Strength of character is never with those who blindly follow. You need to be able to make your own choices and walk your own path. 

The Crystal Ribbon

Celeste Lim’s The Crystal Ribbon is about Jing who belongs to an extremely poor family. In order to have some food on the table the eleven-year-old Jing is sold for five silver pieces to a wealthy Guo family as a bride to their three-year-old son but her primarily role is to be his nursemaid. It is a cruel life and from this household she is sold to a courtesan.  She slowly with the help of a spider and a nightingale she escapes and returns home to her delighted father. She soon finds happiness in being an apprentice to Shenpopo, the shamaness at the local village shrine.

The Crystal Ribbon is historical fantasy with the characters, incidents, and certain places in the story being purely fictional. The story is set in AD 1102, during the Northern Song dynasty in the Taiyuan province of Medieval China and according to the author’s note in the book “much of the detail in the story, such as the practice of tongyang xi, traditional rituals, and the invention of paper money, are historically accurate”. She adds:

“Although the magical elements in the story are fictional, that isn’t to say that the people in those days didn’t believe in such magical creatures and deities; some of the Chinese beliefs, practices, and rituals mentioned in the novel still exist, and certain characters, such as the huli jing, spide jing, and baigu jing, are drawn from classical Chinese literature and compilations such as the Shanhai Jing, Journey to the West, Soushen Li, and Liaozhai Zhiyi.

What I especially hope to bring to attention is the tradition of the tongyang xi. Although the Chinese Communist Party ( CCP) banned this after its establishment, it is still practiced in rural areas, generally among poorer communities. My ama ( grandmother) used to tell us many such horror stories, including one about how our great-grandmother bravely fled China during the great famine and came to settle in Malaysia.” 

Award-winning writer Edwidge Danticat’s Untwine is another stunning book for middle-graders. It is about sixteen-year-old identical twins Giselle and Isabelle Boyer. They are talented musicians and live life like any other teenager except for the strong bond uniting the sisters. Also their life is a bit topsy-turvy for now as their parents have announced their separation though continue to live under the same roof. En route to a concert the family is involved in a horrific accident that rips their family apart. Just as the girls had to be untwined at birth from each other during the C-section performed on their mother, after the accident, Giselle has to learn to untwine herself in every sense of the word from her sister, Isabelle, who is no more. It is an excrutiating process as Giselle feels the absence of her twin sister very strongly.

“Split in half sometimes, and at other times walking, living, breathing for two. Two hearts are beating in one chest,but it feels like no heart at all.”

It is an extremely moving tale for any reader but if you are a twin ( as I am) the searing pain experienced upon reading the story is unforgettable.

Both the books —The Crystal Ribbon and Untwine –are written for young adult readers expressly but they are both such magnificently exquisite stories told ever so elegantly that they will be forever treasured.

Celeste Lim The Crystal Ribbon Scholastic Press, New York, 2017. Hb. pp.340 

Edwidge Danticat Untwine: A Novel Scholastic Press, New York, 2015. Hb. pp. 310

( Both the books are available in India courtesy Scholastic India as well.)

16 February 2018