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Oct. 9th, 2026 08:08 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
skygiantsI really enjoyed The Apple and the Pearl, which I would describe sort of as a bittersweet fantasy mosaic novel set in the milieu of the all-timer This American Life episode "Music of the Night after Night after Night."
The Apple and the Pearl takes place over the course of one day on a train that carries a traveling ballet theater from place to place. Every night, the company puts on the same show, "The Apple and the Pearl", in the middle of the woods or a field or a meadow -- today happening to be All Souls', it's a graveyard -- for an audience of weird haunted faerie creatures. And every day, before the show happens, they go through all the ordinary business of a ballet company: changing up the casting, endless rehearsals, setting up the backdrops, flirting, rehashing old arguments, introducing new trainees, dodging that one lighting guy who's always making uncomfortable jokes, avoiding that other musician who's been sobbing about his lost love for months now, eternal massive rounds of laundry with insufficient laundry machines.
And it's all normal! It's largely very normal, and very banal, except that you don't talk about the people who disappear with the fairies -- it happens, every once in a while -- though that's actually not what happened to the musician's lost love, she just broke up with him normally and decided not to renew her contract with the weird fantasy mystery train and got another job, which makes it extra annoying to everyone else that he's still summoning magical sorrows for the whole company every time he plays that one second act solo. And maybe one or two of the company members know a little more about the lands of fairy than the rest -- maybe some of them have even spent some time there -- but for every girl who sees ghosts or exiled changeling still looking for a way home, there's another member of the company whose biggest concerns today are 'the ballet mistress still thinks I am doing a bad job' or 'I have been dating this other dancer for sooo long and I don't know how to break up with him' or 'my son's tuition bills are stacking up again and my ex isn't helping AND the hot lesbians haven't texted me back'.
And over the course of All Souls' Day, we're going to spend a little bit of time with all of them: the dancers, the musicians, the costumers, the lighting techs, the company manager and the company cook, everybody who keeps the train going and ensures that night after night, the show goes on. It's not so much a story with a plot as a series of portraits, with a kind of increasing weight of tension as the day approaches its end; for much of the book there's nothing particularly different about this day to set it apart from any other day on the train, so of course, as the book goes on, you-the-reader start to wonder, why are we seeing this day? and wait for whatever might be coming before the book closes. But me, I'm just happy to see a ballet fantasy that is not only very good about the realities of ballet but gives equal weight to all the people who are involved in putting a show on stage, the front- and back-of-house, the glamor and the magic and the quest after an impossible perfection and the repetition and the boredom and the endless and eternal loads of laundry, and I enjoyed this one very much.
The Apple and the Pearl takes place over the course of one day on a train that carries a traveling ballet theater from place to place. Every night, the company puts on the same show, "The Apple and the Pearl", in the middle of the woods or a field or a meadow -- today happening to be All Souls', it's a graveyard -- for an audience of weird haunted faerie creatures. And every day, before the show happens, they go through all the ordinary business of a ballet company: changing up the casting, endless rehearsals, setting up the backdrops, flirting, rehashing old arguments, introducing new trainees, dodging that one lighting guy who's always making uncomfortable jokes, avoiding that other musician who's been sobbing about his lost love for months now, eternal massive rounds of laundry with insufficient laundry machines.
And it's all normal! It's largely very normal, and very banal, except that you don't talk about the people who disappear with the fairies -- it happens, every once in a while -- though that's actually not what happened to the musician's lost love, she just broke up with him normally and decided not to renew her contract with the weird fantasy mystery train and got another job, which makes it extra annoying to everyone else that he's still summoning magical sorrows for the whole company every time he plays that one second act solo. And maybe one or two of the company members know a little more about the lands of fairy than the rest -- maybe some of them have even spent some time there -- but for every girl who sees ghosts or exiled changeling still looking for a way home, there's another member of the company whose biggest concerns today are 'the ballet mistress still thinks I am doing a bad job' or 'I have been dating this other dancer for sooo long and I don't know how to break up with him' or 'my son's tuition bills are stacking up again and my ex isn't helping AND the hot lesbians haven't texted me back'.
And over the course of All Souls' Day, we're going to spend a little bit of time with all of them: the dancers, the musicians, the costumers, the lighting techs, the company manager and the company cook, everybody who keeps the train going and ensures that night after night, the show goes on. It's not so much a story with a plot as a series of portraits, with a kind of increasing weight of tension as the day approaches its end; for much of the book there's nothing particularly different about this day to set it apart from any other day on the train, so of course, as the book goes on, you-the-reader start to wonder, why are we seeing this day? and wait for whatever might be coming before the book closes. But me, I'm just happy to see a ballet fantasy that is not only very good about the realities of ballet but gives equal weight to all the people who are involved in putting a show on stage, the front- and back-of-house, the glamor and the magic and the quest after an impossible perfection and the repetition and the boredom and the endless and eternal loads of laundry, and I enjoyed this one very much.
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