Project and content management for Contemporary Authors volumes
WORK TITLE: What Should Be Wild
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE:
WEBSITE: https://www.julia-fine.com/
CITY: Chicago
STATE: IL
COUNTRY: United States
NATIONALITY: American
RESEARCHER NOTES:
LC control no.: no2018059108
LCCN Permalink: https://lccn.loc.gov/no2018059108
HEADING: Fine, Julia
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040 __ |a NJQ |b eng |e rda |c NJQ
100 1_ |a Fine, Julia
370 __ |e Chicago (Ill.) |2 naf
373 __ |a DePaul University |2 naf
374 __ |a College teachers |a Authors |2 lcsh
375 __ |a female
377 __ |a eng
670 __ |a What should be wild, ©2018 : |b title page (Julia Fine) ; jacket flap (Julia Fine teaches writing at DePaul University; she lives in Chicago with her husband and son)
PERSONAL
Married; children: a son.
EDUCATION:Columbia College Chicago, M.F.A.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Writer. DePaul University, Chicago, IL, writing instructor.
WRITINGS
SIDELIGHTS
Julia Fine is an American writer. She earned an M.F.A. from Columbia College Chicago. Fine serves as a writing instructor at DePaul University.
In an interview in the Qwillery, Fine talked about her writing process and habits. She admitted that she is a hybrid between being a pantser and a plotter, explaining: “In general I write from the gut. I’m definitely not good with outlines—I can make them, but have a lot of trouble finding the passion to write once I’m forced inside them. That said, it helps me to write the key scenes quickly to provide a sort of structure, and then jump around filling things in from there.”
She did confess that her reading choices play a large role in influencing her writing and specific pieces that she works on. “I’m so inspired by so many books and writers.” In the same Qwillery interview, she shared that she finds it a challenge to put in the time requirement needed to properly research a story idea. Fine relate that “a lot of research and time and emotional investment goes into producing a full length book, and so it’s tough to know when an idea is “the one” and that investment is worth it.”
Fine published her first novel, What Should Be Wild, in 2018. Young Maisie has the gift and curse of being able to kill and revive life with a single touch. Her anthropology-professor father keeps her sequestered in the family mansion with only the elderly Mrs. Blott to run the household. When Maisie turns sixteen, her father disappears and Mrs. Blott dies. Her great-nephew, Matthew, comes to Maisie’s aid to help her find her father. While she falls for him, the appearance of the handsome Rafe complicates her views of life.
In the Qwillery interview, Fine talked about how she views her first novel. “I do consider the story a fairy tale, in that it’s about figuring out the boundaries between personal desires and social responsibility,” noting that that is essentially the core for every fairy tale. In an interview in Chicago Review of Books, Fine explained how she came across the idea to write this story. She iterated: “One day, I heard something on the radio about a legal case in Texas where there was a women who was 16-weeks pregnant, and she was brain dead. The hospital wanted to keep her on life support, but her husband wanted to take her off of it. It was a terrible situation all around, but I immediately started thinking about a different situation with a twist where the baby was born. What would it be like to be a kid born under those circumstances—where your mother wasn’t alive? That’s what led to Maisie. From there, I knew this story was going to be speculative.”
Booklist contributor Donna Seaman labeled the novel “a provocative fairy tale.” Seaman noted that Fine writes “with convincing intensity and a charming mix of wit, gruesomeness, magic, and romance.” A contributor to Kirkus Reviews reasoned that although “not all female-identifying readers may see themselves here, the poise and skill with which the story unfolds is an undeniable pleasure.” The same Kirkus Reviews contributor claimed that the author “has written an old-fashioned book with contemporary resonances.” Writing in Xpress Reviews, Tina Panik pointed out that “Fine’s debut was written under the tutelage of Audrey Niffenegger, whose influence shows.” Panik found the novel to be both “imaginative and haunting.”
In an interview in Chicago, Fine discussed the role that Niffenegger played in helping her to develop the novel. Fine mentioned that she and Niffenegger met while at Columbia College Chicago “every two weeks for class, and then on the weekends for one-on-one conferences. A lot of the book came from Audrey saying “I wonder what’s happening in this part of the forest.” After class, we met up for writing dates and bootcamps a few times, and when I was querying the book, she offered me advice. And then when I sold the book, she offered to read it and blurb it. So she’s really been there to hold my hand and walk me through things every step of the way.”
In a review on the Bustle website, Sadie Trombetta stated: “A hypnotizing fairy tale that explores what it’s like to live life in an unruly female body that everyone around it insists on controlling, What Should Be Wild pulsates with originality, curiosity, terror, and pleasure. With gorgeously distinct chapters that alternate between Maisie’s story in the present and her ancestor’s stories in the past, Fine has created layered narrative about growing up girl and becoming woman in a world that sees your physical form as a wild threat.” Trombetta concluded: “Dark, violent, and yet still so full of wonder and beauty, What Should Be Wild is spellbinding fairy tale that gets at the heart of living life in a female body.”
