Maria Turtschaninoff
Over these literary islands, inaccessible, closed, and paradisiacally fruitful, a strange light is glimmering In her fantasy novel Maresi. Krönikor från Röda klostret (“Maresi. Chronicles from the Red Monastery”, not translated into English), Maria Turtschaninoff creates another memorable literary island. The island of Menos, whose name can be traced to menstruation, is an asylum for girls. No men are permitted, so happy relationships thrive among the women and girls.
The novel is a work independent of the earlier accounts Arra and Anaché, which are set in neighbouring countries. The story of the Red Monastery is reminiscent of an ancient drama, with interventions from queens of the gods. Turtschaninoff introduces a wide range of characters, all with imaginative names such as Maresi, Jai, Heo, Nummel, Dorje, and Loeni. The contemplative beauty of the cover, complete with details in blood red, is apt for the theme. Even those maps so important to fantasy writing are more like dreamlike insinuations in bright pastels than actual guides. Nevertheless they help to emphasise the mood.
Monastery novice Maresi Enresdotter is the first-person narrator, who pens her story retrospectively, albeit with reluctance. She is the one who bears witness: “The smell of blood. The sound of crunching bones. I don’t want to relive this. But I have to.” Maresi, who has experienced famine and at the age of nine sought refuge in the monastery, grows up and learns within the monastery setting. Although hunted by dark forces, she finds strength, particularly in reading and in the company of women.
The portrayal is unrelenting, almost claustrophobic, because everything takes place in closed rooms, on the island, in the monastery halls, in the passages of the caverns. The island’s solitude is violently interrupted by the arrival of Jai. Jai is on the run from her father, who has buried her sister alive. Jai and Maresi are linked in that they have both witnessed their sisters’ deaths: a terrible trauma which they later deal with through the discovery of their healing and magical powers. The girls’ hair plays a special role. This is where their strength resides. Combing their hair summons a storm that will stop intruders.
In the skilled hands of Turtschaninoff, this powerful vision of resistance is both credible and compelling. Although the story plays out in remote places in an indefinite period of time, there is no doubt that – as in the previous books – it addresses honour-related violence and the oppression of women. The visions of female power depicted here point towards the injustices of our time, and the message is crystal clear: Dare to resist! What takes place is nothing less than a gender war in a microcosm, as consistently told from the girl’s perspective. Turtschaninoff adeptly reuses standard elements in the portrayal of the girls in that Maresi, just like another Anne of Green Gables, dreams of founding a school to educate the girls of her country. The influence of Ursula Le Guin’s The Tombs of Atuan (1970) from the Earthsea series can also be felt; this is a novel that portrays a group of women in which the girls suffer abuse.
Maresi can be read as an allegory that plays with the dramaturgy of ancient drama in an effort to invigorate this girl’s story of the fantastic in which the power of women can withstand the assault of men. Turtschaninoff is dazzling in her depiction of a matriarchy that follows the magical powers of monthly menstruation, dances the virgin dance, and practices feminist self-defence with the aid of magic. She moulds ostensible simplicity together with daring conglomerates of elements from the various realms to create an exciting, thoughtful, and visionary story. It is as if the myth has come back to life.