Where did Shahrazad get all those stories that she told the Sultan in The Thousand and One Nights? Susan Fletcher provides the answer: from all available sources. I always thought she just made them up, using her creative imagination. The author lets us know that storytelling is an art that takes years to develop, years of research into old stories. She also emphasizes the mental skill of memory; you have to practice, just like an actress practices her lines.
My interest in Shadow Spinner became more involved when I realized the author was introducing another storyteller into her mysterious web. I wanted to know who this Marjan was and how she became a storyteller; I wanted to follow her into the Sultan’s palace to meet Shahrazad. Every awkward step that Marjan takes because of her crippled foot becomes a step toward becoming a storyteller. At first there is hesitation and shyness; the words that Marjan tries to relate to Shahrazad are unsure, full of doubt and shallow. Then Marjan becomes more confident and her story flows like a river in a dry desert. We become part of Marjan’s life and we feel her pain as she hobbles from place to place, trying to help Shahrazad recover an important story.
What is this important story about? And who knows this story? It’s a story that the Sultan desperately needs to hear. And only one person remembers this story – a mysterious storyteller. Finding the story and the storyteller becomes the major plot of the story. Marjan becomes the messenger who carries this story to Shahrazad. The story in the end saves Marjan’s life and Shaharazad’s life.
What is this important story all about? Why is it so important to the Sultan? These questions are the driving force behind Susan Fletcher’s Shadow Spinner.
Shadow Spinner by Susan Fletcher
Review by Teacher Wigowsky
For Middle School grades (6-8)
How do you tell an old story and bring new life to it?
Ans. Introduce a new main character and add a new twist.
How do you put a classic like The Thousand and One Nights in a framework that makes the picture look like an original and not just a reproduction?
Ans. Provide a new answer to the question of who the real storyteller was.
How do you reveal the secrets of the storyteller’s craft while weaving a tale within a tale?
Ans. Start each chapter with a framed “prologue-insight,” which not only tells the reader what the chapter is about, but also gives an insight into the art of arousing curiosity in the reader’s mind.
Susan Fletcher in Shadow Spinner spins an old tale with such skill and dexterity that it almost feels like a window is provided in each of the 23 chapters through which the reader watches the writer steadily weave a fantastic tale on the loom of old Arabic legends, folklore, and culture. You first see the shadow of the author stealthily introduce her young female main character by using the first person narrative form: “You can never really know what’s going to happen to a person in this life. What actually became of me, no one would have guessed.” Even though the author never uses the old Persian word “KISMET,” which means fate or destiny, the entire story of young Marjan is framed by that Arabian concept.
When Marjan meets Shahrazad, fate brings together two great storytellers, one who was great in “spinning shadows” (which are like an echo of a familiar sound, or a retelling of an old tale) to neighborhood children, and the other who was reweaving threads of familiar tales to the Sultan. Both learn the lesson that “stories can save your life.” Marjan learns that lesson after finally trusting her instincts and inner talent for story-telling; Shahrazad learns it after admitting her dependence on other storytellers to assist her with the storytelling process.
It’s amazing how the thread of old tales and the thread of a new tale are so interwoven that it appears to be a patterned two-sided magical carpet that whisks through magical lands of bygone days – it could be ancient Persia, Arabia, China, or India – and darts through alleys, bazaars, humble homes, palaces, and yes, even harems. The word “harem” seems to evoke an image not only of an oriental palace with a group of women serving a common king or sultan, but it also has a feeling of something “forbidden” to an outsider. When the crippled Marjan enters the exclusive harem of the Sultan, she quickly learns how to survive as a woman in a male-dominated Arab world. She uses her mind and quick-thinking wit to overcome her crippling handicap; she admires Shahrazad for “never giving up”; she befriends a crazy pigeon-lover named Zaynab, who proves to be very helpful at crucial times; she learns to trust people who help her out of dangerous situations; yes, this story is really about Marjan, the heroine who saves Shahrazad from a predictable death by the cruel Sultan.
Being a storyteller of old tales, according to author Susan Fletcher, is the same as being “a keeper of ancient lore,” a collector of “the wisdom of the world.” The old tales endure a long, long time, especially if the storyteller somehow puts a personal truth into the fabric of the story line. Even the personal truth of the desire to see women treated equally, can take on a life of its own. Love, friendship, forgiveness – all those elusive truths become very important as the story unfolds, and both Marjan and Shahrazad fight the battle to save the women of the Sultan’s realm from his personal vengeance. The truth that “Love conquers All” is the eternal truth which serves as an example for generations of readers of this magical story.
What would a story about the ancient Arabian Nights be without a magician? Unexciting! So the author does not disappoint the reader and provides a magician who weaves a different kind of magic. It’s not the magic of a genii or a magical lamp, like in the familiar Aladdin story. It’s more in the realm of magic words, like in Ali Baba’s “Open Sesame.” The magician we learn about little by little is a good Samaritan who rescues young girls from become brides of the murderous Sultan. He is a friend to Marjan and teaches her lessons about life and storytelling in a manner similar to the way the author gently and affectionately does the same to young readers. The mysterious magician is the surprise that the author saves for the final trick in good storytelling.
Links to other sites on the Web
Book Review written in January, 2001
after being told the author was coming to our school
in Hubbard, Oregon