Writing in the Chicago Review of Books, Sara Cutaia remarked that “this novel is written in stunning prose, with an urgency that demands the fullest attention, not unlike the magical fiction of Karen Russell or Helene Wecker. Maisie is keen and curious, naïve and fierce, a character that is boldly herself in even the most trying of situations. With the long line of headstrong women rounding out the tale, this is the feminist speculative fiction I’ve been waiting for.”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Booklist, April 1, 2018, Donna Seaman, review of What Should Be Wild, p. 52.
BookPage, May 1, 2018. Matthew Jackson, review of What Should Be Wild, p. 17.
Chicago, May 10, 2018, Adam Morgan, “One Way to Write a First Novel? Under the Wing of Audrey Niffenegger.”
Chicago Review of Books, May 8, 2018, Sara Cutaia, “Julia Fine on Fairy Tales, Female Desire, and Empowerment.”
Kirkus Reviews, March 1, 2018, review of What Should Be Wild.
Xpress Reviews, March 30, 2018, Tina Panik, review of What Should Be Wild.
ONLINE
Bustle, https://www.bustle.com/ (July 25, 2018), Sadie Trombetta, review of What Should Be Wild.
Julia Fine website, https://www.julia-fine.com (July 25, 2018).
Qwillery, http://qwillery.blogspot.com/ (May 8, 2018), author interview.
Julia Fine is a recent graduate of Columbia College Chicago's MFA program. She lives in Chicago with her husband and their son.
Julia Fine on Fairy Tales, Female Desire, and Empowerment
by Sara Cutaia
May 8, 2018
Comment 1
A
sprawling family tree with a history of tragedy. A young girl, born with the ability to kill and revive with a single touch. An ancient forest where wanderers disappear. Julia Fine’s debut novel What Should Be Wild has all the ingredients of a Gothic fairy tale, but expounds upon them in fantastic and modern ways. It’s gorgeous and exhilarating.
Though young Maisie Cothay is only sixteen years old, her upbringing has been fraught with darkness and secrecy. Her mother died before she was born, but Maisie continued to grow inside of her. Her father Peter feared her “curse” of a touch and kept her hidden in their ancestral home Urizon at the edge of the old forest her entire life, trying to learn more about her in a scientific and personal way. His research uncovered an entire line of women from Maisie’s maternal side that have disappeared into the forest, all the way back to the year 591 AD.
When Peter himself disappears into the forest one day, Maisie is forced into a world which has been kept from her, finding allies and enemies alike, in her search for him. In the forest, Maisie will have to confront the lineage of women trapped there and come to terms with the darkest parts of herself — possibly breaking the family curse in the process.
This novel is written in stunning prose, with an urgency that demands the fullest attention, not unlike the magical fiction of Karen Russell or Helene Wecker. Maisie is keen and curious, naïve and fierce, a character that is boldly herself in even the most trying of situations. With the long line of headstrong women rounding out the tale, this is the feminist speculative fiction I’ve been waiting for.
Julia Fine lives in Chicago, and I was lucky enough to speak with about her debut novel, what it was like writing about the female body, and how she balanced weaving together multiple, distinct narratives. Don’t miss her book launch party with Audrey Niffenegger on Thursday, May 24 at Women & Children First.
***
Sara Cutaia
What was your inspiration for Maisie’s story?
Julia Fine
I was working on something different when I came into grad school at Columbia College Chicago, but I got stuck. One day, I heard something on the radio about a legal case in Texas where there was a women who was 16-weeks pregnant, and she was brain dead. The hospital wanted to keep her on life support, but her husband wanted to take her off of it. It was a terrible situation all around, but I immediately started thinking about a different situation with a twist where the baby was born. What would it be like to be a kid born under those circumstances — where your mother wasn’t alive? That’s what led to Maisie. From there, I knew this story was going to be speculative. Once her “thing” became reviving and killing with a touch, it fell into place from there.
Sara Cutaia
Your book jumps between time periods frequently when revealing the other Blakely women’s history. How much research did you have to do in order to make those sections feel authentic?
Julia Fine
I did a lot of research. I read mostly historical fiction for each of the time periods to get a feel for it. It helps me imagine being in the time more than reading factual lists and such. I also did a lot of research on fairy tales, and the history of fairy tales. I already had a lot of personal interest in these subjects, but writing this book gave me an excuse to read these books that I’d always wanted to.
From the Beast to the Blonde by Marina Warner was hugely influential. It was both about fairy tales and female storytellers. It helped me solve a lot of my plotting problems and a lot of the Blakely women are modeled on the archetypes she talks about in that book.
Sara Cutaia
It was so great to see such a brave and bold feminine protagonist, even with her flaws. I was enthralled with the way the story deals with the body, as well, not only in terms of her curse, but with her space in the world. Were you aiming to accomplish something relating to how women, especially young girls, struggle with their bodies and society’s expectations of them?
