Tag Archives: Australian Speculative Fiction

Traces of Jean d’Arras’ Melusine in Gillian Polack’s “The Time of the Ghosts”

Posted on by misoa100
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Heinrich Vogeler creator QS:P170,Q213734 , Vogeler, Heinrich – Melusine – Barkenhoff Worpswede, marked as public domain, more details on Wikimedia Commons

Not Like Other Sirens – The Melusine’s Craving for a Human Soul

Tales of water-associated women, resembling a dragon, fish, or snake, have made appearances in one way or another all over the world. Mentions of sirens, mermaids, figures like the Medusa, to name some of them, aren’t uncommon. But the Melusine, who shares some features with these mythological beings, also vastly differs from them.

Appearing as a normal woman, the foundress of the Lusignan line, a medieval chatelaine and matriarch during six days of the week, the Melusine was cursed by her mother Presine to transform into a serpent, or fish, from the waist down once a week. While other monstrous beings like the siren lured men into traps, effectively murdering them, the Melusine craves for a pure human soul.

The Mother Dragon

To achieve the life she longs for, she must keep her fairy-self hidden from her husband. Her transformations all depend on the betrayal by the male figures in her life. First by her father who broke the promise not to see her mother in childbed, and later by her husband Raymond who spies on her in her monstrous form while she takes a bath. As a result, Melusine is forced to turn from a half-fairy to half-serpent, or half-fish, sometimes even depicted with wings, and lastly into a dragon.

Not only is she burdened with having to give up on her chance of becoming human, but the Melusine also must let go of her husband, status as a noblewoman, and her home. The biggest sacrifice she has to make, aside from relinquishing her human-self, however, is letting go of her children. While she stays away from her husband, she nevertheless continues to visit her children occasionally, even as a dragon, not fully a monster, but a caring mother instead.

Jewish Fairy, Jewish Soul

Over the years since the story of the Melusine was first told by Jean d’Arras, the events and the half-fairy’s appearance have been retold and changed many times. She continued to capture the interest of different cultures all over the world, who adapted her to fit their image and even today, the Melusine still appears in literature and other forms of media.

The Time of the Ghosts by Gillian Polack is only one example in which the Melusine plays a huge role in modern times, but it proves to be an interesting comparison to the old medieval texts that first explored the history of the half-fairy.

In the medieval texts, the Melusine often didn’t only crave to be human, but also for a final Christian death once she had managed to acquire a human soul. The situation in The Time of the Ghosts is similar. While Lil, who is the Melusine in the novel, longs to be human as well, she does not crave a pure Christian soul, but a pure Jewish soul instead.

One of the biggest differences to Jean d’Arras’ Melusine is that Lil is able to give up on her immortality and her winged serpent form. She does so by choice at first and isn’t forced to take on her serpent form at all. On the contrary, Lil can’t take on her fairy form at all throughout most of the novel, even if she tries several times. She does succeed at the end of the novel due to a number of reasons, including her husband and her descendants.

A Fairy’s Family

The Melusine’s family also plays a big role in The Time of the Ghosts. Lil finds a husband she loves in Sebastian and together they have two children. Before they are born, however, Sebastian disappears without a trace. Prior to her husband vanishing, Lil was traveling a lot but ultimately settles down with her children once he’s gone. This starkly contrasts the medieval figure of Melusine, whose husband’s betrayal forced her to leave her home and wander instead.

In The Time of the Ghosts, Sebastian’s disappearance could thus be seen as a betrayal which causes this reversed plot. But just like Jean d’Arras’ Melusine, Lil suffers due to losing her husband and ultimately also her children.

Her son dies early, and her daughter grows up to despise her and her magic, sending Lil away and forbidding her contact with her family, whom she loves more than anything. She continuously attempts to watch over her descendants but can’t reconnect with them due to her fairy-self.

In addition to losing her family, Lil also had to let go of several of her old identities throughout her life, leaving many friends behind as well. Giving up her identities can be compared to Jean d’Arras’ Melusine losing her high status. This aspect is particularly apparent in the novel’s “Tales of Melusine”, where those who knew her fairy-self throughout life had a high opinion of her but eventually ended up dying before her, taking her status to the grave with them. Forced to be alone for years, Lil thus decides to give up on her fairy-self and immortality.

