Hans Christian Anderson wrote the tale of “The Little Mermaid” in 1837. Since then, it has been revised and retconned and retold in numerous ways. This month, Geek Speak writers are hard at work reviewing many re-imagined fairy tales and it seems that we are awash with a new version of old mythologies. “The Little Mermaid” happens to be my favorite fairy tale. A fantastical creature falls in love with a human prince and saves his life. Because she loves him, she sacrifices her tail, her family, and her comfort to be with him. When he doesn’t marry her, she is given the choice to kill him and return to the sea. Instead, she dissolves into sea foam.

I won’t talk much about Disney (although it is possibly the most famous retcon), except to say that when I was in the fourth grade, I was deeply disappointed that Ariel lived and that there was little to no sacrifice at all in the story. Frankly, I don’t know if that means I have a poetic heart or I need to seek therapy. I was instantly heartened to see that Carolyn Turgeon, for the most part, follows the story faithfully. The few twists only add deeper layers to the story, strengthening the bonds of love and friendship.

Lenia is a mermaid who is obsessed with the “upper world” of human beings. Living on her grandmother’s tales of humans with souls, she is fascinated by the idea of souls living forever. However, she is only allowed to view this world one time, on her eighteenth birthday. When the time comes, she swims to the surface, only to witness a large shipwreck. People don’t die like merpeople (who turn to foam), and so given the chance to save one, she carries a man to the shore and falls in love with him. She calls to a girl, Margrethe, to save him. Margrethe, a princess hiding in a convent, saves the man and falls in love with him too. When she finds out he is the prince of a warring kingdom, she resolves to marry him and bring peace to the land. Meanwhile Lenia gives up everything: her family, friends, and even has her tongue cut out, to turn human and be with the prince. However, if he marries someone else, she will turn to sea foam and die.

The thing I did like, that others may not, is that the cover did not really live up to the actual story. On the cover, it promises that this is “A Twist on the Classic Tale” and the praise is all for a dark, gothic novel. Frankly, anyone who is looking for a darker tale than the original is probably never going to get it. After all, the original involves mutilation, a constant feeling of walking on swords, and plenty of death and sacrifice. That the author also included all of these original parts makes it plenty dark, but not darker. Furthermore, there were only little twists. Should I mention them? Probably not, because it would spoil the only surprises in the book, which remains incredibly faithful to the original. If you are looking for the Disney version, however, you are out of luck as this is much darker and gruesome than just singing lobsters (which are frightening enough). Last, the description reads like these women are in deep competition, but I never really got that. I think that kind of suggestion makes the prince a more central figure, when I felt that he was more of a macguffin than a fully realized character.

One way that this book does differ from the fairy tale quite a bit is that you get both the perspective of the princess and the mermaid. Furthermore, the two women meet and forge a great friendship. It is only through terrible circumstance that they even compete with each other. However, they do retain the bonds of camaraderie. In fact, what I loved the most in this story is that the true love here isn’t between the prince and these women rivals. Indeed, Margrethe seems to love Lenia more than anyone else, and perhaps only fell in love with the prince because of Lenia. There is a lot of talk in the pop culture media about the phenomenon known as bromance, but this was really about the power of true friendship between women overcoming all obstacles. There is no doubt that the women do love the prince, but something inside me felt for the first time since watching Big Love that everyone could have worked something out (and been together) if only they had known the full truth at the right time.

Any reader should also be aware that there are some pacing issues as well. Although this usually doesn’t bother me, the progression of time wasn’t particularly clear, and some chapters seemed to take a day while others took months. Moreover, I was expecting the mermaid world to be more… alien and unfamiliar. Instead, it seemed like the human world, except it was under water. This could possibly be because of the original story and its lack of merimagination, but if a book is going to retell a story anyway, it always helps to make things better than keep them the same. It would have been nice to have a deeper understanding of merculture and see how it was distinctly alien to human life. I think this would have also made Lenia’s cognitive dissonance more sympathetic once she’s in the upper world.

Despite these flaws, the book is definitely a great read. Coupled with a few glasses of mead and a chocolate cupcake (which is how I enjoyed it), it is a great companion on a rainy day, when you start to look at the water dripping on the windowpane, and wonder what it would like to swim underwater and turn to foam at the end of a long life.

   -- Sara Paige