I am a big fan of the retelling genre. While I recognize not all retellings create a significant take on the original story, I do think there are a lot of well-done retellings that create an entirely new work out of a familiar concept.
There is something supremely entertaining to me about knowing the general direction of a story (because I’m familiar with the original work), yet being surprised at every turn by the new details, ideas, or themes a different author is presenting through a retelling. I love seeing authors flex their imagination, and I think sometimes this is easier with a retelling as they don’t have to do ALL the work. They have the bones, but they get to flesh the story out in whichever way they want.
Though I’m clearly interesting in retellings, I haven’t gorged myself on the novels that have come out in recent years. I’ve read a few, to be sure, but I view these periods as similar to when The Hunger Games kicked off the dystopian era. While dystopian literature has been around since the conception of humanity, The Hunger Games certainly repopularized it within the YA genre. There were more dystopian novels and trilogies than one could count, and very few of them lived up to the trilogy that started this resurgence.
Because I was alive, aware, and avidly consuming all YA books during this time period, I saw first hand how gimmicky some books could be when they were emulating more popular books of the same style. Retellings are another genre that has been popular since there were stories to be retold, but has been repopularized within YA. I’m not falling for this trick again, so I’ve only read a handful of titles that are generally well-regarded as good retellings. These would include The Lunar Chronicles, Circe, Song of Achilles, Heartless, Sea Witch, Uprooted, Spinning Silver, and a few others.
As you can see, these are all books that were published quite a while ago. I haven’t read any retellings recently, so when I saw Kaikeyi pop up in my Kindle deals I was intrigued. Kaikeyi is the story of a young woman who is touched by the gods. The reader follows her life as she undergoes great trials in order to save her world and her family from outside forces and the workings of the gods themselves. It sounded interesting, and it had a unique quality that pulled me in.
Kaikeyi draws from Indian mythology which made it very unique in so far as where the inspiration is drawn from. To me, at least. I’d never read a retelling that draws from Indian culture, and that was the main aspect that drew me to this novel. Retellings of common fairytales or of popular Greek myths have saturated the market, so I was excited to see a retelling of a mythology I was mostly unfamiliar with.
Unfortunately, I found Kaikeyi to be fairly average. The writing was simplistic, and the chronology of the story seemed odd, making the climactic events have less impact on the reader. It’s not a bad book by any means, but I don’t think I would recommend it unless you’re looking for a retelling that isn’t the usually Greek/Egyptian/Nordic gods or fairytales. In that aspect, it does shine for its originality.
I did think the exposition was well-balanced throughout the novel. It appeared the author knew her audience may not be familiar with stories of Indian culture, so she was sure to include a lot of detail here. Rather than give large info dumps, she uses the idea of the main character passing some of these stories on to her children as a way to impart information to the reader. I thought this was especially clever as it allowed her to “dumb down” some of the terminology for us, the readers, as the character in the book was speaking to children.
As I said, I don’t think I would say it was a particularly well-written story, but if you’re voraciously consuming every retelling you can find, this would not be a bad one to read.
Reading this novel and refamiliarizing myself with the idea of retellings has had me thinking about why we’re so fascinated with this genre. I think the most obvious reason is that they’re generally more entertaining than the original myths and fairytales these writings are based on. Retellings can also make a classic work (with elevated language) more accessible to young readers. However, I think there are bigger reasons as to why we enjoy these books so much.
Part of our enjoyment likely has a lot to do with nostalgia. Most of us grew up with fairytales, and seeing them rewritten as these epic novels both takes us back to our childhood as well as gives us a new, unique view into the world. Similarly, retellings of myths gives us a new perspective on a well-known story.
To this last point, I think this is one of the biggest reasons why people enjoy these retellings so much. Many of them give a voice to characters that were used simply as plot-devices, or whose actions were presented in a way that completely villainized them. For example, Ursula was never given any backstory as to why she was so evil, or why she wanted to harm Ariel. Not every villain needs a backstory, but it is very interesting when we catch a glimpse into a villain’s motives. It makes it easier for us to sympathize with the character.
This sort of retelling also allows readers to spend more time with a character they particularly enjoyed. If you thought the Queen of Hearts was fascinating when you first read Alice in Wonderland, it would be a real treat to read Heartless and be able to see how the character evolved. I guess in that instance it isn’t so much a retelling as it is an origin story, but you know what I mean.
For books like Song of Achilles or The Lunar Chronicles (true retellings), we see the story presented from a different perspective. The characters have a lot more agency than they do in the original publication, and their personalities are much more fleshed-out. Not to mention, fantasy adaptations like The Lunar Chronicles have a lot more happening plot-wise than the original story. There’s a cyborg Cinderella, Rapunzel is trapped in space rather than in a tower, and the princes of the story are much more than just pretty prince charmings. This isn’t to say the original stories aren’t great, but I think people are so interested in these retellings because of the extent the writers go to in order to create a more imaginative world. It adds so many new layers to a once well-known tale.
I really enjoy the genre of retellings and I hope with the recent rise in popularity we get a few quality books out of it. Maybe in the near future I’ll subject myself to reading some of the more recent publications so that I can give updated recommendations. I’m looking forward to it already.
The Lit Wiz