Melusine’s ability to live happily at the end of the novel is only possible due to her husband finally returning and still being in love with her, as well as through the discovery that Kat is a descendant of hers. Kat who, instead of pushing her away like her daughter, longs to spend more time with her. She cares about Kat as she would about her own children and only manages to take on her fairy-self again because she wants to see her grow up and be with her husband again.

Jean d’Arras’ Melusine does not get to experience this happiness as her relationship with Raymond doesn’t end well. Gillian Polack thus flipped the medieval Melusine’s story upside down.

A Fairy’s Form

Another very significant common ground between the two versions is the Melusine’s fairy form. Gillian Polack’s Melusine is also depicted as a woman with a serpent’s tail and golden wings, as well as scales, when she finally shows herself to Kat. In addition to her otherworldly appearance, she is also described as young and powerful, hinting at the magic and special abilities she possesses, just like her counterpart by Jean d’Arras.

Aside from taking on her fairy form, she is also able to fly, use telepathy, and can convince everyone to do what she desires. Furthermore, the novel hints at her ability to see the future when Melusine writes about giving a man the gift of foresight. This power was said to be used by the medieval Melusine. Lil also uses other types of magic, though what exactly she can do is never described in detail. Throughout the time when Lil doesn’t deny her fairy form, she is also described as incredibly beautiful, enticing, and initially immortal.

A Fairy Tale Ending?

In conclusion, while Gillian Polack’s and Jean d’Arras’ Melusines share many traits with each other, like their powers, the loss of those they love and wanting to die as a human in the end, there are also stark differences between the two.

Lil was betrayed by her husband and child, not by being discovered as a Melusine, but by Sebastian’s disappearance and her daughter being unaccepting of her magic. She does, however, end up getting a happy ending. Nevertheless, her ability to give up on her immortality and her fairy-self instead of being forced to shift once a week is the biggest difference in my opinion. But perhaps it is for that very reason, that Gillian Polack’s Melusine is allowed a happy ending and can continue to live with her family, as she accepts her true self and is accepted as such by others.

Narrative(s) and Structure in Gillian Polack’s “The Time of the Ghosts”

Posted on by annsophieludwig
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Something that immediately caught my eye while reading is that Gillian Polack’s novel The Time of the Ghosts consists of three different narratives: the main story, Kat’s blog and the ‘Tales of Melusine’. All three narratives have their own content, structure and narrative situation and they take turns throughout the novel. While the narratives differ in these aspects, they ultimately combine into one narrative. 

The First Narrative

The first narrative, the main narrative of the novel, follows the story of the three old women Lil, Ann and Mabel who take in the rebellious young girl Kat, who was homeless. Kat forms relationships with her “grandmothers” and together they explore the world of ghosts, spirits and monsters. This narrative has a third person narrator but what is important to note is that most of it is told from Kat’s perspective, which makes her the main focaliser. The novel uses several spaces and a black line, to indicate that a certain scene is over. The following part of the text then is a time skip, a change in location, one of the ‘Tales of Melusine’ or one of Kat’s blog posts.

The Second Narrative

The second narrative is Kat’s blog. It is asynchronous, as she is writing her blog rather irregularly throughout the novel and the entries are not closely tied to the surrounding narrative. Mostly the topics of her blog include research she has done on monster and ghost sightings, reviews of the ‘Tales of Melusine’ she has read so far or a journal of events involving her grandmothers. Kat calls her infrequent posts “snippets of lives” (p. 162) and compares them to the ‘Tales of Melusine’ (cf. p. 162).  Sometimes she writes about her past, her family and her nightmares. In this narrative Kat is a first-person narrator. That, and the fact that she is writing about her own experiences, gives the reader a much closer look into Kat’s character compared to other characters in the novel. For this reason, I found it easy to connect with her character more deeply. Another important thing to note is that her blog posts are unlabeled. They do not have a title and, as mentioned above, are mostly identifiable through breaks in the text and a switched narrator. Therefore, at first glance they may look like a continuation of the main narrative but these posts have their own voice. As Kat is a fifteen-year-old girl and she is also writing a blog rather than a literary mode, her language is more colloquial and she is often voicing her opinion on whatever she is writing about. 

