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displacedcactus's review against another edition
challenging
dark
emotional
sad
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
I wanted to love this book. I loved the concept, and the opening pages really pulled me in with Nethercott's almost lyrical writing. But y'all, this book is miserable. Sparks of joy are few and far between, quickly moved past so we can focus more on Isaac and Bellatine's intense self-loathing.
I didn't like Isaac at all as a character. I have no time or patience for smarmy men or people who steal from small businesses and others who can ill afford the loss.
Bellatine was a character I could have liked, but she was so closed off that I felt like she was even closed off to me as the reader, and it was hard to connect to her.
A story about hosting a traveling puppet show in Baba Yaga's chicken-legged hut should feel fun and adventurous, even if a dangerous enemy is chasing you. But no fun was to be had.
There is a final, beautiful, hopeful message at the end, but I had a miserable time getting there. I understand why others enjoyed this book, but I was the wrong reader at admittedly the wrong time in my life for something this heavy.
I didn't like Isaac at all as a character. I have no time or patience for smarmy men or people who steal from small businesses and others who can ill afford the loss.
Bellatine was a character I could have liked, but she was so closed off that I felt like she was even closed off to me as the reader, and it was hard to connect to her.
A story about hosting a traveling puppet show in Baba Yaga's chicken-legged hut should feel fun and adventurous, even if a dangerous enemy is chasing you. But no fun was to be had.
There is a final, beautiful, hopeful message at the end, but I had a miserable time getting there. I understand why others enjoyed this book, but I was the wrong reader at admittedly the wrong time in my life for something this heavy.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Child death, Animal death, Death, Gore, Gun violence, and Antisemitism
Moderate: Fire/Fire injury, Xenophobia, Violence, and Self harm
Minor: Cannibalism and Vomit
There's a brief off-handed mention of necrophilia, somehow SG doesn't have a CW tag for that one. There are specific scenes of a pogrom and they're pretty disturbing.jaimeeslitlife's review against another edition
adventurous
dark
emotional
informative
inspiring
mysterious
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
"What happens when the walls we raise outlive the dangers they were built to keep out? At what point does a fort become a cage?"
Thistlefoot was weightier and more beautiful than I imagined; in this novel, folklore meets immersive fantasy meets real-life horrors (horrors that Nethercott's ancestors actually witnessed).
Baba Yaga, a figure from Slavic folklore, is reimagined as a Jewish woman living in an Eastern European shtetl during a time of civil war and pogroms; she is fierce and maternal, she can help or harm, she is shunned and sought after. Thistlefoot is similarly full of opposites; it is solemn and joyful, gruesome and humorous, realistic and fantastical. The folklore of the past leaks into present-day in a heartwrenching story about inherited trauma, roots, and the power of storytelling.
Nethercott creates a world in which the magic is tantalizingly revealed and not overly explained. This world feels just slightly off-center from ours; houses grow legs and gills and no one bats an eye, but horrors like pogroms still haunt history. Parts of this book had me on the edge of my seat, flipping pages as fast as I could. Other parts felt like I was floating along, picking up crumbs of information but mostly soaking luxuriously in Nethercott's beautiful prose.
I also think that there's a lot to explore here re: the idea of houses as bodies; trauma alters Thistlefoot the house, just as it alters generations of the Yaga family. The house holds trauma but it also holds (and creates!) stories. Thistlefoot is the perfect vessel for the story Nethercott tells.
Thistlefoot is a powerhouse (pun intended) of a debut novel, and I cannot recommend it enough.
Thistlefoot was weightier and more beautiful than I imagined; in this novel, folklore meets immersive fantasy meets real-life horrors (horrors that Nethercott's ancestors actually witnessed).
Baba Yaga, a figure from Slavic folklore, is reimagined as a Jewish woman living in an Eastern European shtetl during a time of civil war and pogroms; she is fierce and maternal, she can help or harm, she is shunned and sought after. Thistlefoot is similarly full of opposites; it is solemn and joyful, gruesome and humorous, realistic and fantastical. The folklore of the past leaks into present-day in a heartwrenching story about inherited trauma, roots, and the power of storytelling.
Nethercott creates a world in which the magic is tantalizingly revealed and not overly explained. This world feels just slightly off-center from ours; houses grow legs and gills and no one bats an eye, but horrors like pogroms still haunt history. Parts of this book had me on the edge of my seat, flipping pages as fast as I could. Other parts felt like I was floating along, picking up crumbs of information but mostly soaking luxuriously in Nethercott's beautiful prose.
I also think that there's a lot to explore here re: the idea of houses as bodies; trauma alters Thistlefoot the house, just as it alters generations of the Yaga family. The house holds trauma but it also holds (and creates!) stories. Thistlefoot is the perfect vessel for the story Nethercott tells.
