Plot summary

An unseen narrator relates the story of September, a twelve-year-old girl from Omaha, Nebraska. September's father is a soldier at war in Europe and her mother works all day building airplane engines in a factory. One day a Green Wind visits her and she accepts his offer to take her to the great sea that borders Fairyland. September meets a gnome who gives her the ability to see Fairyland as it truly is before pushing her into that world. September's adventures continue in Fairyland, where she meets witches who give her a mission to steal a spoon back from the Marquess, who rules Fairyland with an iron fist. She teams up with A-Through-L, a wyvern whose absent father was a library, and thus considers himself a "Wyverary", a wyvern and library hybrid. When they find the Marquess, she hands over the witches' spoon in return for September's promise to retrieve a special sword from a casket in the Worsted Wood. September meets Saturday, a marid, and with A-Through-L they head for the Worsted Wood, where September finds the casket. The "sword" inside varies depending on the interests of the finder's mother, so September found not an actual sword, but a wrench because of her mother's work as a mechanic. As September escapes the Worsted Wood with the wrench, Saturday and A-Through-L are kidnapped and she sets about finding them. She must circumnavigate Fairyland in a ship of her own making to land at the Lonely Gaol, a jail at the bottom of the world. Along the way, she befriends a one-hundred-and-twelve-year-old paper lantern named Gleam, who helps to guide September to the Lonely Gaol. Once there, she learns the Marquess's full story and that she wants September to use the wrench to permanently separate Fairyland and the human world. September refuses and frees her friends from the Gaol. She uses Saturday's marid powers to wish everything well again, just before her time in Fairyland runs out—until the next spring, when she is bound by law to return.

Reception

Fairyland was published by Feiwel & Friends as a novel for young adults (10–14 years old), but has been embraced as a tale for all ages. The New York Times noted that "there’s a ton of grown-up humor—Valente mocks bureaucrats, Bergman and put-upon grad students, lost on kids but fun for oldsters."^[6] Neil Gaiman called it a "glorious balancing act between modernism and the Victorian Fairy Tale", while Peter Beagle said "Catherynne Valente is a find, at any age!"^[7]

Selected as a Best Book of the Month for May 2011, Amazon.com called Fairyland "a fantastical tale that's somewhere between Lewis Carroll and Terry Pratchett", stating that "Catherynne Valente's imaginative cast of characters and spirited prose turn what could be a standard heroine-on-a-quest story into something on par with the best (and weirdest) classics."^[8]

Awards and honors

In 2009, Fairyland, which was published online, won the Nebula/Andre Norton Award.^[9] It was the first book to win the award before traditional publication.^[7]

The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making won the readers' choice CultureGeek Best Web Fiction of the Decade award for best web fiction of the 2000s.^[10]

In May 2011, it debuted at number 8 on the New York Times Bestseller list.^[11]