Teacup's Reviews > Wise Child

Oh wow, this was so lovely! When I started I had no idea that it was going to include so many of my favorite tropes or elements to read about in fiction.

One was chosen family/re-parenting. The jumping point of the book is that Wise Child's parents have both abandoned her in their various ways, so when her grandmother dies the village tries to figure out what to do with her. She ends up going home with Juniper, a witch of sorts, and... everything she had been brought up to believe about parenting and childhood (and that many of us are still brought up to believe) gets turned on its head. Juniper is kind, gentle, loving, and firm without rancor. Reading about Juniper as a caregiver, seeing her relationship with Wise Child grow, and in particular the ways Wise Child blooms when in a safe environment that is so full of trust... it made me melt. Juniper sets expectations, but she never ever punishes, and she lets Wise Child discover what she wants to do and how she wants to act in her own time.

What I especially loved about this new parenting & family dynamic is that Wise Child doesn't suddenly turn into a perfect Good Little Girl who loves to do chores, learn her lessons, and only ever feels the Right Ways. She's still a child, and she gets sullen and vindictive, struggles to self-regulate emotionally, and is proud, impetuous, and rash. She finds many household tasks odious and lessons boring, and she very openly tells Juniper so! But oftentimes she still ends up doing them even if she doesn't unilaterally love it, for a variety of reasons: because she values her relationship with Juniper, because it's part of her routine, because there's nothing better to do... and also because she does grow to appreciate certain aspects of the work.

That brings me to the second trope I love... that of cozy cottage witch doing cozy witchy domestic things! Gahhhhhh, there is so much of that here and it's so delightful. There's such loving description of household tasks, from the mundane like milking the cow, setting & cleaning the table, sweeping, to more magical things like herbalism, working in the garden, gathering ingredients from faraway places, cutting, drying, straining herbs... It forms a huge part of the book and it's a demonstration of Juniper's worldview that these daily tasks are what makes life worth living and how you express your appreciation of life. That it's possible to find joy in the work. There's tension between her and Wise Child in that regard, and appreciated that the author presented both viewpoints without judging Wise Child for her recalcitrance. Also, the writing takes delight in the sensory aspects of their life together, from the warmth of the fire to the softness and green-ness of the cushions in Wise Child's favorite chair.

The routine of daily life is really tied into magic and spirituality, which really works for me. Magic in this book means as being aware of, understanding, and acting with the patterns of things. So it makes sense that much of it would be expressed through seasonal activities of tending animals and crops, as well as helping sick people. I first encountered that 'magic of the mundane' sort of worldview in Tamora Pierce's Circle of Magic books, and it's stayed close to my heart ever since.

CW healing from trauma
In the end, The Wise Child also turns out to be a book about recovering from abuse and trauma. This was the most unexpected aspect for me, but incredibly well handled. I was so deeply moved by the ways Wise Child kept being drawn back to her abusive mother, even after you'd think she'd have 'learned her lesson'. She struggles so openly with that pull, and Juniper always allow her to make her own choices while empowering her to have a different life if she wants it. The slow unfolding of understanding in Wise Child was extraordinary, heartbreaking, and beautiful.

Readalikes: the aforementioned Circle of Magic series by Tamora Pierce, which similarly focuses on the magic of everyday tasks; the Earthsea series by Ursula LeGuin, in particular Tehanu, where another woman and a traumatized little girl live and work together on a mountainside, doing everyday magic; Coraline by Neil Gaiman, for the conflict between mother and Other Mother, and the discovery that getting everything you want is boring; and Hild by Nicola Griffith, because of the uncanny little girl growing up in medieval Britain, where older religions and Christianity uneasily rub up against each other.