If Sleeping Beauty were bisexual and Persian: a review of Girl, Serpent, Thorn

There's a reason "Let It Go" from Disney's Frozen is often interpreted as a lesbian coming-out anthem. Whenever a fairy tale includes forbidden and dangerous magic that needs to stay hidden or repressed at all costs, it always feels like a metaphor, whether intended or not, for queerness. Therefore, when Melissa Bashardoust's young adult novel, Girl, Serpent, Thorn, introduces Soraya as a princess cursed to poison anyone she touches with her bare skin, many readers are going to expect some queer subtext. Soraya's magic is treated as shameful and monstrous; her family keeps her hidden away for both safety and political reasons; she is never permitted to have physically intimate relationships with anyone. Her experience certainly seems like one that queer readers are meant to relate to.

What's refreshing is that Soraya is not merely coded as queer like so many other witches and monsters in fairy tales. She's just queer, explicitly so. The same is true of a couple of the other monsters in the story. Girl, Serpent, Thorn is hardly the first modern book to elevate sapphic subtext to text, but it hasn't gotten old yet.

Despite modern twists, Girl, Serpent, Thorn unfolds like a very traditional fairy tale. The text is very self aware of the fact it's a reimagining of old stories like Sleeping Beauty, Rappaccini's Daughter, and The Shahnameh, and even the epigraph pays homage to Angela Carter, an author famous for her feminist retellings of various fairy tale, which should definitely clue readers in to the type of novel Bashardoust is trying to write here. The plot itself constantly plays around with how stories change in their retellings, and things like truth, rumors, and storytelling all play a crucial role in driving the narrative: A mother is lied to and manipulated by demons, and the result is a curse on her daughter; a princess is locked in a castle, and her only access to the outside world is through the stories she hears; a boy falls in love with the rumor of a girl kept hidden away, and he falls in love with the idea of saving her.

Readers familiar with traditional Persian fairy tales will know that they don't always open with: "Once upon a time ..." They sometimes begin with the words: "There was and was not ..." This opening toys with ideas around whether the story is true or not. It forces the reader (or listener) to immediately consider the ways in which the ensuing narrative, despite its fictional nature, may still capture something real and nonfictional. In other words, Persian fairy tales like to begin with a reminder that fiction is sometimes truer than truth.

Partly inspired by Persian fairy tales, Girl, Serpent, Thorn's prologue starts with the same words: "There was and was not a girl of thirteen who lived in a city to the south ..." The ensuing plot revolves around stories and the kernels of truths they hide. Soraya finds herself surrounded by lies, betrayal, mysteries, and conspiracies. Even the castle she calls home is full of secret passageways that she must learn to navigate. It's up to her to wade through the secrets to find the answers buried underneath: Why is she cursed? How can she break it? Can she trust the one demon willing to help her? Can she even trust herself to make the right decisions?

The text also explores how Soraya herself both "is" and "is not" -- she exists, but she also doesn't. On the most basic level, despite being a fantastical monster that only exists in fiction, she's still very human, and readers can find her relatable, empathize with her situation, and learn something from her that can be applied to real life. While she appears monstrous and poisonous at first glance, her rage and spite both feel more than earned, and she never looks all that much more terrifying that a very angsty teenager. The target audience (young adults) should find that much of her internal turmoil, despite her extraordinary circumstance, looks rather ordinary and familiar. For some, her strong moral compass may cause her to fall flat as a character. The book promises horrors, and it never fully delivers, but there's still value in Soraya unambiguously maintaining her humanity. By doing so, she can be both ordinary and extraordinary. She is both real and imaginary. She is both existence and nonexistent. She is and is not.

Within the text itself, Soraya also embodies the space between existence and nonexistence. In the first chapter, Soraya finds that she can "almost believe" she exists if she's standing on the roof, where she can see the rest of civilization beneath her. Away from the roof, however, her severe isolation from society causes her to struggle to fully believe in her own existence. As someone who keeps herself constantly walled off from the world, she may as well not be real. Since hardly anyone interacts with her, she's the proverbial tree who falls alone in the forest. At the same time, she is still in possession of enormous power, so her behavior has rippling consequences that affect what happens beyond the confines of her palace prison. In an early scene, she kills a butterfly with her poisonous touch. It makes a person wonder whether her actions can cause a massive butterfly effect. If you find yourself curious about the answer, then you should probably read the book.