First Impressions Review: Dark and Deepest Red, by Anna-Marie McLemore
I got this book as a present from my mom alongside ‘Blanca & Roja’, and I must admit I was nervous to pick it up since I ended up being a tad disappointed in that book relative to ‘Wild Beauty’(which I loved). That was primarily due to an overly-complicated plot and themes – and this one’s blurb seemed more convoluted yet. Happily, though, that was not the case, and I enjoyed ‘Dark and Deepest Red’ very much. ‘Wild Beauty’ still wins the prize so far, though, because while the 16th century plotline of this book is amazing, the modern day one is – especially in comparison – merely OK. Let me explain:
In this book, we follow two pairs of young people: A Romani girl named Lala and her aunt’s apprentice Alifair in 16th century Strasbourg, and Emil Woodlock (Lala’s great-to-the-whatever grandnephew) and Mexican-American Rosella Oliva in 2018…somewhere USA. Well, it is a small town called Briar Meadow that undergoes a yearly magical phenomenon of temporary and mostly whimsical effect known as the “glimmer”. That aspect is super cool: icicles that taste like rose candy, feuding neighbors suddenly becoming friendly, etc. It is wonderfully atmospheric, and more actually-fairytale-like than the historical timeline. However, I don’t know where, geographically, this town is supposed to be – it seems almost like New Hampshire or Upstate New York, given the seasonal climate and the very white-American culture, but at one point they say Mexican coywolves came into town, which would suggest somewhere in the Southwest - and that is a bit of an issue when it comes to the social issues the characters experience.
You see, feeling like the outsider the majority group might turn on at any moment is a big theme in this book. But when it comes to Briar Meadow, the particular blend of prejudices and tolerances is not quite like anything I’ve experienced in the US or heard about from anyone but this author. For instance, Emil’s parents are both successful academics (suggesting that this is a college town) and pretty openly proud about their Romani heritage. The town has a lesbian mayor, and the response to two same-sex couples among Emil & Rosella's friend groups is just “Finally! Good for them!” - which also vibes with the progressive-small-college-town thing. But Emil and Rosella both feel really awkward about their darker skin and are paranoid about people turning on them. The main evidence we get of prejudice against them is people thinking Day of the Dead altars or having an ancestor table at holidays is evidence of necromancy. And, sure, I could see that being an issue in some small American towns; Heck, one of my Irish Catholic friends said that, in her small Michigan town she got asked if she sacrificed white cats to Mary! But that was also the type of small town where prejudice against gay or POC people was more blatant and consistent. And even before ‘Coco’ introduced a broad swath of Americans to Day of the Dead1, most people I knew who saw an altar figured it looked like Halloween. I’m not saying the situation depicted here doesn’t exist – I strongly suspect McLemore is writing from specific personal experience2. I just found it disorienting because my experience of being the only Latina in my Indiana school was so different3. Adding to the disorientation, the descriptions of the clothes and the school social structure felt almost 1950s: boy and girl friend groups are super segregated, people are buying hand-sewn shoes for debutante balls, no one has a cell phone, etc. It’s just…yeah, knowing exactly where and when this is supposed to take place would make it easier to make sense of what level of racism, exactly, Emil and Rosella are likely dealing with.
1. In 2017, exactly the “last year” where Rosella apparently got in trouble for talking about it in school, if it is indeed 500 years between timelines.
2. The author grew up in or near the San Gabriel mountains, which are in California near LA. So maybe somewhere like that is the setting, assuming it was a very-white pocket of California? Though that raises the question of why either of these families are staying, when it seems like there would be more opportunities for both academics and makers of fancy hand-crafted shoes in less WASPy communities nearby!
3. The thing that
got me outcast was mainly being a giant nerd (kind of like Emil), while my
cultural background was the only shred of “cool” I had going for me. The
response to my facial features or Cuban background was an excitedly curious
insistence on knowing “Where are you from? No, where are you REALLY from?” or
exclamations of “Gosh, I wish I was ethnic!” That is, the responses tended more
toward awkwardly exotifying rather than actually hostile. Not that there isn’t
the potential for hostility in the Midwest: When my dad and his Colombian wife
moved to a ‘til-then all-white neighborhood in Michigan, the previous owners
refused to be in the same room for the closing. (To which I say: But you needed
the money, right? So…go ahead, drink that vinegar!) It’s just…different from how
it manifests in this book. Or maybe it was us who thought about it differently, IDK.
