It’s October, it is decorative gourd season, motherforkers, and time for SPOOKY STORIES and pumpkin spice and boots and scarves and right on time, we have a feminist version of the Legend of Sleepy Hollow told from the point of view of Katrina van Tassel, the woman at the point of of the love triangle between Ichabod Crane and Brom Bones.
In Washington Irving’s original story, Ichabod Crane comes to the village of Sleepy Hollow some time after the American Revolutionary War as the new schoolmaster, and catches the eye of one Katrina van Tassel, the daughter of a wealthy landowner. Ichabod is poor but earnest, but Katrina is also being courted by the local Lad About Town, Brom van Brunt. The story comes to a head (pun pretty much intended) when Ichabod meets a local ghost, a headless Hessian mercenary who flings a pumpkin at Ichabod and scares him off. Brom marries Katrina, and Katrina’s desires and inner life are not explored at all.
In Palombo’s version, it’s told completely from Katrina’s view. She is VERY clear on what she wants, and where her opinions on both Brom and Ichabod lie. Brom was a childhood friend, and everyone sort of expected that they would end up married, but then Brom got into an altercation with Katrina’s best friend and drank ALL of the toxic masculinity juice, and Katrina is like, how about you go fuck yourself.
Ichabod shows up, and he’s cute and smart and smitten and Katrina (to quote one Eliza Schuyler) feels her heart go boom. Other parts go aflame, too, and soon she and Ichabod are sneaking around making out, while Katrina’s father thinks that Ichabod would NOT be a good husband. He’s poor and possibly just after Katrina’s wealth. What could he possibly offer her?
Brom, on the other hand, has the neighboring farm and it’s a marriage suit that makes sense to literally everyone in town. Katrina tells him several times, in very clear terms, that she does NOT want to marry him, that she WILL not marry him, and he really shouldn’t even fucking speak to her. Her father tells her to be nice, and her mother tells her to not antagonize her father. The only people who accept Katrina’s word are Ichabod and her best friend, Charlotte.
It was…an experience reading this during the Kavanaugh hearings. Brom, with his “Ha ha, Katrina, I just need to woo you more!” and getting violently angry when he isn’t given his way, is a character I HATED. I messaged the other Bitches and told them that I wanted his dick to fall off due to leprosy and then I wanted him to die in a fucking fire. I recognize that my tolerance for toxic male behavior, even when it’s clear that this is not being framed as acceptable by the book, is at an ALL TIME GODDAMN LOW. I recognize that I am not reading this book in a vacuum. I do wonder how much less ragey I would be over this if I had read the book before this past week.
But seriously. Losing his dick to leprosy would have been a reasonable fate for one Brom Van Brunt. I am exhausted of angry men not being able to take no for an answer or not being able to cope with receiving consequences for their actions.
I really thought this was written well. There was a lot of thought put into how to build the world of Early American Sleepy Hollow. The area was primarily settled by Dutch colonists, so many of the characters spoke in Dutch and English. I strongly suspect that Palombo had a map of where all of the main locations were in relation to the real Sleepy Hollow. While the original story isn’t set in a specific year, Palombo does use Hamilton-based touchstones to set this story in very specific time. I think that came off a little trite, to be honest, but it does make sense that Dutch Americans in Upstate New York would be interested in the comings and goings of the son-in-law of Phillip Schuyler, one of the most prominent people in their community.
The main weakness is that there isn’t a lot to Ichabod. He’s a nice enough guy, I guess, but he’s mostly there as a prop for Katrina’s story. Part of this is a result of it being in Katrina’s first-person POV, but she’s VERY clear on how loathsome Brom is. The main strength is the friendship between Katrina and Charlotte and how ride or die they are for each other. There’s some bumps in the road, as there are in any friendship (especially when you’re 18-19 years old), but they always come back around.
My main grounding in the Sleepy Hollow story is the Tim Burton movie from 1999 (remember when Casper Van Diem was going to be a Big Thing?) and the regrettably short lived TV series that I adored for the one season it was relevant. Being able to get this story with Katrina’s experience as the center was great. It’s not a romance…
There is a happy ending, in the sense of Katrina reaches a place of peace and Brom gets…not quite the just desserts I wanted (but as we all know, I am bloodthirsty on the best of days). And to be sure, it’s not an HEA. Since this isn’t a romance, that’s fine. I just don’t want anyone looking for the epic love story of Katrina and Ichabod and their HEA to be disappointed. I did enjoy this quote a bit, and it’s a good read while drinking your autumnal drink of choice while the autumn winds swoop through the changing leaves and maybe if you listen carefully, you can hear the hoofbeats of a horseman in the distance.
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I actually felt like Brom got a pretty satisfyingly gruesome ending (though I agree that further um….modifications to his body would have been welcome)! Otherwise I felt roughly the same way about the book – it’s about the tragedy of losing true love more than anything.
This interpretation of Brom Van Blunt seems like a pretty fair take on the original story although not one Washington Irving would like. I recently read “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” for the first time in many years and was struck by how culture clash is at the center of it: a skinny schoolteacher from New England, who likes intellectual discussions and spending time chatting with women, arrives in a rural area where the men spend their time engaging in “manly sports” in all-male groups and are most likely to use book pages to grease the axles of their wagons. Washington Irving was clearly sympathetic to the latter point of view and approved of Brom’s manly-manness, but nothing forces the reader to agree with the author.
I think there is a typo in the last paragraph – ‘quote’ should be ‘quite’, right?
Given my feelings about the state of the world right now I think I will give this book a pass, but great review!
I almost picked this up at B&N the other day but I might go back for it now. “Tragedy of losing your true love” and “the power of female friendship” is right up my alley.