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When I finished The Onion Girl, I wanted to kick Charles de Lint in the shins.
Jilly Coppercorn has always been his main character, though she'd never before had a book of her own; she shone through all of his Newford stories, tangle-haired and fierce and so full of love that you couldn't be around her without feeling it, all of it wrapped in a shadow of old pain, but surpassing that shadow.
He always said she'd never have a book of her own. Mostly because she was his favorite character and, well, you can't give someone the lead in a book and not have Bad Stuff happen. But he finally gave in. Jilly was persistent.
The Onion Girl made me stamp my feet and want to throw things because it was wrong. He took from Jilly and gave nothing in return. He made her less. He made her the Broken Girl, as she said.
And said he wouldn't write her again, not as a main character.
And I was so angry. Because that's not how her story ends. Okay, in an ideal world, her story never ends, and Charles becomes immortal and never stops writing her, and I become immortal and never stop reading. And I get a pony. But even in this non-ideal world, I could not accept the Jilly at the end of The Onion Girl as the forever Jilly. It was wrong.
Jilly. Doesn't. Give. Up.
And I thought maybe Charles didn't know that. For all his gift, he has not been what he calls a Child of the Secret. He has not been pummeled to the ground repeatedly and risen up stronger each time. Maybe he does not know that when something breaks your body, it does not break you. It slows you. You need to work hard against it.
But, if you're anything like Jilly, you do not give up. Not after all of that. I wrote recently about people who've gone through the Bad Shit - how they know that they can fight through anything, because look what they've done already! Everything is surmountable. And when that's your life, you Know this. You can forget.... but only for a little while. It comes back.
Jilly drew Charles back into her story, against all of his intentions.
Healing is never painless. And maybe that's why Charles shied away from this book for so long.
But healing is necessary.
And he gave her that. These pages and words, this place to heal herself and become who she is once again, and more than ever.
This book is right.
Jilly Coppercorn has always been his main character, though she'd never before had a book of her own; she shone through all of his Newford stories, tangle-haired and fierce and so full of love that you couldn't be around her without feeling it, all of it wrapped in a shadow of old pain, but surpassing that shadow.
He always said she'd never have a book of her own. Mostly because she was his favorite character and, well, you can't give someone the lead in a book and not have Bad Stuff happen. But he finally gave in. Jilly was persistent.
The Onion Girl made me stamp my feet and want to throw things because it was wrong. He took from Jilly and gave nothing in return. He made her less. He made her the Broken Girl, as she said.
And said he wouldn't write her again, not as a main character.
And I was so angry. Because that's not how her story ends. Okay, in an ideal world, her story never ends, and Charles becomes immortal and never stops writing her, and I become immortal and never stop reading. And I get a pony. But even in this non-ideal world, I could not accept the Jilly at the end of The Onion Girl as the forever Jilly. It was wrong.
Jilly. Doesn't. Give. Up.
And I thought maybe Charles didn't know that. For all his gift, he has not been what he calls a Child of the Secret. He has not been pummeled to the ground repeatedly and risen up stronger each time. Maybe he does not know that when something breaks your body, it does not break you. It slows you. You need to work hard against it.
But, if you're anything like Jilly, you do not give up. Not after all of that. I wrote recently about people who've gone through the Bad Shit - how they know that they can fight through anything, because look what they've done already! Everything is surmountable. And when that's your life, you Know this. You can forget.... but only for a little while. It comes back.
Jilly drew Charles back into her story, against all of his intentions.
Healing is never painless. And maybe that's why Charles shied away from this book for so long.
But healing is necessary.
And he gave her that. These pages and words, this place to heal herself and become who she is once again, and more than ever.
This book is right.
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(Which was all your fault, by the way. :D)
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ps. You MUST read Dreams Underfoot, also by Charles de Lint.
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Anyway, I'll stop rambling now, it's just nice to find someone else who understands how much like family the Newford crew are. :)
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I think Charles de Lint knows more, in some deep, important way, than we will probably ever realize. Discovering his books in 1997 was a majorly life-changing experience for me.
Thank you for posting this entry. I'd been worried about reading Widdershins, but now I'm definitely going to get it.
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I couldn't read it. I had to put it down. I don't cry over much of anything at all, but that book made me BAWL. I didn't get more than halfway through it because it *HURT*. I almost didn't read any more de Lint because he is *TOO* good.
I read more of him, and I love him, but I've never finished The Onion Girl. If you say his new book fixes her, this pretty, lovely girl that he made me love and did all those horrible things to, then I might give it a second chance.
-Tug
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It seems like the longer I live, the more shit I go through, the easier it gets each time to pick myself back up and say, "Ya know what? I've done this already, and it didn't kill me THAT time either. Muah."
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But, if you're anything like Jilly, you do not give up. Not after all of that. I wrote recently about people who've gone through the Bad Shit - how they know that they can fight through anything, because look what they've done already! Everything is surmountable. And when that's your life, you Know this. You can forget.... but only for a little while. It comes back.
Thank you. I -so- needed to see that tonight, of all nights, and be reminded.
TechWolf
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However, they are slow. As in, glacier-like. The entire process took approx. 8-10 months of different sorts of tests and the like. At the end of the process, there were some issues with my physical (blood pressure) that resulted in me having Doctor visits, a polycystic kidney scare, and being put on diuretics. But after all that, it looked like I was in. And then out of the blue, the night you wrote this and I responded, I got a very impersonal e-mail telling me more or less, that even though I'd been dicked around by them for the past 10 months and everything looked OK, that no, it wasn't really okay, and I wasn't going to be considered for employment.
So basically, I had just gotten the news that the $10-20 an hour "raise" that I'd been sort-of-counting on for the past 10 months or so wasn't going to happen.. Definitely felt like the proverbial kick in the nuts.
However, having been reminded that hey, I've been through worse, and survived worse helped put it into perspective.
TW
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Gessi
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But I'm really glad Widdershins shows that, and I'm so looking forward to reading it!