Thistlefoot is a powerhouse (pun intended) of a debut novel, and I cannot recommend it enough.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Murder, Child death, and Violence
Moderate: Death and War
Minor: Cannibalism
beforeviolets's review against another edition
adventurous
emotional
reflective
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
Reading this book felt like a part of my own soul was carved out of my depths and projected on the page in front of me. I imagine the horror I feel is not unlike the way someone who has only ever seen themself through a reflection must feel when they see themself in a photograph for the first time. A knowing and unknowing.
Thistlefoot tells the story of the Yaga siblings, estranged for many years after growing up together in a family puppet theater. But they find themselves reunited by a phone call, informing them of an inheritance: a house on chicken legs called Thistlefoot, they turn their new home into a traveling puppet theatre, on a cross-country road trip to perform a show from their youth. But little do they know that their past is haunting them in more ways than one.
GennaRose has written a love letter to folklore and its ever-changing nature, to puppetry and the power of performance, to generational trauma and the importance of history retold, and to storytelling both as an art and as an act of resistance.
Despite its characters’ innate inability to do so, this book plants roots. Like a forest, there’s a whole system of wooden tendrils beneath its surface, burrowed between the pages, stretching back to the past and reaching towards the future. A whole life tangling beneath your (metaphorical) feet. Its themes, its characters, its plotlines interconnect in ways that only begin to break the surface. Each begotten fruit, each unfurled blossom the product of a history and a future unseen, a gift to the reader as we make our way through the complex, snarling terrain of this world and its many unfolding tales.
I unfortunately cannot begin to break down the many amazing element of this book or we'll be here for ages, so let me just quickly list some of my favorite things: a sentient house with its own POV that talks like a Jewish grandmother, an interwoven puppetry show, Baba Yaga as a protective and strong Jewish woman in a Russian shtetl, a new twist on the golem myth paired with conversations about control and life itself, maybe the weirdest sapphic relationship I've ever read, a nonbinary scientist, lavender cigarettes, a joke about Stanislavsky, the concept of ghost as memory (THE CONCEPT OF GHOST AS MEMORY!!), and a dissection of modern American folklore.
This book is for all those who have spent so long looking into the distance, they’ve forgotten where their path began. (And for Jewish puppeteers.) Kill the lantern. Raise the ghost.
CW/TW: antisemitism, genocide, eugenics, violence, gun violence, fire, death, child death, character death, grief, PTSD, murder, drugging, alcohol consumption, blood & gore, smoking, self-inflicted harm, migraines, racism, car accident, adult/minor relationship (kinda?), emesis, needles (brief), cannibalism (mention), decapitation (mention)
Thistlefoot tells the story of the Yaga siblings, estranged for many years after growing up together in a family puppet theater. But they find themselves reunited by a phone call, informing them of an inheritance: a house on chicken legs called Thistlefoot, they turn their new home into a traveling puppet theatre, on a cross-country road trip to perform a show from their youth. But little do they know that their past is haunting them in more ways than one.
GennaRose has written a love letter to folklore and its ever-changing nature, to puppetry and the power of performance, to generational trauma and the importance of history retold, and to storytelling both as an art and as an act of resistance.
Despite its characters’ innate inability to do so, this book plants roots. Like a forest, there’s a whole system of wooden tendrils beneath its surface, burrowed between the pages, stretching back to the past and reaching towards the future. A whole life tangling beneath your (metaphorical) feet. Its themes, its characters, its plotlines interconnect in ways that only begin to break the surface. Each begotten fruit, each unfurled blossom the product of a history and a future unseen, a gift to the reader as we make our way through the complex, snarling terrain of this world and its many unfolding tales.
I unfortunately cannot begin to break down the many amazing element of this book or we'll be here for ages, so let me just quickly list some of my favorite things: a sentient house with its own POV that talks like a Jewish grandmother, an interwoven puppetry show, Baba Yaga as a protective and strong Jewish woman in a Russian shtetl, a new twist on the golem myth paired with conversations about control and life itself, maybe the weirdest sapphic relationship I've ever read, a nonbinary scientist, lavender cigarettes, a joke about Stanislavsky, the concept of ghost as memory (THE CONCEPT OF GHOST AS MEMORY!!), and a dissection of modern American folklore.
This book is for all those who have spent so long looking into the distance, they’ve forgotten where their path began. (And for Jewish puppeteers.) Kill the lantern. Raise the ghost.
CW/TW: antisemitism, genocide, eugenics, violence, gun violence, fire, death, child death, character death, grief, PTSD, murder, drugging, alcohol consumption, blood & gore, smoking, self-inflicted harm, migraines, racism, car accident, adult/minor relationship (kinda?), emesis, needles (brief), cannibalism (mention), decapitation (mention)
Content Warnings
Graphic: Antisemitism, Gun violence, Genocide, Child death, Murder, Death, Fire/Fire injury, Grief, Alcohol, and Violence
Moderate: Gore, Mental illness, Self harm, and Blood
Minor: Adult/minor relationship, Racism, Car accident, Vomit, and Cannibalism
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