A Lovely Fairy Tale and a Not-Quite Parable

 Emily Wilde’s Encyclopaedia

Emily Wilde’s Encyclopedia of Faeries by Heather Fawcett
(published 2023)

Emily Wilde’s Encyclopaedia of Faeries is an absolutely delightful fantasy: or better said, a great fairy tale. It’s set in a mythical Scandinavian country (sort of like Iceland but closer to Europe) in 1909. The two main characters are academics who work at Cambridge University in the Department of Dryadology — that is, they are engaged in the scientific study of fairies and the many types of fairy creatures that abound in the world of the novel. Emily Wilde is doing field work in the strange and forbidding Scandinavian country, hoping to gather data for her comprehensive encyclopedia of every species of fairy. After arriving at her little rustic cabin, Emily quickly meets at least one fairy, a small creature that she calls Poe — and she meets many other fairies in the course of the remarkably suspenseful tale. 

Emily has a very prickly personality, and one of her challenges is adapting to life with the villagers in her research location. They extend friendly and helpful offers of food and assistance with her life in the rustic cabin — but she doesn’t grasp emotionally how to accept their friendship. In her narration of the events of her stay, at first she portrays them as hostile, but eventually we learn, with her, to see them quite differently. The catalyst for grasping their better character is a colleague of Emily’s — a researcher in the same department where she works, who shows up unexpectedly not long after she moves into her cabin.  She also has a hostile and suspicious view of him, and in fact suspects him of having falsified the research in his quite successful publications. Her gradual discovery of his virtues and his honesty — as they face many dangers from the hidden and menacing fairy world — is as interesting as her discovery of the strange nature of the fairies they are studying.

Although there are similarities to what we would call the real world, mostly the world of this novel is fantasy, and also is ahistorical. The reader must suspend disbelief in the existence of fairies as well as in many of the features of Emily’s personal and professional experience. Specifically, academic life at Cambridge University as it exists in the novel isn’t what would have existed in 1909. Conditions there are much more like life in a twenty-first century US or Canadian university than it would have in early-twentieth-century England. There are many hints of technology and style that would be anachronistic if the novel pretended to be historical rather than fantasy. 

Emily, as a researcher with a doctorate in Dryadolgy, had more professional opportunities than a woman who lived in that actual historic period. (Note that historically, the first woman Professor at Cambridge was Dorothy Garrod in 1939). Systems of tenure, academic hierarchy of titles, publication conventions, peer review, formal citations and citation tracking, and the like would have been different than they are portrayed in the novel — but  what difference do those details make? After all, the main plot is about exploring vast and dangerous fairy realms where magical powers, spells, enchantments, magic words, and invisible and malevolent characters are all part of the natural setting. Here’s one of my favorite more-or-less anachronisms in Emily’s narration: “Even the forest is rendered in black-and-white; I feel as if I am in a movie. I must have something to rest my eyes upon.” (p. 225)

The review of this book in the New York Times put it this way: “what seems on its surface to be a twee romp is in fact a stirring exploration of mythography and storytelling, with a dark and twisted heart.” (source) 

Note: A sequel to this book has been published but I’m not a big fan of sequels to fantasy books. I learned my lesson when I was in third grade and read the sequel to my favorite book, The Princess and the Goblin — I was so disappointed that I cried. So I may not opt to read more about Emily.

Amor Towles’ Dystopia

“You Have Arrived at Your Destination” is a story by Amor Towles. 
Short. Not as enjoyable as his other works.

Blog post © 2024 mae sander