Julia Fine
It pretty quickly occurred to me that it was a perfect metaphor — Maisie not being able to touch anything, and being restricted — for the way young girls are taught to think about their bodies. To negate themselves, and to think their thoughts of desires are wrong and dangerous. Our culture is both fascinated and scared of women’s bodies. If you’re a young woman who wants to have sex, it’s both cool and really scary. I wanted to write about taking ownership of that, that it doesn’t have to be scary. Female desire is a beautiful thing. As long as it’s balanced and acknowledged, it can be great. Maisie was the perfect vehicle to do that, because she is so divided.
Back to research, though, I’m really interested in the way we compartmentalize ourselves, especially as women. You take on one role, like motherhood — you’re thought of as just a mother, or just a lawyer if you go to work, just one thing. You’re often told you can’t be both. It feels like it’s harder for women to be more than one thing at a time than for men. I hate that idea, I think it’s ridiculous. So part of this book was trying to show that it’s really dangerous to be labeled as just one thing. Or to try to think of yourself as just one thing. Everything is nuanced, and you shouldn’t restrict yourself and try to fit into one singular role.
Sara Cutaia
There are threads of fairy and folk tales in this story — how much did those types of stories influence your tone when writing?
Julia Fine
I read 19th-century “anthropology” books that talk about rituals, and it was fascinating. I got a lot of pre-Christian religious stuff from those books that show up in my novel. I was reading about a bunch of rich, aristocratic, white men who would be like, “I noticed in X culture they were doing things at the river,” and I just stole that and used it in my fiction but in my own, feminist way.
Sara Cutaia
So was this story always going to be speculative and fantastical, or did reading those types of books push you more in that direction?
Julia Fine
It was always going to be speculative just because it didn’t make sense otherwise, scientifically. As I was writing Maisie, I was just spitting out whatever was there in the moment. She started telling these fables and folk stories, and I wasn’t looking for it to go in any certain direction. But once I figured out that I wanted to tell the story of her ancestors, and the history of her family was going to be related to her curse, it was clear how the fables were ending up as skewed versions of these women’s lives. It worked out really well to be reading up on fairy tales and the history of all these things.
Sara Cutaia
I was really invested in Maisie’s relationship with those few people in her life, specifically her father and her caretaker Mrs. Blott. How much of your own childhood is represented in Maisie’s childhood?
Julia Fine
My grandmother was always telling stories, and they were very fantastical for a child. She played a huge role in me becoming a writer, and also as a model for the character of Mother Farrow, a woman who has all this wisdom who teaches you via story vs. telling you directly.
I will say there’s a lot of me as a teenager in Maisie, in terms of not wanting to listen to anyone else’s advice. And also in her being super self-conscious, and feeling like she doesn’t belong, but also feeling like she knows everything. That’s probably a pretty common teenage feeling.
Sara Cutaia
How did you plan out this novel? There are different timelines that end up being important when they all converge — what was it like weaving all of those together?
Julia Fine
It was very difficult! It took me the longest, figuring out how things fit together in terms of what would be happening chronologically — like, what’s happening in the forest while Maisie is experiencing things outside of it? But also, where does it make sense technically to put this small vignette? I played around with it a lot. I was really lucky that no one told me “you can’t do this!” When you think about it, I introduce seven women characters in two paragraphs, and they have maybe 15 pages to themselves in the whole of the book. On a technical level, I shouldn’t do that! But it worked.
Sara Cutaia
Though Maisie is a young girl in the novel, both in age and in her worldly experience, the themes and certain scenes are quite dark. How did you balance writing this discovery of the world without weighing down the plot too darkly?
Julia Fine
While I was writing, I was letting the story go where it felt right. And because this is my first book, there was no pressure to slot it or label it in any genre way. I didn’t think about an audience while I was writing, and a lot of people have been kind in their feedback about it not falling neatly into a specific genre or label.
When it did get dark, I let it, because it felt like the natural way. Maisie was making all of these really stupid decisions, which makes sense with her character. But if it had ended up with someone rescuing her, it wouldn’t have felt right or organic. She had to go through it, just like people have to go through it in real life.
Sara Cutaia
What’s next for you?
Julia Fine
I have a very, very early idea of my next novel. It’s going to be about a poltergeist in the first few weeks postpartum of this family in their home. I’ve got snippets here and there. What Should Be Wild has taken up a bunch of my time though, so I haven’t quite gotten back to my good writing habits yet, and also after my own postpartum. But that’s the bones of it so far!
FICTION – FANTASY, HISTORICAL
What Should Be Wild
By Julia Fine
Harper
Published May 8, 2018
Julia Fine teaches writing at DePaul University and is a recent graduate of Columbia College Chicago’s M.F.A. program. She lives in Chicago with her husband and their son.
One Way to Write a First Novel? Under the Wing of Audrey Niffenegger
Julia Fine’s What Should Be Wild, penned while studying with her childhood hero, hits shelves this week.
