Gretel and the Dark

October 13, 2014
Granville's debut is a back-and-forth tale of secrets and imagination, deftly intermingling two distinct and seemingly unrelated stories of loss and redemption. A fairy tale prologue opens onto 19th century Vienna, where Herr Doktor Josef Breuer, a respected psychoanalyst, is stumped by a strange new case. A nameless and stunning young womanâLilie, he calls herâclaims not to be a girl at all, but a machine who yields no clues about her origin. Simultaneously, the story of Krysta, a pale and lonely girl some years later in Nazi-controlled Germany, unfolds. She spends her days home alone telling herself old stories while her physician father visits the mysterious zoo next door. When Krysta's reality becomes more frightening than the darkest of her fairy tales, Krysta retreats further into her imagination and begins to invent her own stories. Chapters alternate from Krysta to Lilie, and as truths shift beneath their feet, readers may feel the whiplash. Nonetheless, Granville weaves her two tales together through lush prose; her novel is both a thoroughly engaging journey into the darkest corners of humanity, as well as an illumination of the redemptive power of the imagination. And if Lilie's and Krysta's stories are any indication, it's the victors, indeed, who write history.

July 1, 2014
British newcomer Granville pits storytelling against the Holocaust in a pair of alternating narratives whose connection is obvious from the start.When Dr. Josef Breuer's description of the young woman found nearly dead on the grounds of an abandoned Viennese mental hospital includes mention of a shaved head and "a line of inked characters" on her left arm, we know that she is somehow a concentration camp survivor, even though the year is 1899. Lilie, as Josef calls her, has "come to find the monster"-and we know who that is, even before she asks Josef to take her to Linz because "the monster will be too big by the time he comes to Vienna." It's also clear in the narration of an unpleasant girl named Krysta that we have moved into the Third Reich years. Krysta lives on the outskirts of a camp where her Papa performs medical experiments on the inmates; it's about as plausible that she would strike up a friendship with one of these "animal-people," a boy named Daniel, as it is that she would suddenly be placed in the camp herself after her guilt-stricken father's death. Readers are basically waiting to find out how someone from the 1940s appeared in fin de siecle Vienna, and those who paid attention to the novel's prologue will figure it out long before the author's explanation in the last five pages. Granville creates an appropriately dark atmosphere, from Josef's distasteful attraction to the vulnerable Lilie to the gruesome fairy tales Krysta heard from their housekeeper, Greet, before she and Papa came to the "infirmary." The author aspires to assert the power of imagination to help people cope with dire circumstances, but her setup is so blatant, her characters so predetermined, that her use of the Holocaust seems like a gimmick rather than a genuine effort to deepen our understanding.Dealing in fiction with a subject of such moral and physical enormity requires a level of rigor and care not achieved in this overly pat novel.

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Starred review from July 1, 2014

In 1899, a mysterious young woman is found on the streets of Vienna--beaten, emaciated, and alone. Called Lilie, she claims to be a machine, an instrument, sent to destroy an evil entity in its infancy. Decades later in Nazi Germany, little Krysta struggles to adjust to the death of her mother. Seeking a fresh start, her physician father has moved them to a new town, where his prestigious job leaves her often in the care of others. Krysta longs for her old beloved housekeeper Greet and the fairy tales she used to tell. Trying to make sense of her world, Krysta sees the people around her as characters from Greet's stories--evil witches and frightening beasts she must outwit to survive. But when Krysta's father unexpectedly dies as well, her new caretakers turn out to be closer to witches and wolves than she ever realized, and Krysta decides to test the powers of those folktales and legends, wishing her way out "to anywhere and anywhen." VERDICT As haunting, lyrical, and enchanting as the fairy tales Krysta is so taken with, Granville's bittersweet first novel will keep readers hooked, guessing and wondering how Lilie and Krysta's stories relate, right up to the end.--Leigh Wright, Bridgewater, NJ

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