Books That Burn reviewed Dark and Deepest Red by Anna-Marie McLemore
Review of 'Dark and Deepest Red' on 'Storygraph'
5 stars
I was not already familiar with "The Red Shoes", but I love this as a retelling. It takes most of the parts of the original and remixes them in beautiful ways. DARK AND DEEPEST RED takes a pretty judgmental story about a girl harmed by wearing red shoes (i.e. being very visible and ostentatious, among other social implications) and transforms it into one about reclaiming family history, personal heritage, and self-confidence as a marginalized person (and does so in two different eras). I liked this a lot and I definitely recommend it. I read the original short story before reading DARK AND DEEPEST RED because I wasn't already familiar with it, but unless you're a completionist there's no need to do that.
As a brief aside: it’s fascinating to me that one of the realistic and very believable parts of this book is the dancing plague. They’re real things that …
As a brief aside: it’s fascinating to me that one of the realistic and very believable parts of this book is the dancing plague. They’re real things that have really happened at different times in history (including Strausbourg, 1518), but they fit right into the magical feeling of this story.
The chapters are on the short side and rotate pretty consistently between the three main characters, only breaking the pattern a couple of times. I sometimes felt stymied because just as something really interesting was happening in one section it would end and switch to the next narrator, but towards the end the switches started really working for me and I liked the effect a lot better. It’s a structural choice that leads to some pretty cool transitions between sections as they are thematically linked (two perspectives share a time and the third does not).