conflict, morals, and conflicting morals in Spinning Silver
A review of Naomi Novik's Spinning Silver, with some notes on moral systems and going beyond "good and evil."
Dear friend—
In a recent post, I lamented my inability to write good stories or good characters. Earlier this month, I finished a book that made me want to dissect the whole thing, so I could figure out exactly how both are done.
(Warning: This review has a few early/mid-plot spoilers. I’ll try to keep them as vague as possible, but if you want to read this book and want to go in with every twist fresh, turn back now).
Spinning Silver by Naomi Novik (she/her) was a surprise of a book. I had read the short story version a few years ago and quite liked it, though I read two of Novik’s Last Graduate books and, confession, barely finished the second.
But Novik is a lauded author in the genre, and with Spinning Silver, the reasons for that became clearer to me.
Spinning Silver is a fairy tale-style fantasy that centers on Miryem Mandelstam, the daughter of a moneylender who has made a mess of his business in the small, hostile village where they live. He’s been too generous, driving Miryem and her mother to hunger, and yet their neighbors still ostracize the family because they are Jewish.
One winter, Miryem gathers the fortitude to go out and collect debts on behalf of her father. The townsfolk reluctantly start paying off their debts, making the Mandelstams even less popular. But the family can finally eat, rest, heal, and even purchase a few nice things. Miryem’s mother and father fear how the work is hardening their daughter’s heart, but Miryem is proud of what she’s done for her family.
Until one night, the Staryk King appears. Harbingers of winter, cold and capricious, magical and deadly, the Staryk have been invading villages for as long as anyone can remember. They destroy and pillage, before making off with as much gold as they can carry. Their white road gleams from beyond the tree line of the forest, and everyone knows not to breech it.
So when the Staryk King demands that Miryem take a bag of Staryk silver and exchange it for gold in the human world, she has no choice but to comply. But things get interesting when the King promises to make her his queen in exchange for her skill—and then he actually does.
Miryem is only one third of the story. There’s Irina, the clever daughter of a duke who buys Miryem’s Staryk silver, and Wanda, a young woman in the village whom Miryem hires to help her family. As their stories intertwine, the three women show again and again how cleverness and caring can overcome brute strength and cruelty.
As equally engaging, though, were the villains in the story—or rather, how Novik and her protagonists handle them. Two of the central villains are unwound slowly but surely over the course of the book, one of which is the Staryk King himself.
Both are presented as otherworldly and alien, with motivations as capricious as they are cruel. But by the end of the story, they have their own morals, their own principles, and their own desires that you can’t quite write off as utter evil.
This goes not only for the Staryk King but his people, too. What I loved most about Spinning Silver’s worldbuilding was how Novik created a different value system for the mythical Staryk.
While much of human society is based on gratitude as well as credit and repayment, the Staryk are all about immediate balance. Every good deed must be returned immediately in equal measure—the same with bad deeds. Following Miryem as she gradually comes to understand this was super fascinating.
The logic of the Staryk moral system and its unwinding through the plot was so thought-through, complex, and complete—a deep portrayal of something like “culture clash.” It’s at first a source of conflict, but as the story goes on, Miryem comes to understand it better, helping her personal aims as well as her friendships.
Ultimately, I don’t think it’s worth framing these “villains” by whether you can forgive or like them. They do some pretty awful, if not wholly unforgivable things. But I think Spinning Silver highlights that learning the full story behind someone’s actions can change their impact, or at least how you respond to those actions, in important ways.
At the same time, the moral complexity of the villains creates conundrums for our protagonists. Irina and Miriam have different loyalties shaping how they see what is good and right, especially when it comes to the Staryk.
Irina’s loyalty is first and foremost to her people, her countrymen, the duty of her position. Every decision she makes about the Staryk is guided by that. But Miryem doesn’t share that same loyalty. Instead, she is loyal to her family, her tight-knit community, and her friends—which drives her to act in opposition to Irina.
Though their decisions create pretty huge conflicts for the other, Irina and Miryem still respect each other. They understand the other’s point of view and never blame or hate the other for making those decisions and bringing about that conflict.
That kind of thorny conflict is super interesting to me. Rather than fighting an evil, you’re fighting through a shitty predicament; not just a villain, but also the situation created by differing motivations between friends. I’m wondering already how I can try something similar in my own fiction.
Some other things I loved:
Wanda’s development and that of her brothers was so beautiful that I cried by the end. Their relationship with Miryem and her family was slow-built and hard-won. I found myself rooting for every protagonist, but Wanda especially.
I also loved how Novik intertwined the fantastical world of the Staryk and the magic with the real experiences of Jewish people at a similar time in our world. The book portrayed the political and personal realities of being Jewish in an often-hostile non-Jewish environment, as well as the warmth of having a close-knit community to counter that. Also, the descriptions of Jewish traditions from Miryem’s perspective and from that of non-Jewish characters were beautiful.
I loved the magic of the book. It moves from whimsical to punishing, eerie to welcoming, beautiful to terrifying. That’s what I like about fantasy or magical realism novels without any explicit magic “systems”—there’s always something unexpected around the corner.
Some additional nitpicks/warnings:
My biggest gripe with Novik’s The Last Graduate series was the “telling not showing” narration, in which every social dynamic and action by the main character had to be explained by a deep thought process or anecdote. That style of narration appears with some characters and in some moments, but it wasn’t as present.
This is often a heavy and bleak book. There are a lot of harsh moments that only seem to get harsher—trouble after trouble befall our heroines, and I felt a lot of second-hand anxiety/dread as I read to see if they made it through. The cold, miserable setting probably didn’t help, either. I had to take a break from this book for a few days and return to it.
Content warnings: Graphic violence, domestic abuse, body horror. Allusions to sexual violence. Antisemitism expressed by side characters and passing characters.
Thanks as always to Mica’s red pen ♥