I read Spinning Silver

This week, I read Spinning Silver, the latest fantasy novel from Naomi Novik, who wrote the tremendous Uprooted.

Miryem's father is a money lender, who is so bad at collecting debts that his family lives in poverty.  When Miryem takes over the family business and ends up doing a great job, she doesn't understand why her parents are so heartbroken when she can turn silver into gold--you know, figuratively.  But the Styrk--winter monsters who hunt the forest--don't understand metaphors and set Miryem the task of turning a chest of silver into gold for them.  Or else.

This story is told from the point of view of several people you meet throughout the story, mostly girls Miryem's age who bring the reader through several plot lines.  it's a compelling story in terms of plot, but my favorite part was watching different characters deal with the same issues from different angles.  Miryem is dedicated to making deals and following through on them, as are the Styrk.  The Styrk make bargains and get offended if the bargain you offer doesn't seem fair, even though their sense of fairness seems unreasonable to humans.  They make deals so they will never be in someone else's debt, so acts of kindness and thanking someone for following through on their part in a bargain are seen as offensive because these put them in your debt.  So the way Miryem and the Styrk both make and handle bargains is interesting.

But even more interesting is when Wanda, who works at Miryem's house to pay off her father's debt and who has a terrible home life, also hates to accept acts of kindness.  When Miryem's family offers her anything, she thinks this must put her further in their debt.  She's surprisingly okay with being in their debt, because every day she spends at their house cleaning is a day that she's not at home.  This interest in being in debt and the mistreatment she gets at home feeds into her misunderstanding of basic kindness.  In this way she's like the Styrk too.

I also really like it that Miryem's family is Jewish. Even in this completely fictional world with magic and demons.  They're not even a lightly veiled allegory for Jewish.  No, they're straight up no work on shabbat, praying over challah, dealing with antisemitism Jewish.  People give a lot of crap to second-world fantasy stories that hold on to aspects of our world, (Except the patriarchy.  We have to keep the patriarchy or it wouldn't be realistic!) so including a real world religion is a bold move and an important move, and I love it.