Europe and is based on the origins of Stonehenge. Journey to Aprilioth (1980) won a silver medal for original paperback fiction from The West Coast Review of Books. Songs from the Drowned Lands (1983) won the Canadian Science Fiction and Fantasy Award, while the third book in the series, The Sarsen Witch, was shortlisted for the same award. Eileen also co-authored Walking After Midnight (Berkley 1990), a nonfiction book on reincarnation, based on a documentary by a Vancouver filmmaker. Her latest adult historical fantasy is Winter on the Plain of Ghosts: a novel of Mohenjo-daro from Flying Monkey Press
The Alchemist's Daughter, her new young adult historical fantasy from Thistledown Press was shortlisted for a 2005 Sheila Egoff Prize for Children's Literature, and is nominated for a 2005 Aurora Award. Her other YA novels, also from Thistledown Press, are Dance of the Snow Dragon (1995) and The Snow Queen (2000). The Snow Queen won a 2001 Aurora Award for Best Canadian Speculative Novel in English.
Eileen's poems and short stories have appeared in many North American publications, both mainstream and speculative, including PRISM international, On Spec, Tesseracts, TransVersions, The Year's Best Fantasy & Horror, Northern Stars and Ark of Ice: Canadian FutureFictions. She is one-fifth of the poetry group Quintet, who recently published their first collection, Quintet: Themes & Variations.
See BC Bookworld's Bio of Eileen Kernaghan.
"With her vivid descriptions of the haunting beauty of Glastonbury and the exotic splendors of Twelfth Night revels at Greenwich palace, Kernaghan does a marvelous job of transporting the reader back to the sixteenth century. The dialogue is seasoned with just enough Elizabethan expressions to give a taste of time and without bogging down the flow of conversation. The Alchemist's Daughter would be a good book for a young teen who likes Renaissance festivals, Robin Hood, and the Knights of the Round Table. I wish it had been on the shelf of my junior high school library." (SF Revu)
"Author Kernaghan delivers a fast paced story, salt and peppered with real and fictitious characters, interlaced with enough magic to keep the fantasy reader pleased but painted over a vivid, realistic backdrop that, would serve the mainstream reader too." (Yet Another Book Review Site) "Just the right amount of magic to balance the realistic details. This page-turner will keep young teenaged readers fascinated." (Welwyn Wilton Katz)
"The Hans Christian Andersen story is mixed with elements from the Kalevala and Saami shamanism in this intelligent, magical young adult fantasy about a Danish girl who ventures into the far north to rescue the boy she loves." (Carolyn Cushman, Locus).
"In her version of The Snow Queen, Eileen Kernaghan takes us to another time and to a place few of us will ever visit: the far northern reaches of Scandinavia, where the glacial ice is blue, and the northern lights color the sky in rainbow hues and the cold is, for many of us, almost unimaginable... it held me thoroughly spellbound." (Denise Dumars, www.cinescape.com)
"This lovely, slim, small press volume (handsomely packaged with classic cover art by Charles Robinson) ... is a deceptively gentle tale, lyrically written by a long underrated Canadian fantasist." (Terri Windling, www.endicott-studio.com)
"Eileen Kernaghan's The Snow Queen is a richly expressed and poignant story.... Kernaghan deftly subverts the traditional female roles in fairy tales...." (Greg Bauder, Tickled by Thunder).
The Snow Queen is available from amazon.com and other
major online bookstores, www.booktown.ca, White Dwarf Books,
Banyen Books, Vancouver Kidsbooks, and other independent Canadian
bookstores; and from the publisher, Thistledown Press.
"Snowdrifts rose to the windows of the Snow-Queen's palace. The tall arched panes glittered with a wintry, ice-blue light. The great doors of crystal and silver stood ajar, unguarded; a powdering of snow filmed the milk-white marble tiles of the courtyard within.
No hearthfires burned in those vast, chill rooms -- only the cold and eerie flames of the aurora borealis, blazing down through crystal skylights, flickering across the icy floors. They could hear the faint glassy tinkle of chandeliers, the whistling of the wind down endless, empty halls. There was a kind of music, too -- high, keening, crystalline notes endlessly, piercingly sustained, like tones struck on a goblet's rim. The sound was like a knifeblade in the base of Gerda's skull. She clapped her hands over her ears to shut it out.
Nothing had prepared Gerda for a palace so magnificent --- and so utterly devoid of warmth and comfort. No one human could live in this place, she thought. And she shuddered at a sudden chilling intimation: living here, what might Kai have become?
