Tom, Thom by K.M. Ferebee
My rating: 4/5 cats
He looks at this frail thing, his little brother. This not-quite-human bundle of limbs. He should feel love. Instead, he feels tired. Unequal to the task. Somewhere deep inside him, a twinge of dread begins.
it is entirely possible i gave this a fourth star cat on the strength of its “cover.” because now that i’m rereading it for review, i’m enjoying it at a high-three-star cat level, which is splitting hairs and a distinction that means nothing to anyone apart from me—i’m just sharing my feelings with you. and my feelings are at high-three level.
this is a changeling story with some moves i haven’t encountered in my (admittedly limited) readings in changeling tales. in this one, there is no exchange; the two creatures coexist under one roof as doubles (mon semblable, mon frère!), until the “new” boy develops his own human features that are more brother than twin. he does retain a bit of his wolfish wildness
but to a diminished postwar-england family who has already suffered and lost so much, it’s easy for a mother to overlook a little wildness in an adopted son.
“Would you mind so much, having a brother, just for a little bit?”
okay, i changed my mind again, because changeling stories have that effect on their readers. i have decided this is indeed a four-star cat-for-karen read. as i’m rereading more of it, i’m appreciating more of it, and i should just stop rereading now before i change my mind again and confuse my poor old brain.
“Do you not mind when I ask you about it?”
“Why would I mind?”
“Mum says I shouldn’t. You might be sad. That’s what she thinks.”
Thom blinks slowly. His eyes are wide, bright, foreign. He says, “I’m sad anyways.”
see, part of my “meh” was the overuse of short simple sentences:
When Tom is seven years old, he dreams of wolves. He lives by the woods. His father is dead. His mother takes in washing from the little town of Leynmouth. Washing is how we make ends meet, she says. In the mornings she washes, and she listens to the wireless. The radio reports the forecast from the North Sea.
and
Tom wonders why his mother would tell him a lie. He turns his face towards the blanket. He can hear the wolves out in the forest. Their broad paws leave prints. They let their tongues loll. They turn their bright eyes towards him.
these give the story a staccato rhythm ill-suited to fairytales, which i associate with more languid prose. but they are really only jarring at the beginning (even if it’s a reread of the beginning) and as the story deepens, there are fewer instances of them, so ignore all that junk i said up there and let’s talk about this instead, because good lord, this made me rapacious as a wolf myself:
He is given bread with butter and jam. He licks the seedy jam off his fingers. He is mouse-quiet; he can see his mother is thinking. He cuts more bread to toast over the fire.
The other boy comes creeping, step by shuffled step, from the hall. Out of the corner of his eye, Tom sees him, but does not react. He simply stares straight ahead at the fire. The bread gets brown and hot and smells of warm grain sweetly roasting. The other boy licks his lips. Tom ignores him. He spreads the bread with yellow butter—on any other day his mother would reprimand him for eating up all their ration—and deep-red strawberry jam. The jam and butter melt together. The other boy holds out his hand.
too hungry to review any more. just read Tadiana ✩ Night Owl☽’s review and i’m going to go build a fire and toast me some bread. there’s no way this will end badly.
read it for yourself here:
http://www.tor.com/2016/02/03/tom-tho…
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