Vassa in the Night by Sarah Porter

The first prompt in the StoryGraph Onboarding Challenge is to read a book that you find using their filter that has three moods attached to it. Vassa in the Night, by Sarah Porter, is tagged as being adventurous, dark, and mysterious. It also happens to be the very first book on the list that StoryGraph recommends for me. The StoryGraph website orders their recommendations for you based on a detailed survey about your reading tastes. Vassa in the Night was the book that their algorithm predicts I will like the most. I had never heard of this novel before, so I was very interested in seeing if it would actually become a new favorite.

I'd never heard of this author before either, so I did a little research before getting started. Sarah Porter is the author of eight young adult fantasy novels, none of which I was familiar with before I started my reading. Vassa in the Night is her fifth novel and is a retelling of the old Russian folktale, Vassilissa the Beautiful. Now, I love fairy tale retellings, and I told StoryGraph this information on my survey, so this recommendation was seemingly dead-on. However, what StoryGraph doesn't know, and would have no way of predicting, is that I've never found a story including Baba Yaga that I have truly loved. Nevertheless, I was willing to go in with an open mind and give this one a shot.  

The plot of the novel centers around Vassa, a high school student living with her stepmother and stepsisters in an alternate, surreal version of Brooklyn. Her birth mother passed away a few years ago and her father walked out on her a little while after that. She gets along well enough with the family she has left, but she is feeling a bit melancholy and aimless as the story begins. Her closest companion is Erg, a tiny wooden doll that she keeps in her pocket. Erg can walk, talk, and seems to have deeper magical gifts as well. She was a gift from Vassa's mother, and Vassa has sworn to keep her safe and secret. 

Erg isn't the only magic present in the universe of the story. Vassa's Brooklyn is full of it, but most normal people give it a very wide birth. The uncanny is violent and unpredictable here and it's foolish to involve yourself in it unnecessarily. The most notable example of this is BY's - a supermarket that dances around on chicken legs and displays the heads of shoplifters on spikes around its parking lot. Vassa has always steered clear of the place, but a series of events leads her to make midnight shopping trip there at the beginning of the novel.

Once inside, she meets the proprietress, an old woman named Babs and, thanks to some magical shenanigans, is almost immediately accused of shoplifting. She talks her way out of a beheading, and agrees instead to work at BY's for three nights in exchange for her life. Each night, Babs sets her a seemingly impossible task to complete, but with Erg's help, she manages to get most of them done. However, as she struggles, she comes to learn that she is not the only being that Babs is controlling, and her focus shifts from her own survival to saving others and taking down Babs once and for all.

This story was pretty good, and my summary falls woefully short of describing all the bizarre, fantastical elements that Porter includes in this world. This kind of setting definitely won't be for all readers, but I really enjoyed all of the weird details that made up Vassa's Brooklyn. Figuring out now the magic worked was very engaging and impossible to predict. The novel as a whole felt like a fever dream. Still, Vassa was a very relatable character and her struggle to defeat Babs and grow as a person was compelling. The themes in the story were similarly strong, focusing on family and friendship over romantic desires. The story had a lot of heart and it was a good retelling of a classic tale.

What I couldn't escape, however, was my random dislike of Baba Yaga stories. I've read a few books including this classical character over the years, most notably Gregory Maguire's Egg and Spoon, and I've just never fully enjoyed her. I respect her literary and cultural significance, but she just isn't my thing. In Vassa in the Night, Babs is the reimagining of this character and I couldn't help but dislike her meanness. She's a character with a really cruel and violent edge to her, and her brand of villainy just does not appeal to me. Anyone that is into Russian folklore, however, will probably absolutely love her portrayal here. I looked up Vassalisa the Beautiful, the folktale this novel is based on, and I do think that this is a clever and well-written retelling. This is simply a case of personal preference diminishing my enjoyment.    

Overall, I did think this was a worthwhile and really unique read. It didn't becomes a special favorite, but I'm still glad to have experienced it. I think that StoryGraph did a nice job matching me with this book, as its aspects of being adventurous, dark, and mysterious were a great choice for me. The fact that it was a fairy tale retelling was also great for me. It could never have known that I don't love Baba Yaga, so I won't hold that against it. I'm looking forward to continuing to use this website and checking out more of its recommendations in the future.

Challenge Tally

StoryGraph Onboarding 2020 Challenge: 2/12

Total Books Read in 2020: 56