Hugos 2019: Spinning Silver by Naomi Novik

Trade paperback, 474 pages
Published 2019 (originally 2018)
Acquired May 2019
Read July 2019

Spinning Silver by Naomi Novik

This was the last Best Novel finalist that I read for the 2019 Hugo Awards. It's a loose fairy tale retelling, and I was kind of dreading it because that kind of thing doesn't interest me, but I was soon sucked into it. Naomi Novik has constructed a fascinating world filled with a number of fully realized characters; I appreciated her ability to give us multiple protagonists whose goals are at odds with one another in pretty dramatic ways without compromising our empathy with any of them. I've never read anything by her before, but she writes really compellingly-- there were a couple sequences where I was utterly enthralled, on the edge of my seat with suspense. It helps that it's a very unpredictable novel (in a good way); it's not regurgitating some kind of stock plot you've seen a million times.

One of its most noteworthy features is that it has multiple first person narrators. Surprisingly, it rotates narrators even within chapters, and there are no obvious indicators of the switches; you have to pick up on who the "I" of each section is, though Novik is good about putting some kind of giveaway detail within the first couple sentences of each section. Even more surprisingly, it constantly adds on narrators, even hundreds of pages in, so you never know who you'll be hearing from next. Why do this, I wondered? One is, I think, that this is a book about spinning, about twisting fibers together to form yarn. The yarn is made up of individual strands-- just as stories are. The structure of the novel reminds us how there is no such thing as a standalone story, each person's story is made up of other stories in ways both small and big.

This is reinforced in a scene where one character's mother tells another character that the most one can do is help others, and do so cheerfully. Wanda was hired as a servant by Miryem, but Wanda's aid to Miryem's family went beyond what was required. The best people do good in the world where they can, and expect nothing in return, because you don't know how your story might affect someone else's. We see this quite literally in the novel in a scene where two groups of characters are staying in the same house, but in two different worlds, and each group of characters unwittingly helps the other group through their generosity. Like the best novels, Spinning Silver encourages an ethical orientation toward the world with its form and with its plot.

There are men who are wolves inside, and want to eat up other people to fill their bellies. That is what was in your house with you, all your life. But here you are with your brothers, and you are not eaten up, and there is not a wolf inside you. You have fed each other, and you kept the wolf away. That is all we can do for each other in the world, to keep the wolf away. (308)