The deathless girls by Kiran Millwood Hargrave
Orion Children's Books, 2019. ISBN: 9781510106918.
(Age: Senior secondary) This novel is about Bram Stoker's 'dark
sisters.' First person narrator Lillai tells a linear, past tense
story. She journeys through medieval settings filled with
challenges. Soldiers and marauders pillage and people fight with
stakes and knives. There is a Gothic sense of hidden menaces and
forbidding castles. Millwood Hargrave's style is descriptive,
sometimes florid. Rapid fire similes and metaphors are initially
distracting, but many students listening to me read liked the style
and the author's tricks of foreshadowing.
This novel is suitable for independent study in senior school and
for intertextual analysis. Millwood Hargrave raises several ideas
and affirms that women can take control in harsh situations. In the
beginning, demonic men kill adult Travellers, burn their homes and
capture young Travellers out foraging. We are alerted to women's
agency when Lillai says of her twin, 'I was especially proud of the
injuries Kizzy inflicted'. The sisters are sold and appraised by a
Mistess Malovski, who takes them to a castle owned by Boyar Valcar.
His Cook tells their futures, keeping us interested to see if her
prophesy, 'I can find no death for you', comes true.
Defiant, the twins are confined in solitary cells for a time,
fulfilling our sense of Gothic entrapment. 'I didn't know these
places were real', says Lillai. Preparing them for their meeting
with Valcar, Malovski shows the sisters how to make bite wine - wine
infused with snake venom to improve men's virility. We meet many
grotesque men and wonder who Dracula might be.
Cook helps Lillia escape with Mira, whom she starts to love. Lillia
and Mira are reunited with other young people, and they try to
rescue Kizzy.
As the melodrama unfolds, it's hard to stop reading. While the
imperative is to read, not to reflect, there is plenty to say about
the ways in which the author presents the strength of female
characters and the choices they make at the end.
Chris Bourlioufas