The Snow Spider Trilogy by Jenny Nimmo

Snow Spider Trilogy by Jenny Nimmo

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I think what is really interesting in books is where they start to get away from you. I know that makes no sense so let’s work it through a little and see where we end up. Every book has an edge, I think, a space where you know what the story is and you know it very clearly. And then there’s the edge where beyond that, you might know what the story might be but maybe you don’t. Maybe there’s an intimation as what that story might be, a suggestion as to where the plot might go, maybe it’s all mapped out, sharp as day, and maybe it’s not. That’s the edge. The barrier between what you know and what you don’t. The moment where the what if gets in.

(I think this all ties in with some other thoughts that I’ve been having. I was at a thing recently where they said that writing for children should be simple, direct, uncomplicated. And that’s fine advice in some senses, but equally I found it really bothered me. I think that there should be some things that are unknown. Words that you’ve never come across but you can make out from context. Ideas that you might not understand then but all of a sudden do. Things that simmer away and then come to the boil. It is alright to have things not make sense. It is alright to have a bit of a story remain unknown to you).

And so this brings us to The Snow Spider trilogy, a series I have been meaning to read forever and apparently read in 2015 and rated as two stars? Reader, I was an idiot. Or perhaps, more accurately, more kindly, I was reading differently then. People change and books change and finally, when I came back to it now, I adored it. I loved the unknowable edge of it. I loved the way that Nimmo presents you with a rather traditional form of story, one that’s familiar and understood, a boy coming into his self, a story of growing up and coming to terms with tragedy, a story of language and myth and folklore; familiar, familiar, and then all of a sudden: not.

All of a sudden: the slender edge of the world, the world beyond that, a silver spider, people from myth and legend becoming fact and truth, a simple, straightly told story with a dark and unknowable depth, traumas being confronted on the wild edge of the mountain, people standing up when the world tells them to sit, all of it so familiar, so unfamiliar, so full of wilderness.

And every now and then, a moment where the story took its own rhythm and became something happening, almost without me, existing so vibrantly and so endlessly into the dark –

There is a lot to love here. There’s a lot to love in how genuinely Nimmo frames her story and how the immediate demands of the everyday butt up against the wildly magical. I loved how there were moments when I felt myself wondering where this was going to go and what it was going to go do and I loved, loved, loved that I didn’t know. This book got away from me and all I could do was run and keep up. I loved it, I adored it.

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