I'm a sucker for fairy tales, and when Angie Benedetti (KCLS youth selector) got up in front of my Young Adult Materials class last quarter and told us about a retelling of East of the Sun, West of the Moon
called East, I was hooked. Edith Pattou has done an excellent job of bringing this fairy tale to life. Although it was never one of my favorite tales, she has made me love not just her version but the story itself.
What I love most is Pattou's characterization. The story is told in first person, shifting by chapters between Rose, her brother Neddy, her father, the White Bear, and the Troll Queen. Obviously, this variation provides for rich characterization and multiple perspectives on events; the different voices also make the story more interesting.
For me, the test of an author is his presentation of the villain; a story is so much more powerful when I like the bad guy. (King Arthur, for example. The tragedy of Mordred is that he is so much like Arthur and yet can never be king after him. If Mordred were merely evil, the story would be much simpler and less tragic.) Pattou's Troll Queen passes this test. When she first talks about meeting the prince and falling in love with him, I feel sorry for her loneliness and having to wait for more than a century to be reunited with the prince. I have sympathy for her, but over the course of the novel, the queen's cruel indifference to the suffering of humans and even of her own devoted servants becomes painfully obvious. Still, I don't hate her. Instead I feel sorry for her inability to appreciate any value in other people's lives.