The Apple and The Pearl by Rym Kechacha
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 £7.99 ebook
As dawn breaks on All Souls Day, the lingering mists part to unveil an unending vista of serried gravestones. Between them looms a theatre like a haunted house from a horror film and the sleek iron carapace of a steam train - the Pearl. On board are the cast, orchestra and crew of a travelling ballet company, performing a show called The Apple and the Pearl.
Nine o' clock in the morning and as he stumbles toward the restaurant car the lighting director, Zach, is introduced to a new recruit, Lara. “Have you ever worked in ballet before?” he asks her and quickly follows up with, “Have you had any contact with the supernatural?”
Everyone from the principal ballerina to the first violinist, from the wardrobe mistress to the newest members of the corps de ballet does everything they can to get the show on stage and looking fantastic. But in the world of The Apple and The Pearl these artists also have to contend with the malevolent glamour of an audience of Fae creatures only too eager to snatch them away into the Otherworld.
Whisper it gently in case our bosses hear us, but I suspect we often read fantasy to get away from the world weariness that a shift at work can give us. However, there are aspects of a workspace when the right people gathering in the right place where we can create something special, where we get to do the things that we are actually good at what we do. A workplace like any community is ultimately people, each with their own reasons for being there, their own feuds, secrets and ambitions. In Rym Kechacha’s mesmerising fantasy novel The Apple and The Pear we are taken to a magical ballet troupe who perform for the powerful fae on a nightly basis, creating magic, risking their lives and yet this novel reminds us that it’s really the human beings who often bring the real magic to any environment.
It is All Souls Day, and a steam engine appears in a mysterious graveyard. It is known as The Pearl. A theatre appears nearby and once again the train’s occupants prepare to perform the ballet known as The Apple and the Pearl. The troupe work for an entity known as the Crow, they have pledged a year’s service to perform the roles they are best suited from star performer, chef, tailor to every member of the orchestra. The show offers a chance to do something special, but everyone knows you must be careful as the fae audience will always try to steal a human to take them back to Faerie and then they will never return to the show or our world. The show however must always go on.
Its one of the most pleasing moments I get when a book completely gives me something very different to digest and The Apple and The Pearl is a fascinating gorgeous mosaic of surprises. If I tell you that it’s a set around a ballet performing for the fae I suspect then that we would all thinking that the story would be focused on the stage at the front; the special effects budget of the novel pushed to the max and perhaps some fae politics and lots of front-stage theatrical drama. Kechacha however delivers something beautifully different – yes there is magic but it’s the magic of the back of house. Over the course of the novel leading up to the show (which you will see parts performed and yes there is spectacle) but here the focus is what actually makes the art? What drives us to create art? From set design, lighting, costume making to the body-aching level of rehearsal needed every day We slowly rotate through the Company, and each section of the book picks a new central character and we watch the interactions each has with the wider cast. It’s a spellbinding complexly structured mosaic novel where we see how each character is shown to be so many things at once.
We get a heartbroken man being tormented with constant music. A dancer who hates eating finding a chef who will do anything to make his love find a meal he can eat. A changeling swapped human dumped into the 21st century who wishes they could return to that dreadful and amazing fae realm. A couple on the verge of falling in love, a incredibly struct dance teacher who nurses a torrent of grief and so much more. Kechacha explores people finding the work they love, admitting they no longer need the work, knowing they’re too old for the work and those who do it for reasons other than work – the camaraderie, the lust, the love and so much more.
The writing is just gorgeous from images of the land of faeries that is beautiful and terrifying, how words and poetry mirror the joy of the dance and the emotional pulls and turmoil people face on a daily basis. Each set piece is just fascinating and as we spin though the Company, we see how a character changes from what everyone sees externally to what is going on internally in their hearts which may or may not change our opinion of them. It’s a sweeping trip of a novel creating a workplace that in a few hundred pages is as complex as any fantasy kingdom and a reminder that our own inner worlds and external communities can themselves create a strange kind of magic.
Now some of you may think but Womble I want that spectacle and fear not there is still quite a lot of magic. There will still be blood pledge magics, the constant risk of people being taken and never seen again. A technician who definitely seems not fully human and then for good measure we have the bigger supernatural entities that this how is but part of. The mysterious Crow who shifts shape and non-verbally directs the company to various characters who seem to sit in the boundaries of our world. Kechacha is never explicit in explaining what everyone is and how it all works but the sense is we are touching something much bigger than a human mind can quite grasp. The work is essential but we’ll never quite be told fully why and for me I love magic that does not come with an instruction manual. Mysteries that long after reading you have to decide if your head canon works and leave it at that. Those just after spectacle may be disappointed but I think more seasoned fantasy fans will really enjoy what this story has to say about how we humans create something by working together together. And often art drives us to do so on levels no one ever fully understands.
I’ve enjoyed Kechahca’s work before and this is a fascinating and unexpected delight. It makes me think about the times I’ve been the new kind on the block who knows nothing, the expert everyone needs to the veteran thinking why do I want to do this again and all those feelings should I think make you consider those times when groups clicked (and sometimes did not). It’s a gorgeous reminder that fantasy can be far more than simply quests, epic battles and sometimes magic is smaller yet intricate and always beautiful. I strongly recommend this book for a brilliant and different trip into the fantastic.
