The Girl who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making, Catherynne M. Valente

This is the story of September Morning Bell, who leaves her boring life in Omaha which is mainly characterised by loneliness and washing dishes, and flies away to fairyland with the Green Wind and the Leopard of Little Breezes. As they fly away from Omaha, September doesn’t look back or wave goodbye. The narrator explains that this is because ‘all children are heartless. They have not grown a heart yet, which is why they can climb tall trees and say shocking things and leap so very high that grown-up hearts flutter in terror. Hearts weigh quite a lot. That’s why it takes so long to grow one’. To some extent, this is a story about how September grew a heart.

The Girl who Circumnavigated Fairyland is a traditional quest story: September is drawn into the struggle between the denizens of Fairyland and the Marquess, who has gone power crazy and invented bureaucracy. Initially, she sets off on a quest to retrieve a magic spoon belonging to the witch Goodbye from the Marquess who has stolen it, which leads to a quest to find a magic sword in the Worsted Wood. September stands up to the Marquess, and is able to restore the normal order of things to Fairyland. In the process, she makes some true friends, and discovers the real value of the home she has left behind.

Fairyland itself is beautifully evoked and endearingly quirky: there is a herd of wild bicycles, a city made entirely of cloth, and a gaol at the bottom of the world. The Marquess’s hair changes colour to suit her mood, and she wears a very fine hat.

September’s friends include the Leopard and Green Wind from the opening, a Marid named Saturday , and a Wyvern who believes that his father was a Library, so he calls himself a Wyverary. There are also several animated objects, including a green jacket, a key and a lamp, and a soap golem named Lye. The inhabitants of Fairyland oscillate between being wondrous and creepy, making September’s adventure somewhat reminiscent of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. In particular, September’s encounter with an island full of abandoned things that also happen to be alive is both funny and almost terminally exciting.

Although the book is light and often tongue-in-cheek, there is a serious undertone. September’s father has been conscripted and sent to war in Europe, and her mother has started working at a factory making aeroplane engines. September’s feelings of abandonment constantly reappear in the narrative, giving the book a poignant edge one wouldn’t necessarily expect in this type of modern-day fairytale. Indeed, there is one particularly gruesome moment during Septembers’ circumnavigation of Fairyland in which she is forced to catch, kill and gut a pink fish with emerald eyes in order to survive her trip. This is followed by a conversation with a shark about whether or not fish are meant to be eaten, which provides some degree of closure, strangely enough. But the fishing scene is still rather emotional, and really quite disturbing.

The ending is neat, but not so perfect that it discounts the possibility of a sequel – in fact, the sequel is already out, and is called The Girl Who Fell Beneath Fairyland and Led the Revels There.