by Gregory Maguire
publisher’s synopsis
Elena Rudina lives in the impoverished Russian countryside. Her father has been dead for years. One of her brothers has been conscripted into the Tsar’s army, the other taken as a servant in the house of the local landowner. Her mother is dying, slowly, in their tiny cabin. And there is no food. But then a train arrives in the village, a train carrying untold wealth, a cornucopia of food, and a noble family destined to visit the Tsar in Saint Petersburg — a family that includes Ekaterina, a girl of Elena’s age.
When the two girls’ lives collide, an adventure is set in motion, an escapade that includes mistaken identity, a monk locked in a tower, a prince traveling incognito, and — in a starring role only Gregory Maguire could have conjured — Baba Yaga, witch of Russian folklore, in her ambulatory house perched on chicken legs
Egg & Spoon is the only one of Maguire’s books that I’ve read, so I don’t know if his writing style is always like this, but Egg & Spoon has the feel of both a classic book and a folk/fairy tale. The pacing is slower than typical YA novels, the (slightly omniscient) narrator isn’t one of the main characters, the vocabulary is a little higher, and it blends both history and folk legends.
Baba Yaga’s character was a fantastic addition to the novel. Her spunk and quips lighten up the story and make it feel a little more familiar to a modern reader. I appreciated how Maguire used Elena and Cat as foils of each other.
As I said above, the pacing in Egg & Spoon is slower than most readers are probably used to. We spend a while in Tsarist Russia before the folklore elements start to bleed into the story. By the last chunk of the story, the historical elements have faded away to fantasy. But the slower shift from “reality” to fantasy works.
Egg & Spoon is a unique novel, and I don’t think it will be for every reader. However, for those who enjoy stories with a bit of quirkiness and don’t mind a little more “formal”-feeling prose, Egg & Spoon might be a good fit.
Cautions: two instances of swearing; non-detailed references to eating children (typically in a humourous context) *
*I didn’t keep exact track of cautions while reading Egg & Spoon and may have forgotten a caution
Hailey Huntington 
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