Tears of weakness, exhaustion, desolation, leaked from her
eyes, and froze into beads of crystal on her cheeks. The cold had
crept into her muscles and bones; had wrapped itself round her
heart."
cw: Eileen, could you give a sketch of the intent behind The Snow Queen? Who do you hope to reach, and what would you like them to get from the novel?
ek: Well, naturally one intent is entertainment--I'd like to think I've written a page-turner. But as well, I wanted to celebrate a classic of fantasy literature with uniquely independent female characters. In this post-feminist age we still need adventure stories for girls. The Victorian period, remarkably enough, was the heyday of the woman traveller -- all those intrepid ladies with the courage and stamina -- and the financial means -- to set off on journeys of exploration to the most dangerous corners of the world. It's fun to speculate on what might happen to the characters after a story ends -- and I decided that what the future should hold for Gerda was not marriage to Kai, but a life of travel and adventure. So I made some changes to Andersen's conventional mid- Victorian ending. Reworking the story also gave me the chance to expand the role of the Little Robber Maiden, who has always been my favourite fairy tale character. As to who I hope to reach, the answer is readers of all ages. The book is being marketed to the 12 to 16 age group, but I think it could be enjoyed by younger children, if they are good readers, and certainly I hope can be enjoyed by adults.
cw: What was the genesis of this tale--both in history and in your own treatment of it?
ek: Hans Christian Andersen wrote The Snow Queen: in Seven Stories in 1845. Its setting moves from a Danish village to the northern forests, Lapland and "the terrible cold Finmark," to the arctic ice. A friend who teaches literature commented to me that in The Snow Queen, "Andersen finally came to terms with the idea of the north." In any case, it's a unique--and fascinating--work of the imagination, with vividly described settings, realistic dialogue, well-developed characters and complex layers of symbolism and metaphor. In fact, it's really more a novelette than a fairy tale. Like a lot of Victorian writing, the conventional morality of the plot is underlaid with sexual tension (the robber-maiden's relationship with Gerda; the Snow Queen's relationship with Kai). Because I was writing for young adults, I didn't specifically pursue that aspect, but I think the tension is still there, in my version. It's also interesting that Andersen subverts the traditional fairy tale plot by having the heroine set off on an epic quest to rescue the boy. The mid-nineteenth century was a turning point in western culture, when traditional religious belief ran headlong into modern science; and this is the central theme of Andersen's story. Gerda represents simple, unquestioning faith. Kai (and the Snow Queen's ice-puzzle) represents the new spirit of scientific inquiry which threatens that faith. I arrived at my own version of The Snow Queen by a circuitous route. The research I did on Tibetan shamanism for my first YA novel, Dance of the Snow Dragon, and a spin-off novelette, "Dragon-Rain", led me to books on Finnish and Saami shamanism--and then to the Finnish myth cycle, the Kalevala. I began to hear echoes, in Andersen's Christian fantasy, of the older, darker mythology of the Kalevala. The Snow Queen became identified in my mind with the Dark Enchantress, the Woman of Pohjola. I wanted to explore that connection further. (In my version of the story, Ritva, and also the Saami wise women, refer to the Snow Queen as the Dark Enchantress, the drowner of heroes and destroyer of souls.) Years earlier, I had written a poem called "The Robber Maiden's Story"; later I expanded the poem into an adult short story, focussing on the relationship between Gerda and the robber-chieftain's daughter. Finally, using the Andersen story as a framework, I started work on a young adult novel.
cw: What sources did you draw from in conceiving of this version of the tale?
ek: I drew from a lot of different sources, beyond the original Andersen text. I plunged headlong into the Kalevala -- both in print and in the marathon Finnish film version; I read books on arctic exploration from the 16th century on; travel books -- modern trekkers through Saamiland, Kate Marsden's epic 19th century journey across Siberia; books on Saami culture and history ( in particular The Lapps by Roberto Bosi, in the Ancient People and Places series, and People of Eight Seasons by Manker and Tryckare); Joseph Campbell's Way of the Animal Powers; Mircea Eliade's Shamanism. Not to mention books of Victorian costume and 19th century Scandinavian furnishings. And I read Isak Dinesen's tales for a sense of the Victorian Danish ambience.
cw: What attracts you to Gerda and the robber maiden's stories?
ek: The wonderful contrast between the two young women -- in background, education, religion, culture, world-view, and above all personality. Gerda, the Victorian maiden -- prim, innocent, romantic (and utterly naive) -- and the fiercely independent, wilful, unpredictable, uncivilized Ritva. And yet in the face of adversity they become friends. Even in Andersen's original, the robber-maiden is finally won over by Gerda's determination to rescue Kai. I wanted to play with the idea -- explicit in the fairy tale -- that Gerda's tenacity, her stubborn refusal to swerve from her purpose, in many ways makes her the stronger of the two.
