From http://coffeeandink.dreamwidth.org/746990.html:I just read two YA novels retelling the story of the Arabian Nights. The biggest problem with a modern version of this story, at least for a YA audience, turns out to be rehabilitation of Shahrayar, the Sultan who is betrayed by his wife, kills her, and decides to marry a virgin a day, killing each new wife at sunrise so she can't betray him. (She can't bear him any heirs either, but neither of the books goes into that.) Anyway, it's hard to provide a convincing happy ending for modern audiences when the husband is a reformed murderer who started off the marriage by planning to kill his wife. The two books try different solutions to the problem. They ultimately have little in common besides their inspiration, although as you'd expect, both take from the original legend an emphasis on the influence of stories; both Shahrazads explicitly set out to educate their husbands through fiction.
Susan Fletcher, Shadow Spinner (1998)
Fletcher sets her version in medieval Persia. Her protagonist isn't Shahrazad but a Moslem girl named Marjan, who begins the novel as the indentured servant cum adoptive daughter of a couple of Jewish traders. Marjan visits the Sultan's harem to help her "Auntie Chava" sell fabrics, and after Dunyazad, Shahrazad's sister, overhears her telling stories to the harem children, she takes Marjan to see Shahrazad, who after three years is running out of new tales.
Fletcher is very good at creating different places and societies by the graceful inclusion of detail, both sensual and social. The bazaar and the harem might as well be foreign countries: Marjan is shocked to find out how little Shahrazad and Dunyazad know about the world outside. And Marjan is an inspired character: focusing on her adds suspense to the story because we don't have any guarantee that she'll survive, and it also allows Fletcher to show the impact the Sultan's murderousness has on his entire kingdom. Marjan tells us right off that she has a deformed foot that she expects will preclude her ever marrying; what she doesn't tell us just then is that her mother deliberately inflicted the injury on her, so she would never be chosen as one of the Sultan's brides. The Sultan's murders create civil unrest outside; inside, Marjan investigates empty rooms and finds the abandoned belongings of the dead girls.
Marjan thinks of Shahrazad as a hero who sacrificed herself to save other girls, which is of course true; but she's also surprised to learn that Shahrazad loves the Sultan. Shahrazad and the less-forgiving Dunyazad argue fiercely over this, and Fletcher doesn't offer a simple or consolatory ending.
I've made the story sound darker than it is. Its most pervasive note is Marjan's cheerful determination to help out her hero.
See [b:The Storyteller's Daughter: A Retelling of "The Arabian Nights"|106489|The Storyteller's Daughter A Retelling of "The Arabian Nights"|Cameron Dokey|http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1266473458s/106489.jpg|102646] for the other half of the review.