Fairytales remain one of the most enduring forms of human storytelling. Having emerged long before the blockbuster reboot, they have provided centuries’ worth of spoken, written and artistic material ripe for reinterpretation according to the needs or beliefs of the day. They have given rise to works as familiar as Edvard Eriksen’s statue of the Little Mermaid in Copenhagen and now as new as Tangleweed and Brine, a collection of thirteen strange and lyrical short stories from Irish writer Deirdre Sullivan, complete with striking artwork from illustrator Karen Vaughan.
Sullivan – who also works as a teacher and won Children’s Books Ireland’s Honour Award for Fiction for 2016’s Needlework – acknowledges her debt to this fairytale wellspring. “I’m joining a long tradition,” she says, “of stories that I have loved, and that have shaped me as a reader and as a writer. Tangleweed is a book that grew from other books – these stories would not work without other stories. You can’t reshape a thing that isn’t there.”
She cites Angela Carter, Tanith Lee and Emma Donoghue as writers whose reclamation of fairytales and approach to female characters has influenced her. Young adult fiction (YA) is a particular hub of fairytale retellings, from Gail Carson Levine’s classic Ella Enchanted to Marissa Meyer’s futuristic saga The Lunar Chronicles. Sullivan, who primarily writes contemporary fiction for teens, has long wanted to join their ranks: “The Woodcutter’s Bride is a story [now in Tangleweed and Brine] that pre-dates my first novel, Prim Improper, so the seeds of the book have been there for a long time.”
It is very unusual, however, for YA fiction to be fully illustrated. Shelves overflow with accessible and beautiful picture books for younger readers, but there is some stigma attached to books with ‘too many pictures’ for older children or teens, as if by making space for artistic expression the story must somehow be less emotionally complex. Notable successes like Neil Gaiman and Chris Riddell’s Coraline or Patrick Ness and Jim Kay’s award-winning A Monster Calls, both of which have spawned film adaptations, indicate that older readers may be more open to illustration than once thought. The artwork here reflects the often-dark contents of Sullivan’s fairytales, from morally ambiguous witches and sea-struck mermaids to maternal relationships and questions of bodily autonomy. Vaughan also drew on the fairytale aesthetic as a whole. “Some of Karen’s illustrations are retellings of my retellings. She’ll find an image that reflects the mood of the story more perfectly than a scene lifted from the text. It is lovely to be privy to what someone pictures when they read your work.”
Vaughan, a freelance illustrator trained at the North Wales School of Art and Design, has often been inspired by fairy and folktales. After finishing this project, she turned her hand to art inspired by the Russian folktale Baba Yaga. Not the first artist to turn her hand to the field – even pop artist David Hockney illustrated six of Grimms’ fairytales for publication in the early 1970s – her illustrations owe much to Aubrey Beardsley and Harry Clarke’s elaborate patterns and busy visuals. The Golden Age of Illustration of the first decades of the twentieth century has also left an arguable mark on the collection. Traces of Katharine Beverley, Elizabeth Ellender and Kay Nielsen – Vaughan says East of the the Sun and West of the Moon is “one of the most beautiful books [she’s] ever seen” – can be found in its eldritch figures and sense of movement.
Vaughan was “absolutely thrilled” to be approached for the book. “As someone who specialised in illustration for children’s books at university, and someone who adores fairytales in general, being asked to illustrate a book of retold fairytales was my dream project.” She puts her collaboration with Sullivan down to the “awesome” Gráinne Clear, publishing manager and art director at Little Island, who recommended her illustrations after being introduced to them through a mutual friend. “Gráinne is extremely engaged with art and design. She had seen Karen’s work and thought of her as a possible collaborator,” adds Sullivan. “Her work is very nuanced and detailed. I’m always catching little moments I’ve missed out on. At the moment I really love the illustration for ‘Doing Well’, but the first one I felt that for was with the illustration of ‘Come Live Here and Be Loved’. I literally gasped when I first saw it.”
‘Come Here and Be Loved’ comes up when Vaughan is discussing her favourite parts of the project, too. “It’s the closest I’ve ever come to realizing on paper what exists in my head. I also love ‘Ash Pale’ because it was the second illustration I created and the one that convinced my anxious brain that maybe I could actually pull off illustrating an entire book.” Sullivan adds that “The book is a shared work… it’s wonderful to share the experience of launching a book with someone who cares as much about the project as much as I do. I’ve not had that before and I’m very glad of it. Karen’s sister also made book-cake which was both beautiful and delicious, so I would work with her again for that alone!”
While reworking tales including Cinderella and Snow White, Vaughan and Sullivan often question traditional narratives and tropes, or at least those of the fairytales altered by the likes of Charles Perrault or Walt Disney. Sullivan alludes to Ireland’s issues regarding women, agency, and power, and notes that while “it would kill a young adult book to write it with a moral or a message in mind”, Tangleweed and Brine grew “in a feminist brain, and I live in a woman’s body… The twists may be magical, but the internal experience of these women is the truth. Or how I see the truth.”
Something which is clear on seeing the illustrations and stories next to each other is the importance and depth of the artistic process. Throughout the project, Sullivan was working full-time and studying part-time; she says, “these stories were an escape from those responsibilities. I’ve always found writing to be a refuge. I try to figure out ways the world hurts people in my writing… when I get something down that makes sense to me, it’s such a relief. I suppose that is quite visceral! It was a book that was ready to be written. Every story in it is deeply felt, but the process was cathartic and satisfying and everything you want writing to be.”
Vaughan was more pragmatic: “I read through the text and highlight anything I think could help shape the look of the characters and setting. I research clothing, furniture and surroundings that might be appropriate for the story and begin sketching ideas down as thumbnails. I try to generate as many compositions as possible before choosing some to scale up. After the rough sketches are whittled down, the final rough is drawn in pencil, adding in any changes that might have been requested, before I use a lightbox to help ink the drawing on another sheet of paper.”
The illustrations can be seen, of course, in the thorny, ruby-red hardbacks of Tangleweed and Brine. But for a few weeks this autumn, the originals were on exhibition at one of Dublin’s best-known independent bookshops, Books Upstairs, where they lined its characteristic stairwells and glared down on customers as they perused blurbs or drank tea in the shop’s café. “There was an incredibly positive reaction to the illustrations,” says Vaughan. “We felt they could stand alone as their own pieces as well as part of the book.”
Though the small exhibition space had been repurposed for the project in an already crammed bookshop (Vaughan says that this dual potential made it “the perfect fit”), it provided an opportunity to take a closer look at mesmerising patterns and eye-catching designs. You could see the very press of the pen and ink on the page behind the glass. They also “jumped at” the chance to follow this with a six-week run at DLR Lexicon in Dún Laoghaire. Asked how a display – an even rarer feat for a YA novel than illustration – based on the book sprang up, Sullivan says: “It came about because Karen is so ridiculously talented! Her work is so intricate, and seeing them on walls in a larger size really brings that home. Those pieces couldn’t hide in a shed or studio (though I have no idea where artists keep things when they are not exhibited) – they need to be seen and celebrated.”
And for Sullivan’s next project? She is ever so slightly coy. “I can say that I’m not done with witches, fairytales or mermaids yet, and I’ve been writing a lot of short stories for older readers about ghosts…”
Tangleweed and Brine is available now. An exhibition of its illustrations will run at DLR Lexicon from 23 October.
Photography by Robyn Mitchell