When thinking about Cristina Rivera Garza’s, The Taiga Syndrome, the word that comes to my mind time and time again for how to describe the story is: eerie. The novel is a captivating and yet mysterious story about a female detective that is set out to find a woman that went missing.
When reflecting on the novel, various themes are present that are far from the light-hearted, child-friendly and dreamy characteristics of a typical fairytale. However, after watching this week’s lecture, Jon mentions that when delving deeply into the novel, it is apparent that much of the story is similar to a fairy-tale, which draws on themes of play, and childlike narratives, like the most classic one’s we all know and love. Although the book depicts a haunting version of fairytales, it also represents familiarity associated with fairy-tales – ones that are “strange, often disquieting and uncanny, especially the more we think about them.” The novel also presents themes of brutality, a haunting story of life, suffering, and human psyche.
This week’s lecture made me reflect on the most common, well-known fairytales we are told growing up, and the often dark and twisted messages present within them. For example, little red riding hood is a story about a young girl thats sets out to visit her sick grandmother and is stalked by an evil wolf. Once she arrives, she notices her grandmother looks strange, almost wolf-like. After several exchanges, the wolf jumps out and eats her. If that isn’t an eerie fairytale, I don’t know what is. The Taiga Syndrome highlights the eerie and disturbing parts of a fairytale, and therefore, in my opinion, highlights aspects of life. It also explores various frameworks on how a story can be told, and how it may be depicted.
Much of the stories we hear growing up are a reflection of life and the various struggles we face, desires we crave, and the societal concept of good versus bad, leading to positive reinforcement or negative punishments. In a way, this book depicted much of the fundamental, confusing, and captivating feelings of the human psyche. It also represented much of the themes present in other novels in the class – play, identity, life, brutality, human desire, and more. It was fascinating to read, and often left me feeling confused and un-easy in a way. But after all, isn’t that just a perfect representation of life.
My question for this week is: What childhood fairytale did this twisted, mysterious, and eerie novel remind you of?
I like how you mention the idea of “twisted” to talk about this novel. In various ways, this story takes several twists on known genres, or that seem to have a canonical way of telling (fairytales or crime stories). But he also has a wicked, more “adult” side. What do you think of the way in which the novel incorporates these elements? Is it effective or not, in your opinion? Can you think of any passage in particular?
Hi Gillian, great blog post! To answer your question, I’d have to say that the book reminded me of the fairytale “Little Red Riding Hood” as the detective explores the taiga landscape in search of the woman, similarly to how red riding hood was traveling through the dangerous forests in search of her grandma.
I like your reflection on the purpose of the fairy tails within this book, and in general, I hadn’t really thought of the deeper meaning of these childhood stories before. This book reminded me most of Hansel and Gretel, with the clues leaving a bread-crumb-like trail, and the idea of two people being lost in a fantastical, dark forest.
Hello! I really enjoyed reading your take on the Taiga Syndrome this week so thank you for your insight! I totally agree that this story reflects the eerie parts of fairy tales that we tend to disregard when we first think of fairy tales. To answer your question, when I was younger I was weirdly fascinated with the differences between the original Brothers Grimm’s stories and the ones we were told growing up and this story definitely reminded me of Snow White. While we mentioned the theme of apples in class, I was reminded while reading this story about how dark and eerie the original telling of Snow White was and could find a decent amount of similarities between the settings of the two stories. I think it was really cool how Taiga Syndrome allowed us that familiarity with the story while also upholding a large number of mysterious elements. Thanks again for your blog post!