We certainly get that cue immediately for the other storyline, by knowing it takes place in Medieval Strasbourg, on the border between modern-day France and Germany. Lala and her aunt have settled in Strasbourg because it is a largish city for the time where Tante Dorenia can sell her dyes and where they can pass as not-Romani by using a rumor of Italian ancestry to explain their darker skin and hair. Alifair is a trans boy they found in their crabapple tree who they semi-adopted. With regard to that, as McLemore acknowledges in their afterword, conceptions of how gender and sexuality worked were a bit different at the time - but I’m not going to critique the ease with which Alifair and Lala accept that he is really a boy despite his body shape. This is written for a modern audience who often still need some education on such things4! Regardless, both characters have very good reason for hiding their identities in this 16th century setting, knowing that if anything goes wrong they would be likely scapegoats. And something does go wrong: A plague of uncontrollable dancing seizes the women of the town, some of them even dancing themselves to death or flinging themselves into the path of carts. This of course gets interpreted as witchcraft. I do think Lala trying to actively do something about the plague was unwise – given that trying to talk to the victims, or to effect some type of cure, would make people who saw it more likely to consider her a witch. And not telling Alifair or Tante Dorenia that she thinks she is under suspicion does less than nothing to protect them! But I can also understand why the mental pressure of just waiting for the accusation to come could muddle your thinking, particularly if you are a relatively naïve teenager.
4. I do have a minor gripe about how Alifair gets outed, but more on that, the tense middle plot, and amazing ending in the spoiler section.
I really liked Lala and Alifair, both individually and as a couple.
Lala’s simmering internal anger that she later uses to such good effect 100%
makes sense. Alifair has an almost magical rapport with the woods and other
living things. And I was really rooting for their relationship, given how clear
it is that they would do anything to protect each other. Rosella and
Emil, though…I didn’t dislike them, I just found myself a bit bored and
kind of hurrying through their bits to get to the next installment of the
higher-stakes 16th century plot. Microaggressions are no laughing
matter, but juxtaposing a story where that is the worst we see against a story where
the characters are facing the prospect of extremely painful death makes them
feel trivial. I mean, we do get a bit of an upping of the stakes when a pair of
red shoes made by her grandparents – and cut up by them to defy a rich asshole,
and sewn together again by Rosella – get stuck to Rosella’s feet and keep
dancing her through the woods and into dangerous situations. But…well, that’s
another thing I’ll need to talk about in the spoilers section! Also, I found
their decisions about who not to talk to significantly more illogical than even
Lala’s. Rosella, tell your parents about the shoes! Tell them not to make a
fuss because it could hurt the business, sure, but they are shoe experts
and might know something useful! Tante Dorenia is an asset to the 16thcentury storyline too – a sensible, determined, independent mature woman – and
perhaps I would have jived more with the modern bits if we’d gotten more than
one or two scenes each with Rosella and Emil’s parents, as we did with her.
However, I suspect that’s coming from the fact that I’m closer to their age or
Tante Dorenia’s rather than the main characters - and even got on better with adults than my peers when I was a teenager! I get the lack of communication when the adults in a story clearly ARE out-of-touch...but the adults in McLemore's books come off as potential founts of supportive wisdom, so WHY?
Also, I’m fine with
Rosella and Emil getting together, but could we either have had a hint
that they use a condom, or a pre-fade-to-black that suggests, whatever else they're doing, they’re
keeping their pants on for the moment?
That sort of
thing gives me anxiety in modern YA romance plotlines, where getting
pregnant/married as a teen isn’t the societal norm and protection is an option.
They’re clearly both awkward virgins, so other concerns aren’t so much on the
table, but – unlike for Lala and Alifair - that one is! Not to imply
that lack of reasonable precautions isn’t an issue when it comes to older
characters, but there at least it is easier to assume that the late-20s-to-30s
character is on birth control already, or has a condom tucked in their wallet, even if it isn’t directly brought up!
I wanted to touch on McLemore’s inspiration for this story before diving into spoilers. One was the Hans Christian Andersen fairytale ‘The Red Shoes’, in which a vain girl is trapped by her red shoes that force her to keep dancing until someone finally cuts off her feet to free her. McLemore doesn’t actually follow the plot or the moral of that story much at all, but they do make use of a story Andersen told about his inspiration: His father was a shoemaker, whose work was insulted by a rich customer and who, in response, cut up the shoes in front of her. More intriguing, though, is the true story that inspired the 16th century plotline! There was indeed a case of dancing mania in Strasbourg in 1518 – and, as McLemore relates in the afterword, in various other places in Europe during roughly that time period as well. I had never heard of this, and was really intrigued to learn about it. Accounts differ – including of how many people were affected and if any died – but to this day there is no clear explanation for the phenomenon. Some type of stress-induced psychosis seems to be the most likely explanation and, in this book, it is easy to draw the conclusion that the pressures placed on women in particular ended up manifesting in this bizarre manner.
**Spoiler Discussion**
OK, so Lala’s most questionable decision is to try and cure the dancing
plague by taking the shredded shoes of the victims to the shrine of
Saint Vitus by herself. The first bit of that plan kinda goes to hell
immediately because of course she is spotted trying to take the shoes,
which looks immensely suspicious. And then in explaining what she’s doing, she
sets herself up for blame if it doesn’t work! And going alone - in her regular
clothes instead of borrowing some of Alifair’s boy clothes - sets her up for
danger on the road AND a girl blithely heading into the woods alone looks very
witchy. Luckily Alifair knows that bit is seriously stupid and goes after her!
