Deerskin by Robin McKinley is a retelling of the fairy tale, Donkeyskin. I admit it's not a tale I was familiar with before I read this book, and I still haven't taken the time to seek out the original. (Perhaps I should make this a priority...) Anyway, I've posted about Robin McKinley in Memory Monday's before (here I talk about her general influence on me as a reader and here I focus specifically on Beauty.) I have always been the type who goes out of my way to find other books an author has written when I find I really like a book they've written. So, seeing that this was also a fairy tale retelling, I picked up a copy to read. In 8th grade.
From what I do know of the original tale, Donkeyskin is just as disturbing and unsettling as Deerskin. Princess Lissar is the young daughter of a fairy tale couple. No seriously — there is magic in their world, and the her father was one of many suitors to win the hand of the most beautiful woman in all the lands. They fell in love at first site and that love motivated him and gave him and gave him the strength and ability to complete the challenging quest. They marry and are deliriously in love. But when a love is that consuming, when love is that obsessive, it can become tainted and corrupted. They become so focused on and full of each other that there is not room for anyone else, not even their daughter. Always alone, Lissar is delighted when a neighboring prince sends her a dog from his prized brood. Lissar names her Ash, and they become inseparable.
Things are fine, and each of the characters are settled into their roles. But then, the queen falls ill. Afraid of losing her beauty and living when she is no longer the most beautiful woman of all, she allows herself to waste away to nothing. After the queen dies, the king is overwhelmed by grief. While the queen lived, they were so caught up in each other that they had very little attention to spare for their daughter, so she is used to being on her own. But as the king becomes more and more consumed by his grief, and the whispers that Lissar is the exact replica of her mother become stronger and louder, things start to change. Lissar doesn't know what to with all the extra attention from her father, growing more and more uncomfortable until it culminates in an announcement that shocks and horrifies her. Her father announced to the whole court that he would marry his daughter after her birthday. Sickened and terrified, she locks herself in her chambers with her beloved Ash, but the door cannot hold forever and on the third night, her father breaks into her chambers and brutally rapes and beats her. Near death, Lissar takes Ash and flees. The Moon Goddess appears to Lissar and heals hear, removing the painful memories until Lissar has healed enough to be able to handle them.
There is more to the story of Deerskin than this. Far more. There is much to say about Lissar's time in her mountain safe haven where she begins to heal, or down in the neighboring kingdom where lives Ossin, the prince who long ago gave her Ash. There is much to say about Ossin himself. But, this is a post about my memories of the book and the beginning of the story is what filled and took over my mind any time I thought about this book. A few years after I had originally read this book, I was talking to a friend who was thinking about reading it, and I couldn't remember anything beyond knowing that I *think* I liked it when I finished reading it, and that it disturbed me.
I think that I understood as an 8th grader that this book was not actually aimed at me. That I was not currently in the books targeted age bracket. I was too young. This is one of the few of McKinley's books that is specifically aimed at adults. And so, wanting to give the book a fair chance, I decided that I would reread it. And I did. I reread the book two years ago (I think) and am happy to say that, although the book did still disturb me, I genuinely liked it and would read it again. I think that now, I understand more of why the story is told as it is, and now I am disturbed as the story intended me to be, rather than as a 13 year old who wasn't old enough to be the story's target audience.
The is one of the darker retellings out there. You can't have a story based around incest without darker elements creeping into the story, especially given the way the father's inappropriate desires begin to form for his daughter. This is a book that I do recommend, a book that I think is worth the read. This is a book that I will be interested to reread in the future, so I can once again compare how my thoughts and feelings regarding the book have changed as I have gotten older and as I change.
