The Onion Girl -- Charles de Lint

Jilly Coppercorn gets hit by a car while out on one of her frequent nighttime rambles.  She wakes up in the hospital with injuries so extensive that she might never pick up a paintbrush again, let alone walk.  While describing her as devastated is an understatement, there is a silver lining:  Before her accident, Jilly was never able to visit the dreamlands -- but now, whenever she falls asleep, she finds herself in the world that she's heard about and imagined for so many years:

"Maybe your being able to cross over like this is compensation for all the work you've got waiting for you back in the World As It is.  Or maybe that bang on the head knocked loose whatever it is that lets people cross over in a dream."

I am shaking my head now.  Joe just ignores it.  He fixes that steady gaze of his on me, the clown gone.  He's all serious.

"I brought in a couple of different healers," he says.  "Even asked the crow girls to look in on you.  They all say the same thing.  You've got to do the mending on your own.  See, the problem is, there's an older hurt, sitting there on the inside of you, and it's blocking anybody's attempts to speed the natural healing process of what's wrong on the outside."

Her friends see her new ability as more of a danger -- the more time she spends in the dreamlands, the more disconnected she becomes with the World As It Is.  They're worried that rather than deal with her painful past, she's going to give up on her physical body and her physical life.  And dying in the World As It Is doesn't mean that she'll be able to forever wander the dreamlands.  Dying is dying.*

To complicate things further, shortly after the hit-and-run, someone breaks into Jilly's studio and destroys her faerie paintings -- as difficult as it is for her friends to imagine someone hating Jilly, it appears that she has an enemy.

I loved the world and the magic system (system isn't quite the right word in this case -- magic seems to work differently for different characters).  Though this is one of the later Newford books, I didn't feel lost.  That isn't to say that de Lint explained everything and everybody -- I knew for sure that I was missing big chunks of backstory (Cody's, for instance -- there were a few lines about him that really piqued my interest), but I had enough to work with to understand what was going on, and really, this was a story about Jilly.

As I've mentioned, this was my first Charles de Lint.  And while I suspect that it may have not been the perfect one to start with**, I've already printed out his entire bibliography and I'm planning on diving back in very, very soon.  Like, as soon as I figure out which one to read next.

*Well, sort of.  Later, someone talks about dying as being a change in state or something along those lines -- but it seemed clear that when you die, you Go Somewhere Else.  Or maybe become someone else.  I dunno.  Either way, if Jilly dies in the World As It Is, she dies in the dreamlands, too.  I think.

**For example... Jilly's friends say again and again how vivacious and sparky Jilly usually is, but as I'd never met her before, I only had their word to go on, you know?  I actually ended up finding Raylene much more interesting.

Comments

[Thorn]

The instructor of a class I used to take (for a little over two years) suggested I read The Onion Girl, and it's been on my To Read list ever since then. But despite having read some of de Lint's other writing, I still haven't gotten around to this one! So thank you for reminding me.

[Electric Landlady]

I'm behind on my De Lint. You've reminded me as well that I must fix this. ;)

I would definitely suggest some of his early work. Jack the Giant-Killer is great (I think it's collected with the sequel as Jack of Kinrowan) -- it's set in Ottawa rather than Newford and was part of Terri Windling's Fairy Tale series (all of which are worth checking out).

Moonheart and Spiritwalk are also really good early non-Newford novels. A lot of the Newford stuff is short stories, IIRC, so easy to pick up.

I must unpack that box of books.

[Whitney]

Pick up Someplace to be Flying for more about Coyote, Raven, and the Crow Girls. I think it's my favorite de Lint book, except for maybe The Blue Girl.

[a. fortis]

I love Charles de Lint. I think his Newford short stories are really good. I also really liked Memory & Dream. His YA novel, The Blue Girl, was fun, too. I felt like I was getting such a sense of where his inspiration for the setting came from when I visited Ottawa a couple of years ago (where he lives)--it was neat, like a writing pilgrimage, though I was there for an unrelated conference...