Publishers like pigeonholes: a book must slot neatly into the groove of a specific genre. Anything else, and promotion becomes difficult – if it takes more than two words to suggest the shelf in which the book belongs, reviewers and bookshop buyers may demur.
That’s why Thames River Press ought to be complimented for bringing out Vitali Vitaliev’s brilliant Granny Yaga. After all, the book is subtitled A Fantasy Novel for Children and Adults, raising such awkward questions as, “So is it for children or is it for adults?”
The answer supplied by every beautifully crafted sentence may confuse some publishers, but it’ll delight every reader: Granny Yaga is for the child in a grown-up and the grown-up in a child.
After all, any child will eventually grow up and Granny Yaga will make a small but telling contribution to helping him end up more knowledgeable and aesthetically developed. And any adult who has expunged the child in him is a crashing bore unable to marvel at life.
A parallel between Vitaliev’s main protagonist Danny and Harry Potter begs to be drawn, but I’d suggest that Danny, what with his greater subtlety and sophistication, would feel even more comfortable in the territory signposted by C.S. Lewis’s Narnia.
Actually, Danny’s physical habitat is London, but his adventures go way beyond mere physicality. For Danny finds himself smack in the middle of the metaphysical world inhabited by the traditional personages of Slavic, particularly Russian, folklore.
Every Russian tot, which Vitaliev once was and, in every good sense, remains, grows up hearing, in due course reading, fairytales about Baba Yaga and Koshchei the Deathless. When the child is old enough to listen to serious music, he’s reminded of Baba (Granny) Yaga by a segment in Musorgsky’s Pictures from an Exhibition.
But no reminder is really necessary – childhood images stay with us for ever. Baba Yaga, she of the bony leg, chicken-legged hut and such arcane modes of transportation as a broom or pestle and mortar remains etched in the memory, ever alive, ever up-to-date.
When the lady appears in Vitaliev’s book, she flies astride a Dyson Hoover as both a bow to modernity and a reminder that, like her nemesis Koshchei, she’s truly deathless. She’s also a considerably more sympathetic character than I remember from my own childhood, much too protracted if my wife is to be believed.
For example, the witch I remember wasn’t known for her insouciantly ironic humour, and she really ought to thank Vitaliev for humanising her so much. Neither did she ever fly her broom to the same destinations she now flies her Dyson, such as London.
By the looks of it, the old lady may be angling for a tour guide’s job: her amusing interplay with Danny and other characters reveals so much intricate knowledge about London that I defy any reader to say he hasn’t learned something about this great city he didn’t know before. I most certainly did.
Yet Granny Yaga is so much more than a travelogue in disguise. It’s also a history book, a guide to today’s politics, a commentary on modern mores. Above all, it’s riveting, fast-flying entertainment that moves through its gears as rapidly as Granny Yaga flies her Dyson.
The reader flies along with the narrative, never feeling like getting off, hoping the journey will never end and feeling sad that, like all superb books, it has to. But not to worry: by more magic, a little bird has told me that a sequel is coming, and the journey will resume. I for one can’t wait.