I don’t usually write book reviews on my blog, but once on a while something comes along that unlocks something in the mind and opens a floodgate of connections and emotions. Such a book is The House With Chicken Legs, the debut novel of Sophie Anderson.
Before I say more about the book, I need to explain why Baba Yaga and her famous house are so meaningful for me.
It started when I was a child. My parents had a record player, a few LPs and amongst them, an LP of Russian music. The Russian composers were great at creating what they called “Musical Pictures”, usually based on stories or legends, these pieces would conjure an image in the mind of the listener. Works like Scheherazade by Rimsky-Korsakov, Prokofiev’s Peter and The Wolf, or Mussorgsky’s Night on Bare Mountain are all examples of these pictures – and stories – in music.
I’d seen Disney’s Fantasia when very young and remembered, vividly, and with terror, the Night on Bare Mountain sequence. Even just listening to the LP gave me the chills. But it was that fear that intrigued me. What was the music really describing? What did any of this music depict? I had to know. The LP sleeves gave limited information, but enough to send me to libraries and other records. Hard to find LPs of obscure Russian operas or books of set designs by Russian Masters for fairy tale stage works sometimes turned up in niche bookshops, like Collets in London, who imported Soviet publications in the 1980s. They enchanted me, wove a spell, and led to my visiting Russia for real in 1986. It was still the Soviet Union, Gorbachev had just come to power, and I had whirlwind two weeks in Moscow, Zagorsk and what was then Leningrad. It felt like a wonderful adventure!
Throughout all these years I had been drawing. Drawing to music, painting scenes and trying to capture the colours of Rimsky-Korsakov’s Snowmaiden or Flight of the Bumble-Bee, Mussorgsky’s Great Gate at Kiev, or perhaps his own Hut With Chicken Legs.
I fell in love with Russian culture, most especially the music, and artists like Natalya Goncharova… (her Firebird):
Ivan Bilibin… (Tsar Saltan):
His own House With Chicken Legs:
Alexander Golovin (his Firebird design is below)…
Konstantin Korovin’s Sadko:
Such riches! I realise these names will be completely obscure to many of you. All I can do is urge you to investigate their astonishing designs for works as diverse as Kaschei the Deathless, Boris Godunov or The Golden Cockeral.
These artists and composers did not really have an art culture to draw on – in Imperial Russia, only Italian opera was performed, by Italian singers, until the mid-nineteenth century. But then there was a cultural revolution (somewhat preceeding the other revolution!) and artists, writers and musicians began to draw heavily on their folk culture: stories, music art. It was an extraordinary time in the art history of the world, and Russian Art Culture soon exploded upon the West with Diaghilev’s Ballet Russe tours in the early 20th century.
Upon my return from Russia, I began developing a project of my own – a collection of Russian Folk Tales. Eventually it was published, in 1993 as Koshka’s Tales (or, Kingfisher Book of Tales from Russia). Koshka is the Russian word for cat, and I had used the motif in Russian folk lore whereby a legendary cat, chained to an oak tree, wanders left and right, either telling stories or singing. Pushkin referenced this in his poem Russlan and Lyudmilla (later an opera by the composer Michael Glinka, the “father of Russian Music”).
In my book, the cat, rather like Scheherazade, narrates the stories woven throughout, all of them stories enshrined in music: The Firebird by Stravinsky, Rimsky-korsakov’s Snowmaiden, and of course Mussorgsky’s Baba Yaga.
Soon after publication I was recommended The Ghost Drum by Susan Price. Part of a series, it features a slavic/nordic setting, shamans and magic and a storytelling cat. It also features a house with chicken legs. Price’s magnificent Ghost series remains amongst my most favourite books. If, like the composers and artists, you don’t know them, I urge you to seek them out. They are an extraordinary Carnegie medal winning achievement and should be far more widely known. Dark, mysterious and haunting, they are superbly written and dazzlingly imaginative. Almost an Eastern Europe/Scandinavian His Dark Materials, but I think even better.
Susan’s books fell out of print, and the same fate befell my Koshka’s Tales, despite really lovely reviews and support.
For me, that regret was replaced by an unexpected joy – I found opportunities to paint to music, live on stage, with orchestras! And so all those records I listened to as a child informed very directly my adult practise as an artist. Amongst the many concerts I’ve worked on, I’ve illustrated live on stage all sorts of classics by Rimsky-Korsakov, Tchaikovsky, Prokofiev, Stravinsky, and – of course – Mussorgsky’s House on Chicken’s Legs (Baba Yaga) from Pictures at an Exhibition. Here’s a little film, where I explain a bit about Mussorgsky’s music for The House With Chicken Legs:
Last year I befriended Sophie on Social media, after a flurry of messages. I was getting excited about her book, and she admitted to being inspired by Koshka’s Tales. And then something magical happened. I performed in Manchester with the Piccadilly Symphony Orchestra. Appropriately, it was Scheherazade, a Russian Classic, on the programme. Sophie came with two of her children, and we were able to meet after the show.
Of course Sophie was lovely and charming. I knew she would be. But there was something else. there was a depth and generosity that completely took my breath away. Recognising Koshka’s place in her heart, she gifted me two exquisite Russian pins that once belong to her Prussian grandmother (I think!). One shows a firebird, the other? Koshka the cat.
I hardly need tell you how much this gesture means or how much I treasure these pins. What history they must have seen.
Sophie had also arranged for her publicist, the legendary Fritha Lindqvist, to send an advance copy of the book. What a thrill it was to hold it, to *prepare* to read it… then dive in. I realise I’ve barely reviewed the book at all. I don’t want to give too much away, except I will say this – it is fully worthy of the pedigree that preceeds it, from Mussorgsky to Susan Price. This tale of Marinka and her Grandmother (Baba Yaga) and their nomadic life in the house with chicken legs, is an astonishing and important debut. Sophie has brilliantly reimagined, and given new life to the core material of Baba Yaga and her house with chicken legs. More than that, the story moves seamlessly through different settings, mixing the old world with the new, in a way that makes an ancient tale seem fresh, relevant and approachable to today’s children.
But there is more. For here we have a story that challenges and explores the very idea of what it is to be alive; what it is to be mortal; and what it is to be dead. These are important, difficult, taboo themes, explored with grace and honesty, imagination and emotion.
Beyond all this, there is a cracking adventure at the heart of a tale that, reminds us that Russia, and it’s heritage, is not the enemy painted in the media. It is a land of rich diversity and many a story, a land of literature and culture, of myth and music. In our troubled modern world, it is both a pleasure and a need to enter a world of magic and mystery where we are, ultimately, reminded of the importance of family and friendship, and of life. Full of empathy and compassion, this book has really stayed with me since reading.
Huge congratulations to this wonderfully talented new voice. I hope the book is the first of many. From fleeting conversations and blog posts, it seems that Sophie is so steeped in Slavic folklore there will definitely be more. I, for one, cannot wait!
The House With Chicken Legs is published in May 2018
