The Onion Girl

After finishing Widdershins I decided I really needed to go back and re-read the Onion Girl. The book which Widdershins was kinda a sequel too. It was interesting to see how in this book there was a much less of the magical fairy tale type reality and much more of the real world. It seemed to be around two thirds of the book took place in the real world and most of that was about coping with abuse and tragedy.

The two main characters of the book, Jilly and Raylene had both been horribly abused as children. Jilly is a character whose appeared a lot before, Raylene was new. In this story Jilly was the "good" character and Raylene was "bad". Though I really didn't see it that simply in my mind. Jilly ran away from her brother, became a junkie and a prostitute and was "saved" by a social worker and given a chance to finish school, and became an artist whom everyone liked. In this story the tragedy she faces is being hit by a car and becoming crippled. Raylene seemed much stronger. She had a close friend she stayed with her whole life. Her friend gave her a knife and she was able to stand up to her brother, cut him so he'd stop abusing her. She was determined not to become a prostitute, and never got into drugs. She was strong and clever and used her knowledge to take care of her and her best friend. Though of course she also became a con artist and a thief, but she managed to pull herself up and never relied on outside help.

It was a very interesting book, without such heavy moralising, and without a happy ending, especially compared with Widdershins. It seemed less exciting but much more tragic. There was a lot more sitting around talking and a lot less going around and rescuing people. It was interesting to read the two back to back, and in the wrong order. I think I did prefer Widdershins, and you could probably read it without reading this one first, but they do go very well together. There's just a couple times where the gritty realism doesn't quite seem real enough. But I did really enjoy it, particularly the characterisation was very good. And as I said about Widdershins you can really picture everything that's happening and it totally absorbs you. It's good to go back and remember why you like an author so much.

Story of Jilly Coppercorn - long! Starts with her being hit by car. Before she can heal her body, though, she needs to heal old hurts inside - like facing the little sister she left behind when she ran away from home. Good beginning, okay ending, dragged a bit in the middle. I really like Jilly as a character in the other Newford books, but overall, I felt a little disappointed with this book that really focused on her own story.