A raucous work of historical fiction
The Modern Fairies Clare Pollard
Avid Reader
It is the late 17th century, and King Louis XIV is at the pinnacle of his power. Versailles is the hub of the French aristocracy, a great beehive dripping with honey — and bristling with stingers. We are in the era of the great salons, the private gatherings where nobles and intellectuals converged to hon-hon the issues of the day. Clare Pollard's work of historical fiction, The Modern Fairies, grants us entry into one such salon hosted by Madame Marie d'aulnoy, a real-life salonnière and author, who has, as the story begins, mysteriously been rehabilitated after scandal and imprisonment.
The theme of Marie's salon is fairy tales and proto-feminism. Each chapter, more or less, features a guest telling their version of a tale, most notably Charles Perrault, who will in time collect these tales into his famous volume, “Contes de ma mere l'oye”: Mother Goose tales. In the opening chapter, Perrault begins a tale about a king loved by his people, feared by his enemies, and blessed with the most beautiful of wives and daughters. The guests lean in, eager to hear what misfortune will befall this perfect family. “For the energy that lies behind all stories is a destructive energy,” the narrator warns us, full of “the urge to burn down what is for what might be.”
If this sounds like Angela Carter rewriting The Canterbury Tales, you're not far off.
But The Modern Fairies is more than mere homage. Versailles is clutched in a desperate battle between Louis's mistresses, and the collateral damage is only growing. As storms gather, the guests begin to use fairy tales as a way to speak openly — an increasingly dangerous game. To fall afoul of the king can be swiftly lethal, and the king has spies everywhere, overseen by his sinister chief of police, Reynie.
The Modern Fairies gather at Marie's salon because there's more honesty in fairy tales than in the cant to which they, as members of the aristocracy, must publicly subscribe. There are wolves in the forest. Hunger will make a parent abandon their children. Love can destroy you. Men do execute their wives for asking questions. Faced with the brutal truths around them, the guests in Marie's salon want to believe in their own happy endings. Thus, they measure each storyteller by how well they stick the landing: They are savage to those who try to get away with sanctimonious morals or unearned happy endings.
Unfortunately, the novel's most important storyteller is also its most frustrating element. Like Molière's famous hypochondriac Argan in The Imaginary Invalid, The Modern Fairies is hobbled by its own crutch. Pollard's story structure depends entirely on a narrator who can enter the mind of any character, no matter how minor. She refers to herself as
“I” and holds her “dear reader” by the elbow in a voice that combines Jane Eyre and Lady Whistledown from Bridgerton — except that sometimes, her diction pitches into 2020s English.