Poison by Sarah Pinsborough

The cover promises ‘a wicked, delicious, sexy Snow White fairytale’ so the question is does it deliver?

But before we answer that let’s look at the problem of modern-day fairy tales.  In Cinderella, when the wicked step sisters cut off parts of their feet to fit in the glass shoe what was really shocking was the two singing pigeons:

Rook di goo, rook di goo!
There’s blood in the shoe.
The shoe is too tight,
This bride is not right!

http://www.pitt.edu/~dash/grimm021.html

What do you mean you don’t remember that in the Disney version? Oh that’s right; they didn’t use it. They sanitised the original and made it more ‘child-friendly’ (whatever that means) though I think a child would like that little bit of gore.

There are lots of issues with the portrayal of both sexes in  modern fairy tales. Things that you might not at first see to be issues. If you’ve read the works of Angela Carter especially The Bloody Chamber you’ll know what I mean. Her short stories give you a completely different view about how women are expected to behave and how powerful or powerless they can be.

In Poison Pinborough is in a middle ground between Disney’s interpretation and Carter’s feminism though much closer to the latter than the former. She takes the girl who was saved by dwarfs and turns her into a women and in the process strips away the veneer to show us a warts and all portrayal that is much more akin to reality.

Of course, it is still a fairytale. We have wicked step-mothers, charming princes, poisoned apples but we also have depth and characters that show a range of both emotion and reaction. Something that the stripped down fairy tales can’t do as they are usually delivering simple moral messages (or if you’re Disney ideals that can never, and probably should never, be reached).

Some might complain about the sex (and they already have) as it’s not something that should be used in fairy tales as fairy tales are for children. Oh come on, really? How many adults do you know that secretly love sitting down watching Cinderella or Aladdin or Hercules? (The last two are my faves btw). And what’s wrong with extending that enjoyment into something that addresses adult themes? And then allows the heroines to be women and that allows wicked step-mum to have a range of emotions rather than being token evil. As well as asking who falls in love with an almost dead girl in a glass box?

A few points to note Poison is the first published book in a trio of interlinked but it is also cyclical, which is new technique on me, and it’ll be interesting how these events loop back on themselves. The reason I’m saying that as a standalone it doesn’t make sense. The ending is like an opening to another chapter rather than a resolution. Though the focus will change, next we have Charm and then Beauty, the exploration I hope will be as strong. And I hope to find out how the prince managed to be walking in the woods a bit worse for wear.

What I loved about Poison is it’s liberation. Snow White is what I’d like to see a princess aspiring too – maybe not everything – though pretty much. She holds her own. She resists the ideals of her step-mother as well-intentioned as they are. And the step-mother is well-intentioned, if deluded. You can see where she get’s it from as her own great-grandmother shows up.

Now at this point it’s worth mentioning that there as some things that might grate. Not the great-grandmother I liked her. And I liked what she represented. But she does represent ‘borrowing’ and Pinborough borrows a lot. It can’t be helped. It’s a fairytale. There are conventions and expectations, which kind of spoils my point about Disneyfication, but you can lean too heavily and there are points like the names of the dwarfs, where its source material may feel a little too borrowed from.

That’s a niggle.  Another niggle is that some things aren’t as smooth as they could be. The step-mothers moods are extreme and could have had more nuisance in the middle range. But again it’s irritant like an itch. Nothing that’s worth picking at.

Poison really does feel like Pinsborough is showing a world where women in fairy tales should be seen as women, sexual, dangerous, and real rather than something that can be projected on as they lie in a box like a warm corpse only for the charming prince to realise after who his love truly is after she’s woken up and strayed from his ideal.

To answer the original question: it is a wicked, delicious and sexy fairytale and well worth reading.

Synopsis

Fifteen-year old Anais Hendricks is smart, funny and fierce, but she is also a child who has been let down, or worse, by just about every adult she has ever met. Sitting in the back of a police car, she finds herself headed for the Panopticon, a home for chronic young offenders where the social workers are as suspicious as its residents. But Anais can’t remember the events that have led her there, or why she has blood on her school uniform…

Comments/Thoughts/Analysis

Having pre-conceived ideas of what a novel is about before you read is usually helpful. In fact most books go out of their way to let you know something about themselves.  If you’re going to buy a book on impulse it’s usually the cover that catches your eye, and then the blurb, and maybe the opening few pages.  Finding out by word of mouth relies on someone giving their own version of the book, which isn’t always a universal version.

When The Panopticon was first being one person (Simon) thought it was sold as having a heavy science fiction thread with the experiment and the watchful panopticon in the young offenders home that Anais (the main character) has been sent to. I though knew it was going to be a literary novel with some SFFness to it but I wasn’t expecting what it turned out to be.

We meet Anais, as it says in the blurb, on her way to Panopticon but we follow a character who is presented as an outsider. She describes herself as an experiment in the prologue. She might be but if you strip away that idea away as a safety valve of an institutionalised teenager you have the same novel but a prism is missing. It’s very much a novel about reality, how it forms around us, how we protect ourselves from others versions of it and that we can’t always appreciate what we have.

Every year Anais allows herself a fantasy thinking about an alternative life, one where she wasn’t born in a petri dish (or was it a test tube she isn’t sure), but this fantasy of a happier life is always knocked back by the reality of her life. The people that she hangs with get her into trouble. She ends up fighting to save  friend and she misses someone who drags her back down enough to see him again when she really should  move on.

It’s the core of Anais that makes this a book worth reading. She does make mistakes, she does have issues with reality, and she copes with the help of drugs. But given the circumstance she’s in she hopes for a better life. She keeps hope her around like the box that Pandora opened.

Fagan cleverly lets the reader make up their own mind about several of the people in Anais’s life. She is an unreliable narrator in some regards. She’s a fantasist and at the start she’s not sure if the blood on school uniform is that a policewomen who is in a coma. But when it comes to seeing other people she seems bang on. She describes them but their actions are more telling. Like Helen her social worker who things that doing ‘good’ deeds makes her a good person but as Anais doesn’t conform to her idea of a reformed character she drops her. Her boyfriend Jay leads her on is one  leads to one of the most gut wrenching scenes.

You also have more positive relationships like the one she has with Angus, who keeps seeing her in a positive light. Her fast friendships with John, Shortie, Tash and other children of the home show different sides to Anais and how those around her effect her. They also demonstrate a range of people who end up in care.

Ultimately though this is Anais’s story and she’s going to tell it in her own unique way.

Summary

The Panopticon is one of those novels which you can’t describe as enjoyable but definitely leaves you feeling grateful you’ve read it. It’s a story that is dark, but filled with moments of light and hope. Jenni Fagan is unflinching in her descriptions of Anais’s reality. She shows a world of sex, drugs and violence, and it asks you to question your view of reality.

It’ll leave you thinking that you should never assume what leads to someone’s life being as it is. You never really know what they’ve had to deal with.

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The Panopticon is the 8^th Book Club Choice on The Readers Podcast, which I co-host with the Simon Savidge, and it’s now available in paperback.

Jenni Fagan has also been included in Granta’s 2013 list of bright British novelists.