Ceallaigh's Reviews > Ask Baba Yaga: Otherworldly Advice for Everyday Troubles

“Voices are ; noise, humanly noise—but what knows best in you is not of human shape or sound but of a stranger, Wilder beast. )Now it turns in your stomach, now it rends yr chest. Tell the voices to shut up & listen for the growl.”

This sweet, dark little book is full of beautifully written advice communed to the author by Baba Yaga herself. Advice that includes how to deal with feelings of anger and desires for revenge, feelings of low self worth and hopeless depression, feelings of love, fear, and frustration, as well as a ton of gorgeous illustrations that give me serious tattoo inspiration vibes. 🤗

But Baba Yaga isn’t trying to hold your hand or even to make you feel any better. Oftentimes your wishy washy whiny human troubles make her snort and roll her eyes and she delivers her advice in terse, rushed, abbreviated, and badly punctuated gruntings—but even those contain the seeds of true wisdom and you quickly realize that when Baba Yaga speaks, it would be your great mistake not to heed her words.

“You are,a morning wildflower in which the dew has bundled itself. Yr work is to keep growing & bloom in yr small bright life. You cannot change the forest even as you see the animals;tearing into each others’ bodies there. You bring peace to the forest by glowing palely in yr beauty.”

I absolutely loved the writing style of Baba Yaga’s answers. Her strange word choices and all over the place punctuation did an excellent job of evoking the growling, cackling voice of an old crone, barking out her advice as she putters around the forest, or soars through the night sky in her mortar.

Baba Yaga is one of my alltime favorite folkloric characters and Kitaiskaia’s book perfectly captures her spirit in all her wonderful hag-exquisiteness. I can’t wait to get her second book: Poetic Remedies for Troubled Times.

“…& as for me fear is a pushcart I roll jolly—down the hill & the faster it rides the faster do my Wounds in my heart flush with wind & so am I most blood-fueled and living in my healthy glory on this earth.”

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Further / Similar / Suggested Reading:
- Taisia Kitaiskaia also wrote Literary Witches, which I also have, and love. ☺️
- Hag, by Tamara Jobe (poetry)
- In the House in the Dark of the Woods, by Laird Hunt (literary fiction with strong forest witch vibes)
- Drive Your Plough Over the Bones of the Dead, by Olga Tokarczuk (literary fiction with strong crone vibes)