By Adam Morgan
Published May 10, 2018
0 comments
Fine (left) and Niffenegger Photography: (Fine) Nastasia Mora; (Niffenegger) Courtesy of author
Young writers often dream of studying under their literary idols, and for Julia Fine, that idol was Audrey Niffenegger. Growing up in Maryland, she read Niffenegger’s The Time Traveler’s Wife over and over again, even copying her favorite passages down by hand in a notebook. So when it came time to choose a graduate school, Fine applied to Columbia College Chicago, where Niffenegger teaches in the creative writing program.
That was three years ago. This week, Fine publishes a book of her own—with a blurb from Niffenegger on the back cover.
Fine’s novel, What Should Be Wild, combines the intrigue of a literary mystery with the mythology of fairy tales. It follows a young woman, Maisie Cothay, who is born with the ability (and curse) to kill or revive anything she touches. The book also tracks Maisie’s ancestors, generations of women dating back to the 7th century who have been preserved by the wilderness that abuts her family’s country estate.
Without hyperbole, it’s one of the best debut novels I’ve ever read, and the first page made me gasp out loud on the Halsted bus. I spoke with Fine and Niffenegger about the book, their creative relationship, and the importance of community to Chicago writers. You can meet them both at the book launch party for What Should Be Wild on May 24 at Women & Children First Bookstore.
How did What Should Be Wild come together at Columbia College?
Fine: I came into the program with another book in mind [about a dystopian future Chicago] and worked on that book with Audrey for a semester. One day I said to her, “Instead of using the thing we’ve been working on, do you mind if I bring in this weird little short story?” And that was what became What Should Be Wild. It was the first few sentences of the novel, combined with what later became a chapter in the middle.
Niffenegger: The class was called Big Books, and it was for people writing novels. I started the class by saying, “Give me whatever you’ve already got,” and somebody gave me 17 pages, and somebody else gave me 600. The book Julia had been writing was a dystopia, so the characters were not having a very nice time. And so when Julia popped up with this—it’s like if somebody asked me to eat an entire ox and then gave me a lemon sorbet. The more she wrote, the more delightful it became. And the class went wild for it. They went absolutely ballistic for this new thing. There was so much energy to it, something everybody could immediately sense. It gave off this kind of bat signal.
How did your creative relationship develop? What impact did Audrey make on the book?
Fine: We met every two weeks for class, and then on the weekends for one-on-one conferences. A lot of the book came from Audrey saying “I wonder what’s happening in this part of the forest.” After class, we met up for writing dates and bootcamps a few times, and when I was querying the book, she offered me advice. And then when I sold the book, she offered to read it and blurb it. So she’s really been there to hold my hand and walk me through things every step of the way.
Niffenegger: Julia has such a lively mind, so it doesn’t take much to get her going in a very fruitful direction. It was a pleasure to engage with somebody whose not only willing and disciplined but also quirky and funny.
How important is the concept of a writing community for you? Is Chicago a good place for it?
Fine: I’m relatively new to the Chicago literary scene, but everyone has been so welcoming and kind. Like a lot of young writers, I used to think if that I wasn’t in New York, nothing would ever happen. But now I think it’s so much better to be in Chicago. People are more accessible.
Niffenegger: One of the things about Chicago—not only its writing community, but also some visual artist communities—is that there’s a lot of generosity, a lot of willingness to share. People turn each other on to agents and help each other out with all sorts of stuff. Especially in the last few years, there’s been an effort to connect everybody up with social events, because writers tend to stay where they teach or where they work. People are very alert to the idea that we need community.
Julia, where did the idea for this story come from?
Fine: I heard a story on NPR one morning about a case in Texas where a man was fighting for the right to take his pregnant wife off of life support, because she was brain dead and it was very clear that the baby was not going to survive. I started thinking, what if the circumstances were slightly different and the child did survive. And that’s what led to those first few sentences.
Audrey, what are you working on these days? Any updates on the The Time Traveler’s Wife sequel, The Other Husband?
Niffenegger: My husband Eddie Campbell and I have just done a book called Bizarre Romance, a short story collection where we’ve taken my short stories and turned them into comics and illustrated short stories. The Other Husband is coming along. It’s due to my editor in a couple of months.
Tuesday, May 08, 2018
Interview with Julia Fine, author of What Should Be Wild
Please welcome Julia Fine to The Qwillery as part of the 2018 Debut Author Challenge Interviews. What Should Be Wild is published on May 8th by Harper.
TQ: Welcome to The Qwillery. What is the first piece you remember writing?
Julia: I’m so happy to be here! I’ve been writing since I can remember, but my first published piece was a poem in Stone Soup Magazine when I was nine. It was about the moon—I think I used the phrase “queen of the night.” Stone Soup is still around publishing kids’ writing and illustrations and is definitely worth checking out. It was huge for me as a kid to know that people were interested in what I had to say.
TQ: Are you a plotter, a pantser or a hybrid?
Julia: A hybrid, though more of a pantser if I was forced to choose. In general I write from the gut. I’m definitely not good with outlines—I can make them, but have a lot of trouble finding the passion to write once I’m forced inside them. That said, it helps me to write the key scenes quickly to provide a sort of structure, and then jump around filling things in from there.
