The Spirited Review - Something Rich and Strange

Something Rich and Strange (Brian Froud's Faerielands) by Patricia A. McKillip, ill. by Brian Froud

  Nothing of him that doth fade,
But doth suffer a sea-change
  Into something rich and strange.
        The Tempest

Lovers Megan and Jonah are an artist and a rock collector who live and work in a small northwest coastal town. Megan paints seascapes, only and always seascapes; cranky Jonah collects fossils of the sea-that-was and owns a gift shop. Their relationship is a mixture of affection and annoyance, largely due to Jonah's general misanthropy and critical nature. But everything begins to shift and slide when strange creatures start to crop up in Megan's sketches, and then Jonah and Megan meet a peculiar brother and sister who are two briefly human embodiments of the sea.

To Megan, the sea is a gentle, quiet man who opens her eyes to the magic surrounding her and to the elusive possibilities under the waves. To Jonah, the sea is a mermaid siren who sings his heart and mind right out of his body and down into the deeps. Megan remains faithful to Jonah, and kind; Jonah becomes enraptured with the sea queen whose song seduces him out of his sanity and off of the land but not out of his self-centeredness. When the sea man takes Jonah into the sea to seek the singer, Megan searches for her own way beneath the waves to rescue him. In time, the sea man takes Megan below, and Megan and Jonah struggle separately through tests of personality and conscience as the sea tries to wake the humans to her need. In the end, the sea returns the lovers to the shore, bound her service and to her life.

In Something Rich and Strange, McKillip presents an interesting perspective on story and perception; Megan is in fact impeded in her search for Jonah by her fantastical approach to the sea. Coming from one of the world's best fantasists, the idea that fantasy and human imagination can limit our true sight is a provocative one. Obviously, McKillip is not opposed to fantasy -- rather, I think the implication of this story is that all definition and classification, imagination and interpretation must be balanced by the honest and open ear and eye, and that the human word must ultimately give way to wordless realities.

If you like fantasy, if you like environmental fiction, or if you are the least bit in love with the sea, find yourself a copy of Something Rich and Strange and settle down for a mind-swimming read. Do be prepared for McKillip's style, which is at times as complex and many layered as the sea itself; wait until you can immerse yourself for a lazy afternoon or a long night rather than trying to read this book in sporadic blurbs. As with all of her work, this book is not easy to hold in the mind; instead, you should be prepared to swallow the sea along with Jonah, and ride in the belly of the whale.

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