cw: What bits of the work are you most pleased with?
ek: I think the merging of the Kalevala myths with the Andersen story, in the latter part of the book -- that was the trickiest bit, because it was a radical departure from Andersen's plot. The idea that the Snow Queen's palace lies beyond the cave of the north wind, where earth and day end, comes from the Kalevala. The Snow Queen's challenges to Ritva and Gerda are not in the Andersen story -- they are also drawn from Finnish mythology. Ritva comes to identify with the hero Vaino, seeing herself as the inheritor of his powers, and using those powers to fulfill the Snow Queen's challenges and eventually to escape from her palace. Other bits I like are the description of the Snow Queen's palace; Ritva's shamanist initiation (and her visionary journey to the Snow Queen's palace); and Gerda's encounter with Ingeborg Eriksson, the Victorian lady traveller.
cw: You've worked with this story before in other forms--do you think you are really done with it, or can you see going back to some portion of it or some related work again another day?
ek: I'm curious about what new adventures Ritva and Gerda may have--individually, and as a team. Clearly, their story isn't finished, and perhaps I'll write some more of it, it one day.
cw: Can you tell us about the step by step process you use in conceiving of, researching, and writing your books? Not a formula that others can follow, but a bird on the shoulder of Eileen Kernaghan....
ek: The first step, always, is to decide on a setting, and a time period -- bronze age England, 18th century Bhutan, Victorian Scandinavia.... Then comes the protagonist. The plot, for me, evolves out of the interaction between the characters and their landscape and environment. (Unless I'm building part of the novel on the framework of an existing story -- Sangay's journey to Shambhala, the Snow Queen fairy tale, one section of Songs from the Drowned Lands). I do a good deal of research before I begin writing, to get an overview of the historical period, the landscape, culture, etc.; but much of my research is done as I go along, on a need-to-know basis. I plot, usually, one chapter or one section at a time. I rarely know exactly how the book is going to end. And the research often leads me into unexpected twistings and turnings.
cw: You've written fiction for both juvenile and adult audiences. Do you find you are more comfortable in one form or the other?
ek: Except that the adult novels are longer, and their protagonists are slightly older (with, consequently, somewhat different challenges to be faced) the writing process is the same. All my books seem to centre upon quests, or journeys, and all of them, in one way or another, are "coming of age" novels. When I was writing adult novels, I did a great many school readings, to audiences as young as ten or eleven; and now I find that adults are reading my juvenile books. In fantasy, there really isn't any clear distinction beween adult and young adult, except as a marketing label.
cw: What can we expect in the next few years, do you think?
ek: I've started another young adult novel, this time based on Elizabethan alchemy -- I seem to be working my way through a variety of belief systems -- Tibetan Buddhism, northern shamanism, and now western Renaissance magic -- all of whch I find fascinating. After that, who knows?
"This is one of the best fantasies for young people that I have read for some time." (Andrea Deakin, the Vancouver Sun) "Kernaghan unwinds this tale with powerful force and tight control....the audience for this book will be readers of high fantasy of all ages, but it should not be so limited." (Mary Beaty, Quill & Quire)
(Dance of the Snow Dragon) is lushly cinematic with visual splendours of flora, fauna, costume and creature -- magic, dreamed, real and combinations thereof." (Heather Kirk, Books in Canada)
Kernaghan tells (Sangay's) story like an ancient fable, and the magic of Sangay's travels is subtly underlined by the understated quality of her prose." (Douglas Barbour, The Edmonton Journal)
At the end of a passageway Sangay came to an enormous circular room. There was a smell of jasmine, and sandalwood, and camphor. Light poured through glass-covered apertures in the roof.
And there in the centre of that rich, silk-carpeted, silk- curtained room stood the gem-encrusted golden throne. Serpents and lotuses twined round it; eight golden lions supported it; half-sitting, half-lying across its seat was a frail old man in the scarlet and turquoise and emerald garments of a king. When he saw Sangay he braced his hands on the golden arm- rests of his throne and drew himself stiffly upright. The pain in his eyes, in his drawn grey face, betrayed the terrible effort it cost him.
Sangay knelt, and wordlessly offered his bunch of lotus flowers. They were tattered and limp, but the king of Shambhala accepted them as gravely, as graciously as if they had been made of gold. "At last," said the King, and his voice was a mere flutter of breath in his tense and straining throat. "I feared that the world had forgotten me. I feared that you would never come."