TQ: What is the most challenging thing for you about writing?
Julia: For a novel it’s definitely the commitment. A lot of research and time and emotional investment goes into producing a full length book, and so it’s tough to know when an idea is “the one” and that investment is worth it. I also have a one year-old, so lately it’s hard to find that perfect combination of a good night’s sleep and a large chunk of uninterrupted time…
TQ: What has influenced / influences your writing?
Julia: Maybe this is too obvious, but my reading. I’m so inspired by so many books and writers—for What Should Be Wild it was Angela Carter and Shirley Jackson and Philip Pullman and Karen Russell and Doris Lessing and so many more. I’m also hugely influenced by music—for this book I listened to a lot of Hozier, Tori Amos, Damien Rice, and PJ Harvey. Pan’s Labyrinth was influential, and Stephen Sondheim’s Into the Woods (the original version).
TQ: Describe What Should be Wild in 140 characters or less.
Julia: Female desire is powerful!
TQ: Tell us something about What Should be Wild that is not found in the book description.
Julia: There are nods to classic fairy tales all throughout the book. If you’re looking for them, you can catch references to Snow White, Little Red Ridinghood, The Snow Queen, etc.
TQ: What inspired you to write What Should be Wild? Do you consider the story a fairy tale or something else?
Julia: I was first inspired by a legal case in Texas several years ago—a woman was declared brain-dead at about three months pregnant and her husband was fighting the hospital to get her taken off of life support. I started thinking about what life would be like for that child if medical circumstances were different and the fetus could realistically come to term. At the time I was reading Marina Warner’s From the Beast to the Blonde, a book about the feminist history of fairytales. The two worlds collided to form What Should Be Wild.
I do consider the story a fairy tale, in that it’s about figuring out the boundaries between personal desires and social responsibility. I think that juxtaposition is at the heart of all fairy tales, especially the ones with female protagonists. That said, I didn’t consciously set out to write a fairy tale, and I’m happy with whatever shelf the book is put on!
TQ: What sort of research did you do for What Should be Wild?
Julia: What Should Be Wild is basically a big mash-up of all of my research interests. As I mentioned earlier, From the Beast to the Blonde was incredibly helpful in giving me a history of female storytelling. I did historical research for each of the vignettes about the Blakely women. I read a wonderful book called The Hidden Life of Trees by Peter Wohlleben that helped me ground some of the magic of the forest in scientific research. I read The White Goddess by Robert Graves and The Golden Bough by James Fraser to get a sense for the folklore Peter studies and the history of Maisie’s village. I read a lot of William Blake and Dylan Thomas for philosophy and mood.
TQ: Please tell us about the cover for What Should be Wild.
Julia: It’s up to the reader to decide if these are living flowers in the process of dying, or dead flowers coming back to life…either way they’re very feisty. I love this cover because it gives you that Gothic forest vibe without being too explicit. I also love how every time you look at it you notice something different, whether it’s the moth at the top, or the rainbow reflections.
TQ: In What Should be Wild who was the easiest character to write and why? The hardest and why?
Julia: Lucy Blakely was fully formed with very clear desires and personality quirks from the second she showed up on the page. Rafe took me several iterations—he’s the hardest for Maisie to fully understand, so I think some of my narrator’s struggles bled through!
TQ: Why have you chosen to include or not chosen to include social issues in What Should be Wild?
Julia: For me, speculative fiction is all about tackling social issues. I was looking for a way to talk about the pressures and restrictions placed on women, and the fear and fetishization of female desire. Maisie and her family don’t speak for all women, of course, but I hope I’ve captured something universal about the way those of us who identify as female move through the world.
TQ: Which question about What Should be Wild do you wish someone would ask? Ask it and answer it!
Julia: So far no one has asked me about place names, so I guess I’ll use this as an opportunity to discuss them! Urizon is totally stolen from William Blake’s mythopoeia. He has a character named Urizen who represents order and authority. The Blakelys are also a nod to his work. Couers Crossing, Maisie’s village, comes from the French for heart—it was initially Coeds Crossing, from the Welsh for trees, but that came off as too collegial.
TQ: Give us one or two of your favorite non-spoilery quotes from What Should be Wild.
Julia: “Tell a child a tale is not true, give her reason to believe. No handsome prince awaits you. No godmother hides in the hawthorn. Those stirrings you hear in the forest are foxes and birds, nothing more. Tell her that after death comes heaven, harpists, bare-bottomed babes with sprouted wings. Show her where her mother has been eaten by the earth, where her ancestors lie buried. Tell her that souls float up around her, as she watches rigor mortis of her own pathetic making cover the body of a loved one with its frost. Nothing begs question of permanence, of sin, like the power to kill and revive. Nothing promises revival like a fairy tale.”
TQ: What's next?
Julia: I’m in the very early stages of working on a post-partum poltergeist story. Because I’m a pantser I’m not yet sure where it’s going to go!
TQ: Thank you for joining us at The Qwillery.
