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starrysteph's review against another edition
adventurous
challenging
dark
emotional
funny
hopeful
reflective
tense
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
Thistlefoot is a story about generational trauma. But - perhaps more importantly - it’s also about the power of storytelling as memory, disruption, and defiance. It’s about the duty of the audience to bear witness. And it’s about the optimism of seeing the world … as it could be.
We follow the estranged Yaga siblings, Bellatine and Isaac. Bellatine is a woodworker struggling to distance herself from a strange power which allows her to bring objects to life. Isaac is a street performer & con artist with a fantastical mimicry skill: he can shift and adapt and truly become another person.
The two are brought together after receiving a mysterious call to pick up an inheritance from a Yaga ancestor: Thistlefoot, a sentient house that walks on chicken legs (and was once inhabited by THE Baba Yaga). But as the siblings use the home to take their family puppet show on the road, they soon discover they’re being chased by the Longshadow Man, an entity with powerful magic and a connection to Thistlefoot’s curious, dark history.
Each POV in Thistlefoot has its own charm. Isaac is cynical, distrustful of bonds and living through manipulation. Bellatine is level-headed and cautious, but lives in constant fear of giving objects life (ironically, her terror around imbuing objects with power … gives them power all the same). And finally, we have Thistlefoot, the cheeky, arrogant, very-Yiddish-sounding voice of the home who stores great depths of knowledge and tells us readers stories as it pleases.
Nethercott has a delightful way of writing for & to the readers. We are chastised and led astray and punched in the gut – but her lyricality and ease of storytelling is absolutely captivating. This was a hard book to put down.
“Trust. It is a meaningless word, precious only to kibitzers who think all business is their business. I reserve the right to lie to you outright and often – and we must always make use of our rights, lest they vanish from neglect.”
A running narrative throughout the book is the constantly shifting tale of the “real” Baba Yaga. Thistlefoot shares story after story before - in one of the final chapters - landing on what is perhaps the “un-storied” truth. But we learn that lying can be the most powerful form of truth-telling, and folktales can shift to adapt to the audience, the moment, and the lesson. If you’ve heard anything about Baba Yaga, it likely contradicts what another person would say. Baba Yaga is the character she needs to be within the story that she has dropped into. And this is how folktales and retellings work: they are transformative and unpredictable.
In Thistlefoot, the characters are resilient. They reclaim their voice through storytelling in response to their ancestral trauma and the hauntings that follow them in modern day. By weaving truth with lies and fantasy, they cement their stories in modern memory. They are honored. They are not forgotten.
Violence and war is cyclical and pervasive. As he chases the siblings and Thistlefoot, Longshadow Man manipulates seemingly ordinary people. Everyone is suggestible; everyone is naive. You can be charmed into optimism or tricked into cruelty (with the knife of fear at your back, pointing to anyone who you perceive as an Other).
As Nethercott writes (through the reflections of Isaac), only some people are remembered in America. Others are turned to dust. These stories are a way to mourn them, to bring them back to life, and to defy erasure.
I think Bellatine’s power of Embering (a fiery warmth she feels as she animates) is also an act of defiance. Trauma lives on in the body; it doesn’t feel safe. Her body has a desperate need for life to continue, to pass on her bloodline, though she doesn’t always consciously understand that.
There is so much more to unpack here, but I’m not going to write an essay - I’d rather you read and experience Thistlefoot for yourself. By saving the stories, we save the people and we save the culture. Bear witness to these stories. Pick up the book yourself.
CW: death & child death, genocide, antisemitism, eugenics, racism, animal death, violence & gun violence, xenophobia, self harm, adult/minor relationship, suicidal thoughts, vomit, drugging
(I received a free copy of this book; this is my honest review.)
Content Warnings
Graphic: Adult/minor relationship, Animal death, Child death, Death, Drug abuse, Drug use, Genocide, Gun violence, Racism, Self harm, Suicidal thoughts, Violence, Xenophobia, Vomit, and Antisemitism
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: Child death, Death, Genocide, Gun violence, Violence, Antisemitism, Grief, Murder, Fire/Fire injury, and Alcohol
Moderate: Gore, Mental illness, Self harm, and Blood
Minor: Adult/minor relationship, Racism, Vomit, Cannibalism, and Car accident