The Lady, The Tiger And the Girl Who Loved Death by Helen Marshall

I would like to thank Titan for an advance copy of this novel in exchange for a fair and honest review

Publisher – Titan

Published – Out Now

Price – £9.99 paperback £6.99 ebook

As Sara Sidorova hovers between life and death, she is visited by Amba, the tiger god who will devour creation if he is released from the chains that bind him. Amba gives Sara an extraordinary gift: a glimpse into the future.

Years later, her granddaughter Irenda will grow up in a war-torn country where survival means obedience. When a devastating attack robs her of her parents, she travels to Hrana City. There, her grandmother agrees to teach her the ultimate secret: how to tame death. In the circus, amongst the magicians, the strongmen and the contortionists, she will start down a dangerous road, to carry out a revenge decades in the making... and bring justice into the world for herself and for her family.

Rich with glamour and strangeness, brutality and deceit and the dark magic of the circus, this haunting fable from a multi award-winning author will chill your bones and make your heart ache.

Go to any discussion on books and at some point, someone will talk about the power of stories often in a positive life. But while stories can inspire us or make us change ourselves, they also have the power to entrap, to destroy and make us accept that which is not true. Propaganda can equally be called a story. In Helen Marshall’s beautiful, hypnotic and surprising fantasy novel The Lady, The Tiger And The Girl Who Loved Death we follow several generations of women in a dangerous country as they try to save themselves but this time their stories may encourage the end of everything. One of the most impressive years of my reading year so far.

The country of Strana is yet again at war. A young woman named Sara Sidorova is already a widow, carrying their first child and trying to escape enemy soldiers. Racing across dangerous countryside she is shot and as her blood touches the ground, she finds herself in front of two goddess-like entities known as the Evening and Morning Star who also guard Amba an immense Tiger who once finally freed from his chains will destroy the universe. Sara Sidova is going to get a unique choice she is about to hear of her future life and her granddaughter to come Irenda. She will see all the heartache and pain that is to come, and she can decide to end not just her life but the rest of the universe to prevent such pain coming to pass.

This is not your standard fantasy novel as hopefully the summary above has already started to hint. We combine a gritty east European style state which eternally spies and torments its own citizens with circuses filled with illusion and standing to one side three gods and a human woman who can decide the fate of the universe. We do not follow a linear generational story as just as soon as we meet Sara with her being shot, then we skip decades ahead to Irenda now a young woman herself estranged from her grandmother and recently lost both parents to internal terrorism. Alone the two women are finally reunited but Sara decides to help Irenda follow her own heart’s desire she must now join the city’s circus which is quite key to the ruling regime’s own messages to the people and may soon play a role in the possibility for either revolution or a new tyrant.

Marshall uses elements of folklore combined with a very unique tale very much itself. There are echoes of older tales told throughout from the Baba Yaga to tiger gods and many more but just because we think we know the shape and outcome of old tales doesn’t mean this will play out as you’d expect. Marshall plays with the reader creating the echoes of stories within this repressive regime and then subverts what happens next – well timed to shock and remind us that stories show human being at our best and worst. In many ways Irenda becomes the book’s main character as we watch her grow up quickly in the oppressive Hrana City where everyone is watching someone and one wrong move can quickly lead to people being disappeared and then forgotten. The stories everyone self-edits to protect themselves while in the circus the shows here using national folklore also can help promote its own leadership and their agendas and we show the shows are part of wider way of controlling the narrative and Irenda finds herself soon key to a decision on the future and again this surprises us. Irenda is no reviolutionary leader and in some ways seems a little too keen to end her own life out of her won grief over losing her mother. Even Sara and Irenda’s reunion is not the touching re-united family tale that we are expecting. It’s a story to keep us on our toes and just like Irenda we find stories have their limits to comfort us.

Even while Marshall shows us the limitations though the framing device of Sara seeing the future does give this tale a fantastical element. A woman not just seeing what her own future looks like but that her granddaughter is in a s much danger as she found herself prior to being shot. Cycles within cycles is a recurring theme and you can’t help noticing that Irenda too finds herself guarding a circus Tiger known as Amba who seems a small imitation of the godlike being hungrily awaiting to be let loose on creation sitting next to Sara. The past and future seem combined here to create its own tale. All of which Marshall makes feel vivid through their writing this is a tale full of colour or shadow where the vibrant artificial strangeness of the circus stage neatly contrasts with the grey and oppressive Hrana City where blood stains and bullet holes can be easily spotted once you look for them. Yet for all that darkness and sense of futility this is a story where there is sometimes a possibility of hope that a story can change the world, often we may be proved wrong but just occasionally it can work. Marshall knows when to offer a possibility of light even in all this shadow. It’s a tale of people growing up, exploring their own sense of power and limitations and still just trying to do what feels right for them.

When a story keeps you guessing on its eventual outcome all the way through is a delight and when combined with this level of storytelling and creativity makes it a huge pleasure to read. Beguiling, mystical, dangerous and yet also strangely hopeful this is a book well worth falling into and preparing for a most unusual trip to the past and beyond. It is very strongly recommended!