Julia: Thanks so much for having me!
What Should Be Wild
Harper, May 8, 2018
Hardcover and eBook, 368 pages
“Delightful and darkly magical. Julia Fine has written a beautiful modern myth, a coming-of-age story for a girl with a worrisome power over life and death. I loved it.” —Audrey Niffenegger, author of The Time Traveler’s Wife and Her Fearful Symmetry
In this darkly funny, striking debut, a highly unusual young woman must venture into the woods at the edge of her home to remove a curse that has plagued the women in her family for millennia—an utterly original novel with all the mesmerizing power of The Tiger’s Wife, The Snow Child, and Swamplandia!
Cursed. Maisie Cothay has never known the feel of human flesh: born with the power to kill or resurrect at her slightest touch, she has spent her childhood sequestered in her family’s manor at the edge of a mysterious forest. Maisie’s father, an anthropologist who sees her as more experiment than daughter, has warned Maisie not to venture into the wood. Locals talk of men disappearing within, emerging with addled minds and strange stories. What he does not tell Maisie is that for over a millennium her female ancestors have also vanished into the wood, never to emerge—for she is descended from a long line of cursed women.
But one day Maisie’s father disappears, and Maisie must venture beyond the walls of her carefully constructed life to find him. Away from her home and the wood for the very first time, she encounters a strange world filled with wonder and deception. Yet the farther she strays, the more the wood calls her home. For only there can Maisie finally reckon with her power and come to understand the wildest parts of herself.
What Should Be Wild
Donna Seaman
Booklist. 114.15 (Apr. 1, 2018): p52.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2018 American Library Association
http://www.ala.org/aboutala/offices/publishing/booklist/
Full Text:
What Should Be Wild. By Julia Fine. May 2018.352p. Harper, $26.99 (9780062684134).
Everything Maisie touches dies. She can, however, just as easily restore life, but Peter, her anthropology-professor father, keeps her sequestered in the Blakely mansion, with its portraits of Maisie's dead mother's ancestors, a "bedeviled family line," and surrounding spooky forest. Mrs. Blott keeps house, while Peter clinically assesses his daughter's mysterious, cruelly isolating condition. When Maisie turns 16, Mrs. Blott dies, Peter disappears, and Maisie encounters Mrs. Blott's sweet-natured great-nephew Matthew. Instantly smitten by unworldly but determined Maisie, Matthew helps her search for her father, until Rafe, a dashing stranger, disastrously intervenes. As the action pitches into suspense and horror, Fine, a first-time novelist of exceptional imagination, interleaves supernatural scenes in the time-warped forest, where women of the past condemned to exile by war or violent punishments for womanly desires confront a black-eyed girl of malevolent appetites. With convincing intensity and a charming mix of wit, gruesomeness, magic, and romance in the spellbinding mode of Alice Hoffman, Fine offers a provocative fairy tale about womanhood under siege and one young woman's fierce resistance. --Donna Seaman
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Seaman, Donna. "What Should Be Wild." Booklist, 1 Apr. 2018, p. 52. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A534956869/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=136e53da. Accessed 20 July 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A534956869
Fine, Julia: WHAT SHOULD BE WILD
Kirkus Reviews. (Mar. 1, 2018):
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2018 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
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Fine, Julia WHAT SHOULD BE WILD Harper/HarperCollins (Adult Fiction) $26.99 5, 8 ISBN: 978-0-06-268413-4
A debut novel spins a fairy tale about the power and terror of female desire.
Sixteen-year-old Maisie Cothay leads an isolated existence. She was born with a rare talent: Her touch can kill living things and resurrect the dead. As a result, her mother died while Maisie was in utero, and she grows up at Urizon--her ancestral home, which has "a reputation for tragedy"--with only her academic father and a housekeeper for company. Maisie knows that something is cursed in her history: The portraits of her ancestors that line the halls come with legends and rumors about the "bedeviled family line." Many of these stories involve the nearby forest Maisie grew up fearing, warned by her father to never enter. But when Maisie's father disappears, leaving only a strange old map as a clue to his whereabouts, Maisie is convinced that the forest is the key to finding him. As Maisie ventures into the wider world for the first time, she must learn who can be trusted and, finally, via the mysterious woods, must reckon with the true nature of her own gifts and the cursed women in her lineage. Fine, too, looks to the past: Everything from the setting to the elegantly formal prose seems lifted from a 19th-century fairy tale--so much so that it can break the spell somewhat when characters refer to their sneakers or a recycling bin. The novel, with its mysterious forest and Maisie's creative/destructive powers, works well as an allegory of a certain kind of traditional womanly experience of burgeoning sexuality, knowledge, and growing up; though not all female-identifying readers may see themselves here, the poise and skill with which the story unfolds is an undeniable pleasure.
Fine has written an old-fashioned book with contemporary resonances.