But, as I said earlier…I’m not too irritated by her dumb decisions,
because I understand that she’s under a ton of pressure. (She still could probably have saved a lot of trouble by talking through the options with Tante Dorenia and Alifair, though)
Then, of course, both Alifair and Lala end up confessing to witchcraft to try and protect each other. The one actually condemned is Alifair, because somehow the priest knows he was born a girl. Lala thinks: “There are no true secrets in this city, or this world”. That’s the part I take issue with, because…what? Some people kept their birth sex a secret for decades in pre-modern times – sometimes their whole lives! Alifair isn’t from Strasbourg, so there is no one who knows his birth name. Strasbourg is a big enough town that Tante Dorenia thought it was a safe enough place for two undercover Romani to settle, and for the very small proportion of citizens who support Lala and Alifair to block the roads with their bodies…so “no secrets in a small town” logic doesn’t apply here. I know the reveal had to happen for Alifair to get condemned to the stake, but surely there was another way. Alifair and Lala had sex in the woods way closer to town than was prudent – maybe someone saw them. Or maybe someone who was jealous of their relationship just guessed. There are a lot of other ways to go other than “some people just knew”. Also, Alifair is allowed to keep wearing men’s clothing to his execution. If that is part of why he was condemned it seems highly unlikely his jailors wouldn’t force him into a dress5! But…maybe McLemore, who is married to a trans man, didn’t want to pile on the trauma!
5. As a side note, it is an over-simplification to say Jeanne d’Arc was burned for wearing men’s clothes. Yes, that was a big part of the charge against her, but the FRENCH had no issue with that, accepting her statement that it was part of her divine mission to save France. If her English captors had accepted that, on the other hand, they would have invalidated their own claim to the land. (Then again, perhaps these things are often used to get rid of someone who is inconvenient in ways that can’t be admitted!). She did agree to start wearing a dress again, but then wanted to go back again in part because she did not feel safe wearing a skirt in a male-guarded prison. However, I should note that I have no issue with things like the recent play depicting Jeanne as non-binary. If you asked me to name historical figures who might identify that way if they lived today, she/they is certainly one of the first who would come to mind!
The way Lala saves him (and herself, and her aunt) was exceptionally badass, though. With the aid of a sympathetic priest, a lesbian couple who have been trying to be her friends for a while, and various people the kind-hearted Alifair helped over the years, she puts on a hell of a show, using the townsfolk’s fear of witchcraft against them. Her allies put on a show of being bewitched into dancing by her glance, and she announces that she will free the town of the plague if her “demon” is returned to her. Other people who feel this execution is unjust or who have other gripes with authority also start joining in the dance. The good priest declares that killing the witch is too risky; the only cure is to drive her and her demons into the wilderness. So Alifair and Lala walk toward the forest…but then they hear feet behind them. They turn, fearing a last attack, only to find a group including basically all the town’s LGBT residents, the pregnant-out-of-wedlock Tante Dorenia, and other marginalized folk who say: “We’re your demons!” They go on to found a little village of their own on the land of a gay nobleman, and it is delightful.:
“’We will make our living selling rare things,’ Bibio Dorenia tells them all as her belly grows and the season deepens. ‘Beautiful dyes like our woad. Violet champignons from beneath the pine trees… ‘We will make ourselves a town that seems crafted so much of magic it will sound as a dream to any who speak of it.’”
Regarding Emil and Rosella, Emil starts having dreams of Lala, and learns from his parents that she was an ancestor blamed for the dancing plague and – they all assume – probably executed for it. When he realizes Rosella’s red shoes are forcing her to dance, he gets all guilty about it (even though he doesn’t actually think his ancestors would have been at fault, which is confusing) and thinks they shouldn’t be near each other. Rosella had also blamed herself for somehow perverting her family’s work. Her fear that if word gets out about the curse, then no one will want to buy their shoes, at least seems somewhat more rational.
And I do like that the way she breaks the curse is to dance in public – be herself, in public - voluntarily:
“The power Strasbourg had over his family was not only in the secrets they made them keep, but in making them think they had to keep so many secrets to begin with…Then that girl, that woman in the blue dress, had taken hold of everything a whole city had said about her…She had taken it all in her hands and used it…I let go of him. And I danced…I spun toward the light of the nearest road. I put my own fever into the red shoes…I danced past them all. My family’s priest. The mayor and her wife and their children. Teachers I’d had in grade school…With each twirl, I declared myself an Oliva girl, with my brush-brown body and my fingers made beautiful by the calluses of needlework…I tasted my abuela’s defiance, the metallic glint of it, her willingness to destroy part of herself so no one could take it…I’ll save you the trouble. I’ll dance myself.”
