Tag Archives: fantasy fiction

Bird Summons: Light, Lyrical Lockdown Reading

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I’m almost ashamed to say that I had never heard of the multi-award-winning author Leila Aboulela. Bird Summons – her fifth novel – can be described as both Scottish and Muslim fiction; and yet, as a Scottish Muslim who loves to read, she had not been on my radar at all.

What a treat I had in store.

Bird Summons hinges upon a simple enough premise. Three beautifully, realistically flawed Arab-Scottish women embark upon a journey – a pilgrimage, of sorts – to the remote Highlands, ostensibly to visit the grave of Lady Evelyn Cobbold: “the first British woman to perform the pilgrimage to Mecca, to educate themselves about the history of Islam in Britain, to integrate better by following the example of those who were of this soil and of their faith”.

Ostensibly is a good word. Bird Summons is so much than first presents itself. What begins as a nuanced bildungsroman of three immigrant women spanning their forties, thirties and twenties – Salma, Moni and Iman – soon becomes something much more. Into this blend Aboulela seamlessly incorporates ancient folklore stemming from the storytelling traditions of Scotland, India and the Arab world, creating something altogether more enchanting and thoroughly unique. As the threads of the three friends’ lives began to unravel, it was this new thread of allegory and parable that heightened the intrigue for me.

Be prepared: what starts as a story pleasantly grounded in realism, becomes increasingly, thoroughly and enjoyably weird. And yet it never jars. Aboulela makes it easy to embrace the fantastical.

Bird Summons also reads as a sort of love letter to Scotland, and the Highlands in particular. Aboulela’s sympathetic descriptions of the physical landscape her characters traverse certainly evoked a nostalgic, somewhat patriotic twinge for my homeland.

Special thanks to my childhood best friend for gifting me this novel and introducing me to this ‘new’ canon of work. You always promised you’d take me to Stonehaven, and I consider this a promise fulfilled. When they all converged on Dunnottar castle, I thought of you.

Bird Summons, by Leila Aboulela, was published in 2019 by Weidenfeld & Nicolson. It was a Guardian Best Book of 2019; shortlisted for the Saltire Fiction Book of the Year 2019; and longlisted for the Highland Book prize 2019.

Reviewed by Nadia Tariq

 

SISTER SCRIBES GUEST: R L FEARNLEY ON ELVES, ENCHANTMENTS AND EMANCIPATION

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Becci is a sister scribe from Reading Writers  – as well as being on the committee together and going to  the regular meetings, we like to write together in local cafés. She writes under the name R.L. Fearnley and is a fantasy poet and novelist, performing her poetry all across the country and delivering creative writing workshops in a variety of settings. Her poetry collection, ‘Octopus Medicine’ was published under ‘Becci Louise’ by Two Rivers Press in 2017. She is working on her first novel.

Lonely children love other worlds. I know this because I was a lonely child. I found solace in alternative landscapes filled with dragons, wizards and magic. The idea of riding on the back of a fire-breathing monster was one of the few things that made me feel powerful. I loved the stories of dragon-riding heroes and farm-boys-turned-champions. It made me feel that anyone, no matter how humble and invisible, could have the potential for more. I devoured these stories with gusto; Christopher Paolini’s ‘Eragon’ was a favourite, as was J.R.R. Tolkein’s ‘The Hobbit’ and C.S. Lewis’ ‘Chronicles of Narnia’. Of course, I wrote my own stories too. Looking back on them now, I see a fatal flaw that I was, perhaps, too young or too socially conditioned to see.

Where are all the women in fantasy stories?

To be fair, they are there. You see them in the flowing golden locks of Tolkein’s Galadriel, the serious and distant personality of Paolini’s Aryen and Lewis’ stuck-up, lipstick-loving Susan, where liking make-up is apparently reason enough to get you thrown out of Narnia. Women in fantasy when I was growing up all seemed to look the same. You knew you were reading a ‘strong, fantastical female’ if she:

  • Was an elf of some description
  • Had almond-shaped eyes (whatever that means)
  • Had high cheek bones
  • Had full lips
  • Had ‘ivory skin’ (looked dead or never saw sunlight)
  • Had long flowing hair, usually black or blonde.

Normally, she was tall, aloof and had no sense of humour. She was ferocious with a sword but devoid of personality. She was almost always the motive for action or the trophy at the end of it. She was, actually, quite boring.

I notice, from my early teenage attempts to write fantasy stories, that all the ones with female protagonists were unfinished. I just couldn’t seem to write them. I thought, in my youth, that it was because I liked doing ‘boy stuff’, like climbing trees and hunting insects, so of course I empathised with male characters more. Now, I think I just read very few fantasy narratives in which women were written as if they were real people.

Fortunately, a recent flurry of phenomenal female fantasy writers is challenging this trend. Jen Williams’ brilliant ‘Copper Cat’ trilogy has a fierce, humorous central female character who knows what she wants and goes out to get it. N.K. Jemisin’s stunning ‘Broken Earth’ Trilogy is populated with female characters displaying the range of human strength and vice, and her female characters are almost exclusively of colour (another thing you rarely see in fantasy!) Naomi Novik’s brilliant protagonist in ‘Uprooted’, who’s growth is joyous to witness, also pushes female-centred fantasy to new heights. And I find, suddenly, that I have plenty of inspiration. I no longer read books where I, a woman, am irrelevant. I realise that I don’t have to write ‘women’ in my stories, I just have to write ‘people’. It should not be a revelation to see that these two things are not mutually exclusive. After all, in worlds where anything is possible, why can’t the quiet, plain girl at the back of the class be the one who takes up the sword and slays the troll?