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"Fine, Julia: WHAT SHOULD BE WILD." Kirkus Reviews, 1 Mar. 2018. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A528960013/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=fe1134a6. Accessed 20 July 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A528960013
Fine, Julia. What Should Be Wild
Tina Panik
Xpress Reviews. (Mar. 30, 2018):
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2018 Library Journals, LLC
http://www.libraryjournal.com/lj/reviews/xpress/884170-289/xpress_reviews-first_look_at_new.html.csp
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[STAR] Fine, Julia. What Should Be Wild. Harper. May 2018. 352p. ISBN 9780062684134. $26.99; ebk. ISBN 9780062684158. F
[DEBUT] What if your touch controlled life and death? Maisie Cothay has this power, which confines her to a glove-wearing, emotionally void childhood on the grounds of an isolated estate after she, in utero, kills her mother. Peter, her father, is an anthropologist who studies Maisie more than raises her, leaving her unprepared, both practically and emotionally, when he suddenly disappears. To rescue him, Maisie must breach the forbidden forest line, which is when the story begins to alternate narrators and add flashbacks that explore the mythology of the Blakely women. Maisie is tested again and again by her friends Matthew and Rafe as she attempts to rescue her father, gain control of her powerful touch, and decide what place she occupies within the Blakely legend.
Verdict Part fairy tale, part coming-of-age adventure, Fine's debut was written under the tutelage of Audrey Niffenegger, whose influence shows. This book is imaginative and haunting, a stylistic blend of Matthew Haig's How To Stop Time, Melissa Albert's The Hazel Wood, and Tea Obreht's The Tiger's Wife. Fans of all three novels will find something to savor. [See Prepub Alert, 11/11/17.]--Tina Panik, Avon Free P.L., CT
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Panik, Tina. "Fine, Julia. What Should Be Wild." Xpress Reviews, 30 Mar. 2018. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A536533222/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=c296debd. Accessed 20 July 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A536533222
'What Should Be Wild' By Julia Fine Beautifully Captures The Difficult Transition From Girl To Woman Through The Story Of A Girl With A Curse
BySadie Trombetta
2 months ago
The female body is a curious and powerful thing, capable of bringing life into the world, of making food for hungry babies, of having multiple orgasms in a row. But it's also a battleground, one where women are forced to fight for the autonomy over their own physical forms against a society hell-bent on controlling them, and against their own desires and instincts. It's a subject that fairy tales, both classic and modern, often explore in an attempt to better understand womanhood and the female experience, and it's at the very heart of Julia Fine's bewitching debut, What Should Be Wild.
A darkly enchanting coming-of-age story, What Should Be Wild centers around Maisie Cothay, a young woman cursed from birth with the ability to kill or revive any living thing with a single touch, including the mother she inadvertently murders in utero. Left to raise the strange girl on his own, Maisie's anthropologist father Peter makes it his life work to study his daughter's incredible ability to control life, convinced it is the key to unlocking the secrets of his deceased wife's bedeviled bloodline. It is in her ancestral home Urizon — a grand old manor set on the edge of a mysterious forest where, for more than a Millennium, Maisie's female relatives have vanished into the wood — the young girl learns to life with her affliction by adhering to a strict set of rules set out by her father. Her skin is to stay mostly covered at all times, especially her hands, arms, and feet. She is not to touch a living thing to kill it, nor is she to touch a dead thing to revive it. She isn't to talk to strangers or leave the property without supervision from her father or their elderly housekeeper, and she most certainly is never, ever supposed to enter the forest that looms just at the edge of Urizon.
But when her father goes missing and leaves nothing but a strange map as a clue to where he has gone, Maisie is forced to leave the shelter of her carefully planned life and embark on a dangerous mission to save Peter. With the help of a family friend, she ventures into the real world, where she must learn not only how to protect those around her from her strange gift, but how to protect herself from them. As her search brings her closer and closer to the dark forest she was told never to enter, Maise begins to slowly unravel the centuries-old mystery of her cursed bloodline, the circumstances of her mother's death, the secrets of the wood, and the truth within her own body.
What Should Be Wild by Julia Fine, $21, Amazon
A hypnotizing fairy tale that explores what it's like to live life in an unruly female body that everyone around it insists on controlling, What Should Be Wild pulsates with originality, curiosity, terror, and pleasure. With gorgeously distinct chapters that alternate between Maisie's story in the present and her ancestor's stories in the past, Fine has created layered narrative about growing up girl and becoming woman in a world that sees your physical form as a wild threat.
Maisie, a "baby born from death," must reckon with the power of her body from the moment she enters the world. Her family's curse make her physical form literally deadly, but more broadly, Maisie's struggle for control over it serves as a parable for a female experience that is common to so many readers: the awakening of sexuality, the thirst for knowledge and real-world experience, the growing pains of transitioning from girl to woman. For so many, coming to terms with female desire is a truly terrifying experience, especially if you don't know how to navigate the place it resides.
"There was a badness in my body that had cursed me," Maisie says early on in the novel, talking her own deadly skin but speaking for any girl who has ever felt the stirring of passion, lust, or sensuality within them. In a world where women are told how to act in their bodies, what to dress them up in, how to present to the world, what to do with them during pregnancy and after childbirth, we are all at risk of being like Maisie, confused and unable to trust what is in our own hearts, minds, and bodies.
