Spinning Silver
up:: Books
- Type:fiction
- Author:: Naomi Novik
- Year published: 2018
- Year read:
- Month read: December 2020
My thoughts on the book
There isn’t much to process or outline here, apart from the fact that I really loved this book. I saw the recommendation on goodreads (I think) by Patrick Rothfuss who praised it’s beautiful language.
The amazing language also stood out to me. This book tells a beautiful, fairy-tale inspired story about the ice-cold winter and bargains. All of it’s characters have multiple layers. She switches between points of view in a great way and something one character might see another one doing gets a whole new layer of context when we see the action through his or her eyes.
Even the “villains” of the story are complex and you start to feel empathy for them. The main characters are the moneylender’s daughter Miryem, the workmaid Wanda and the duke’s daughter turned tsarina Irina.
It was one of the most beautiful books I ever read and I loved reading it while being in Istanbul.
Quotes
But it was all the same choice, every time. The choice between the one death and all the little ones.
But I had not known that I was strong enough to do any of those things until they were over and I had done them. I had to do the work first, not knowing.
There are men who are wolves inside, and want to eat up other people to fill their bellies. That it what was in your house with you, all your life. But here you are with your brothers, and you are not eaten up, and there is not a wolf inside you. You have fed each other, and you kept the wolf away. That is all we can do for each other in the world, to keep the wolf away.