I was surprised to find a writing style completely out of her norm. Usually her books are rich with descriptive text and sharp dialogue and broken easily into chewable chunks of pacing and flow.
"Deerskin" is nothing like that.
This novel, which is based off of the original fairy tale (or at least one of the original known incarnations of this fairy tale) Donkeyskin, is written almost entirely in narrative voice. Which means that there have maybe been a handful of quoted dialogues in the entire book. Nearly everything else is descriptive or thought-based or third-person omniscient, which for those of you who may not be familiar with the term means that it sounds like the author is telling you things and she knows everything about what's going on in the story and the characters.
It's an interesting style to choose, seeing as how the story of the original Donkeyskin is so disturbing anyway. In summary, a king marries the most beautiful woman in seven kingdoms (or the land, or the realm, or the world depending on the tale) and they are happily ever after. They have a beautiful daughter and their land prospers. Then the beautiful queen grows ill, and before dying she forces her king to promise her that he will never marry a woman less beautiful than her.
Time passes, and the daughter grows to look just like her mother, and -- having been driven slightly off his rocker in grief from his wife's passing anyway -- the king decides to marry his daughter. From there varying versions of the story involve the princess running away, the princess making wild demands that she hopes her father can never fulfill as prices of her dowry (a dress as bright as the sun, beautiful as the moon, etc.), the princess being raped by her father and then running away, etc. etc. In the end she comes back to the palace in disguise (wrapped in the donkey skin to hide her beauty) and works as a servant girl. She is discovered by her father (again in a myriad of ways depending on the tale, sometimes by accident making a cake and having a ring fall in it, the strangest of which involves her leaving her father hints as to her identity as if she wants him to find her...very odd) and he marries her anyway and they live happily ever after. Sometimes she marries a prince of the court, who finds her 'hints' or accidental losses of jewelry, and she marries him, and her father marries a beautiful widow. A better ending in general.
I know. It's one of the weirder ones. And I'm not sure that "Deerskin" is going to end that way.
And I'm also not sure that this third-person omniscient narrative voice is working for McKinley in this book. It comes across as overly stiff, formal, like she's trying to mimic some dusty old epic with lots of 'thees' and 'thous' and 'fors' and etc. Now there have been no thees and thous, thankfully (though I have nothing against a good thee or thou in general) but there are a lot of 'fors'. Like in the example sentence:
I love my hound greatly, for she is the fleetest creature upon four legs. I will have her by my side always, for she is my right hand and my best friend. Together we will be inseparable, for she is loyal and will never leave me unguarded.
Ahem. Yes. Nice once. Bad twice. Terrible three times in a row.
That's the general flavor of "Deerskin" if not to the degree in my example. But it's dense and not a 'light' read by any means, not in terms of content and not in terms of style. I generally think that books should mix: if you have a lighthearted story to tell, find a deep-water way of telling it. If you have a really dark, horrible story to tell, find a straightforward or easier way of writing it. That way you don't bog down your reader or annoy them with your frippery. Find a balance.
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