As Maisie puts it:
"I did not trust my instincts. It was safer to heed Peter. I thought that if I tried very hard to do exactly what he asked of me, my father would forgive me all my failings. I forced myself to sit and smile and each time I felt an impulse I would fold it in my mind, a sheet of paper that creased easily at first, and then required more muscle as desire took on thicker, complex layers."
For so many readers, the experience of folding and refolding desires to keep them suppressed will feel all too familiar. We might all be driven by a desire for human connection — "All humans crave touch, the fundamental feeling that life burns inside another," Maisie says — but like the cursed young woman with the touch of death, women are told to keep that desire in constant check. But what happens when the get too great to ignore, too strong to stifle?
Like so many girls caught somewhere in between the child they were and the woman they long to be, Maisie struggles to come to terms with the behaviors she was taught to have, and ones her body is urging her to act on. In Urizon, under the watchful eye of her father, she had constant checks for herself and her unpredictable body. Outside of the family estate, in the real world and away from her keeper, Maisie must rely on herself and learn to trust her own instincts. After a lifetime of being told to ignore them, to keep them at bay lest she give in to temptation and cause serious harm, it's nearly impossible.
“My body seemed to want it, but my body could never be trusted," a sentiment Maisie says about herself, but one that so many women can relate to. "My body was a wild thing I had tamed into submission, and yet part of me knew at any second it might lash out, it might fight me.”
Dark, violent, and yet still so full of wonder and beauty, What Should Be Wild is spellbinding fairy tale that gets at the heart of living life in a female body.
I Made A List Of Everything I've Read This Year & It Changed My Perspective Entirely
ByKerri Jarema
18 hours ago
Stocksy/Melanie DeFazio
Every July, media outlets and readers alike start posting their "The Best Books Of The Year So Far" lists. With 2018 sailing past its halfway mark, it's the perfect time to take stock of the last six months, including your reading life: What books have you loved? Which have you hated? How are your yearly reading goals progressing, and have they changed at all from when you first conceived of them back in January? I must admit that I never really took the halfway reading recap seriously in my own life. It was fun to watch everyone put their lists together, but I used the results more as entertainment than a push to reflect on my own reading choices. This year, though, it seemed more crucial than ever to take stock.
Without even looking at the list of 31 books I've read so far this year, I knew that my reading hasn't gone quite the way I expected. I've been reading less, for starters. In 2017 I finished the year with 57 books read; in 2016 it was 60; and in 2015 it was a whopping 72. Sure, I'm on track with my general goal of reading one book a week for the year, but I know I won't be reading much beyond that. Again, this is not surprising considering *gestures at everything in the world* but I do think it goes hand in hand with what I discovered when I did look back at the books I've read so far: My reading tastes have almost completely changed this year, and I think it might alter how I read forever.
OK, that might be just a tad dramatic, but stick with me. Before 2015, I would never have considered myself any particular kind of reader. I was a reader. I read books that interested me. The end. But during the two years I worked as a children's bookseller, I suddenly became a "YA person." Obviously, it was important to read kidlit as widely as possible, to offer customers the best recommendations. But it was also great to have a specialty, and YA became mine. Now, it's been a while since I've worked at as a kidlit bookseller, and my 2018 reading list definitely reflects that.
Out of the 31 books I've completed this year, only nine were YA. I read five of those within the first two months of the year, which means that since March, I've only read four YA books. And out of those nine? I would only consider two as hard-and-fast favorites. In fact, most of my favorite books I've read so far this year are memoirs and essays collections, which I have always enjoyed before but haven't read as much of in recent years. When I tell you that this realization resulted in a bit of an existential reading crisis, I am not exaggerating. What does this all mean?! Do...I...not like YA anymore? Enter the shock, cue the horror. But after I calmed down for a second I realized the true value of doing a State of the Reading check, and it's why I'll always advocate for the mid-year favorites list moving foward.
My self-imposed moniker of "YA person?" Yeah, I never realized just how limiting that was until I unconsciously ignored it this year. And I think many readers have fallen into that same trap before, claiming to only love romance or to only read thrillers or to never buy anything that isn't nonfiction. There is a whole wide world of books out there, and telling yourself (probably inaccurately) that you will never enjoy anything outside your chosen genre is keeping you from discovering some amazing reads. And all those goals like "Read At Least 20 YA Books This Year" or "Read Only Memoir For An Entire Month?" I'm throwing them entirely out the window.
Just like life (if you'll allow me to be philosophical for a moment) reading can and should be an ebb and flow. And while that rise and fall should most certainly include things like goals and aspirations, it should also include reevaluation and redefining who we are and what we love. Maybe next year all I'll want is to dive into epic fantasy. Or self-help. Or historical fiction. Maybe all three. Maybe none of the above! Who knows? But for once in my reading life, I'm content not to know.