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Edith Pattou, East

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East by Edith Pattou

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"And I realized how much more complicated life is without the benefit of magic. Rubbing linseed oil into my blistered hands, I thought wistfully of how magic lets you skip over the steps of things. That is what makes it so appealing. But, I thought, the steps of things are where life is truly found, in doing the day-to-day tasks. Caught up in the world of enchantment as I had been at the castle, it had been the routine things I had missed most, which was why I had set up that laundry room and insisted on doing my own washing. But I had missed so much. Sitting at the table back home and peeling potatoes with my mother and sisters in a companionable silence. Feeding the chickens, their urgent feathery bodies crowding my legs, and looking up to see Neddy coming back from the fields. Going on one of my long exploring walks, having a blister come up on my heel but at the same time stumbling upon a fox den and catching a brief glimpse of a mother fox nursing a brand-new litter of kits. And though I might have wished away the blister, slowing down to favor the pain in my heel was part of how I came to see the kits."

-East, by Edith Pattou

#humans!#Our humanity is found in the ordinary #in the work of our hands #in our connection with others #in our sensorial experience of the world #in accepting suffering as a part of it while still managing to affect #awe and wonder #it has an anti ai feeling to it too #books 📚#bookshelf2025 #bookshelf 2025 #east #edith pattou #east by edith pattou #fairy tale retelling #east of the sun and west of the moon

Unknown // Edith Pattou

My Favorite Books that I Read as a Kid 1/

Runemarks (Joanne Harris) / The Cabinet of Wonders (Marie Rutkoski) / Eragon (Christopher Paolini) / Sabriel (Garth Nix) / Skullduggery Pleasant (Derek Landy) / Malice (Chris Wooding) / East (Edith Pattou) / Inkheart (Cornelia Funke) / Eon: Dragoneye Reborn (Alison Goodman) / The Golden Compass (Philip Pullman)

Book Review: East by Edith Pattou

★★★★☆

And telling a story, I suppose, is like winding a skein of spun yarn - you sometimes lose track of the beginning.

Ah, East of the Sun and West of the Moon - it's not a fairytale I grew up reading, but the appeal of it is clear.

This is a lovely retelling and very unusual in some respects. Utilizing multiple first person narrators, readers get the story from various perspectives, each coloured by their own biases, opinions, and knowledge. The world itself is also interesting - though it uses real world countries, they are all renamed as someone in a different culture know each place as.

The story is fairly straightforward: in a family with superstitions about birth-direction, Rose's north-born nature seems to have pre-destined her for a life of travel and adventures, no matter how hard her family tries to keep her still. When a white bear shows up at the door and offers to shift the family's fortune in return for Rose, she can hardly stay no.

A strange premise, but it reads as lovely as the fairytale it's based on. Rose is strong and resourceful; she's curious for adventure and loves to weave. Her family is also sweet - although they make mistakes, you can see how much they all care for one another. The white bear could have been more fleshed out, especially later on, but as a mystery, he's great.

There's not a lot of real romance, but the book itself is enveloped in sweetness and love of all kinds that it doesn't matter. If you're looking for a good retelling of a lesser-known folktales, definitely keep your eye out for East.

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Have you read East by Edith Pattou (2003)?

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Voting ended onOct 29, 2023

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another thing I like about east is that superstition and religion and other belief in stories or gods or trolls or other creatures feels like it is evaluated on a very individual basis. the mother believes in everything, crazy rare superstitions included. the father doesn't believe in much of anything, although he assumes some of those superstitions by osmosis over time. neddy loves stories and it's not very important whether he believes in them.

it's just more interesting to me than everyone in a society not believing in magic and the main character discovering it's real, or everybody believing in it and the main or a side character learning to believe in it as well or debunking it completely as a scheme. I like that there exist magic and mythical creatures, but that the author didn't feel the need to underline that one way or another, and it makes the supernatural event that really begins the story all the more exciting and arresting because there's no blueprint for how the encounter is supposed to work

#in unfathomable detail #east #edith pattou