The Third Narrative

The third narrative consists of the ‘Tales of Melusine’. They are little snippets of the life of the fairy Melusine, later revealed to be Lil, over the last 500 years and they are written like fairy tales. I would argue that the novel wants the reader to see them as such most of the time, as some tales which appear in the novel start with “once upon a time” (p. 13). Another special feature is that the tales are, unlike Kat’s blog posts, labeled and sequenced, yet also achronological. For me this was interesting as in some tales there was no indication in which century they took place, which made them seem more mystical and mysterious. What these tales also do is point at issues connected to Jewishness and Jewish-Australianness. The tales are written in third person narration and have Melusine as the focaliser. Looking at these tales in terms of narrative structure, I would say that they are an embedded narrative, a story within the story so to speak, with the main narrative as the frame narrative.  

In the end, the three narratives combined make for a great novel. While the switch of narrative often felt pretty random, one still sees the connection of the narratives by the end of it. The change in perspective, writing style and narrative elevates the mysteriousness of the story and while sometimes the order or the switch of the narratives seems illogical, by the end of the novel one still got the feeling everything made sense and the mysteries were solved.

“The Time of the Ghosts” by Gillian Polack: A multilayered story with lots to offer

Posted on by Julia Weiser
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How does one spend retirement? For some people, the answer lies in quaint gardens and relaxed hobbies – but what if that hobby is ghost hunting? In Jewish Australian writer Gillian Polack’s 6th novel, The Time of the Ghosts (2017), work doesn’t end with retirement. The story follows the three (in several respects) old friends Ann, Mabel and Lil, who spend their evenings tracking down and scolding away the supernatural creatures of Canberra that do not belong and have been imported in the course of colonization and globalization. One day, 15-year-old runaway Kat is taken in by the trio and joins them in their adventures. Evil forces threaten Australia, and only with Kat’s help the trio has a chance to stop them.

But everybody has their ghosts. Each friend struggles with their own: Ann, who has just retired and who is nearing an ugly divorce, struggles to find her purpose and thereby becomes an easy target for the evil spirits that haunt Canberra. Mabel, who has trouble letting people in, finds herself in a bizarre love affair that simply cannot have a happy ending. Lil fights with the ghosts of her past, which have caused her to give up on her future a long time ago. Lastly, Kat has seen no other choice than to flee from a home of neglect, and must now try to get back on her feet. Accompanying the story of the four friends are the tales of Melusine: an ancient fairy from Western Europe who tells her life over the centuries in short stories, telling tales of the supernatural, immigration, human tragedy, and secret identities. Melusine must disguise herself as a human and, most of the time, hide her Jewish heritage in order to be able to live among others in peace, but consequently never finds true connection to those around her.

Polack’s novel has a lot to offer to a broad readership; with its heart-warming premise of the grandmas taking in a kid in trouble, it certainly feels empowering to watch Kat slowly heal from her past and from her bad habits. But as may have already become clear, the book runs even deeper than the characters’ friendship: Polack touches on difficult topics such as abuse and neglect, but also on themes connected to Australia and its history, among which are Jewish immigration, colonialism and the consequential import of cultures foreign to the continent, and Australia as a convicts’ colony – the ghosts in The Time of the Ghosts surely are not all just of mythological nature. While one could criticize the fact that these serious topics are mostly lurking beneath the surface of the story and are not discussed extensively, the novel seems not to lay the focus on the issues themselves, but on how those affected manage to deal with the aftermath in their own lives; this could transform the underlying victimhood of those suffering to a form of agency and self-reflection.

The slow burn with which the tales of Melusine develop may seem slow paced and interjected randomly in the beginning, but the more the reader gets to understand their connection to the main story line, the more intriguing and engaging they become, until the reader feels like a proper detective about to solve a puzzle. The story is also full of parallels and doubling-elements for the reader to spot, like the similarities of Kat and Lil’s secret identities (especially considering their relation), their need to flee, and their tendency to process their emotions in the form of writing – Lil in her autobiographies and Kat via her blog. 

But what might be most intriguing is the uncertainty with which Melusine frames her stories: while fairy tales are usually known to be invented, nobody can say for certain with the tales of this fairy. While the experiences described seem to be the real experiences of the character, Melusine herself chooses to cause chaos by suggesting that her stories might not even be true and by mixing up the timelines.

The Time of the Ghosts is a multifaceted love letter to artistic blurring of lines combined with a bitter-sweet story of friendship, loss, identity crises and growth. Despite its dark undertones, the novel offers hope and a much needed happy ending – or does it?