MAGUIRE, Gregory Egg & Spoon Candlewick Press, 2014 $24.95 ISBN 9780763672201 SCIS 1683414
In Egg and Spoon, Maguire sets the narrative in Russia at the time of the last Tsar. It is a lyrically and beautifully written book which works on a number of levels. Two very different girls, Ekaterina from a wealthy semi-aristocratic family and Elena a peasant girl of the same age, meet when the train on which Ekaterina is travelling breaks down near the remote village where Elena lives. A series of small but significant events means that the two girls exchange places. Their two lives continue to run in parallel, however, and they meet again in the court of the Tsar. For both of them it is a classic adventure story with them leaving home, having adventures and challenges, developing as characters and returning home a little different from when they set out.
The strange mixture of fear and wonderment that Elena feels when the train begins to move with her aboard it is well drawn. The landscape through which she travels is beautifully described. It is in the snowy landscape that Ekaterina first encounters Baba Yaga, the witch from Russian folktales. She lives in a house which runs along on chicken legs but which can only be seen by children. Other figures from Russian folklore appear including the Firebird which Elena encounters and the egg which she takes with her back to the train. Eggs appear in different guises throughout the book. In addition to the Firebird’s egg, we early on encounter Elena searching in the woods for any eggs laid by the little black hen. That egg symbolises life-giving food. On the other hand, Ekaterina and her elderly aunt carry a gift of a priceless Faberge egg to give to the Tsar. Food becomes a signifier of poverty, excess and wealth. Different childhoods are reflected through such a contrast in the egg, too.
Things may not always be quite as they seem in this world of folklore, magic, and adventure either. Baba Yaga, far from being the child-eating witch of story, turns out to be caring and quite motherly, teaching Ekaterina about the importance of caring for others. Elena too learns to regard her mother in a different light and both girls learn what it means to be mothered. There are times of sinister figures and actions in the story too, written with suitable menace. When Elena’s impersonation of Ekaterina is discovered at the court of the Tsar, his supreme and sometimes arbitrary power is revealed in a series of frightening experiences.
There is an intrusive narrator in this story, and his comments as an onlooker are sometimes amusing, and always pertinent. It is not until the end of the tale that we find out who he is, although there are hints. He too, as we learn late in the book, is subject to the whims of the Tsar and his court and is summarily imprisoned without charge or trial.
This is a book to be savoured and re-visited, an intriguing mixture of fantasy and adventure, written with touches of whimsy and humour, menace and lyricism. It is full of memorable characters, not all of them human, who are beautifully drawn. Some of them flit only briefly across the pages but who, nonetheless, add to the richness of the whole cast.
reviewed by Margot Hillel