Ira Smith's Reviews > Thistlefoot

I’m sitting here, just having finished Thistlefoot, and my head is filled with the beauty of this wonderful book. I’m at a loss for words.

Thistlefoot takes the Russian legend of Baba Yaga, and turns that story into one of Jewish origins. Issac and Bellatine Yaga are siblings who inherit the legendary house of Baba Yaga, the house on chicken legs, from their great great grandmother, who kept the house in storage in the Ukraine for seventy years and bequeathed it to the youngest Yagas. The siblings grew up in a household that gave puppet shows, and the pair decides to take the house on a tour and recreate the puppet shows they gave in their childhood. Both Isaac and Bellatine have their issues, and as the book progresses, we learn their backstories, and also that of the house and the puppets. They are also pursued by the Longshadow Man, a mysterious figure who followed the house from Ukraine, and who seems bent on the destruction of Yaga’s house, for reasons unknown.

I reveled in the excellence of the writing. There are moments of sheer beauty in the book that just took my breath away. The plot is solid and well constructed, and the characters are some of the most finely drawn personalities I’ve ever encountered in a novel. They truly came to life. And the ending…let’s just say it blew me away and left me in tears.

Without a doubt, Thistlefoot is one of the best books I’ve read recently.

My gratitude goes out to Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, and to Netgalley, for providing me an ARC of this excellent novel.

Addendum: I just finished listening to the audiobook version of Thistlefoot. It’s as wonderful to listen as it was to read, and I was just drawn into the world created by the author. Incredibly narrated by January LaVoy.