It’s ridiculous, isn’t it, how a gem can be right in front of you for months and months, and you don’t see it at all? This, alas, is what happened to me with A Curse Dark As Gold. It came highly recommended by Sarah Beth Durst (author of Into the Wild and Out of the Wild), and it was one of the first books to land in my mailbox. Yet somehow there were other fluffier things that beckoned. Shiny pink things of no substance.
I must apologize. I mean really, really apologize. Because, you see, today I hit rock bottom. I can now say I have read every single book in this apartment, and it took until today for me to find out that Elizabeth C. Bunce’s work is a frickin’ masterpiece.
All right. Let me back up a bit. Months ago I opened this book, read the first two pages, and yawned. What was this? Some sad tale about a girl whose father has died? No, no, and no. There were all sorts of whimsical books staring me in the face, and this one didn’t make the cut. I set it aside, meaning to catch up on it later. Which of course meant that I lost sight of it and never found it again until … well, until today.
I have spent the entire evening reading, feeling as if I wouldn’t be able to breathe properly until I finished this story. Charlotte Miller is a young woman — probably somewhere between sixteen and eighteen, though we never find out her exact age for sure — when her father dies and leaves her and her sister to fend for themselves. As the proprietors, or should I say, proprietresses, of a mill that has had a long run of bad luck, which doesn’t seem to be getting any better.
And if the concept of a mill sounds ancient, that’s because it is. The book isn’t set in any specific place or time, though I imagined it as England in the early 1800s. But it is most definitely a sort of historical romance, or historical tragedy. (Reminiscent of a not-teen-lit book I read awhile back, Year of Wonders by Geraldine Brooks. I can’t pay a much higher compliment, because that novel set me reeling for at least a few weeks after I’d finished it.)
Oh! This should have been something I said much earlier: A Curse Dark As Gold is a sort of retelling of the story of Rumpelstiltskin. Although that really isn’t fair, because Elizabeth has woven a story much deeper and more complex than the Brothers Grimm version you may know. Instead of a simple girl who seems to act without thinking, like the character in the older tale, Charlotte is brave, headstrong, smart, rational, a problem-solver. She’s a natural leader, in a time when women aren’t really allowed to lead anything but a household. And there is, of course, a curse involved, though I won’t divulge too much about that.
Let me just say this: If you had to pick only one — Rumpelstiltskin or A Curse Dark As Gold — to read in your lifetime, I’d advise you to go with the latter. I know this is the second time I’ve done this lately, but this is yet another candidate for my top five books of 2008. I’m thinking it’s a lock-in, in fact, and will probably be in a close race for the top three. It really is that good.
Buy A Curse Dark As Gold
Heartily agree; SUCH a good book. I had the good fortune to win a signed copy in a giveaway. Reading the last 150 pages or so late at night when no one else was around was the best…I don’t usually read fairytale retellings with so much delicious creepeeriness.
Well, I’m happy it found its way back to the top of your reading pile!
(And funny you should mention YEAR OF WONDERS; I was just today trying to decide if that or Connie Willis’s DOOMSDAY BOOK is the best novel ever about the plague…)
~ecb
I have read reviews of A CURSE DARK AS GOLD and have come to the conclusion this book is far and away, not just a young adults book. There is so much depth and Ms Bunce has created a story one would never think was boring if they loved language as an art in and of itself.
Her writing just knocks me out! A treasure worth savoring, sentences to be remembered, beautiful descriptions of the landscape and the people.
I love books that take the writer a little deeper than they expected to go. This is one of those books.
Read it all the way through and you will have read one of the best books of this year, and by a writer I hope to see again in many other tales of romance and fantasy.
cuileann, I love your new word! “Creepeeriness” … Like creepy and eerie combined. If it’s all right with you, I’m going to steal it and use it myself.
Elizabeth, thanks so much for stopping by. And now I’ve got to go out and pick up Connie Willis’s book, because I can’t imagine a plague book better than Year of Wonders.
Liz, I did read to the end! Like I said, I felt as if I wouldn’t be able to breathe until I finished, and I even chided The Boyfriend for interrupting me when I had only fifty pages to go. And then again when I wrote the review immediately upon closing the book. I only say it’s in the running for the top five because we’ve not yet reached December, and one never knows what other lovely tales will reach us between now and then.