Erika Johansen on Finding the Dark Heart of The Nutcracker In The Kingdom of Sweets
The Nutcracker is a staple of the holiday season, the story Christmas Eve party that sees a young girl receive a magical gift from her mysterious godfather that eventually comes to life, transporting her to a fantastical realm of candy presided over by the Sugar Plum Fairy. Full of beautiful music and colorful characters, it’s not a particularly dark or foreboding tale. This precisely makes Erika Johansen’s The Kingdom of Sweets such a delicious and unexpected treat.
The novel, set in nineteenth century Russia, follows the story of twins Clara and Natasha, cursed and blessed in equal measure by their mysterious godfather, Drosselmeyer as vessels of Light and Dark, which has kept them at odds most of our lives. And when the fateful events of that infamous Christmas party see them both journey to the realm of the Sugar Plum Fairy, a deceptively beautiful world whose candy-coated shine masks dark, foul edges, their lives—and their relationship—will never be the same.
We got the chance to chat with Johansen about her feelings about the original story, the relationship between Clara and Natasha, and the Sugar Plum fairy as an avatar of vengeance.
Paste Magazine: Tell us about The Kingdom of Sweets! I have to admit I’d never thought that “dark retelling of The Nutcracker” was something I wanted, but it turned out I really did! What made you want to reexamine this classic in this way?
Erika Johansen: I wanted to re-examine The Nutcracker because I used to love the watching the ballet as a child, but somewhere around the age of fifteen or so I realized I had come to hate it, for reasons I never quite understood.
I still love to listen to the score, but I can barely sit through a performance, and when something darkens that drastically in your own mind, as a writer you want to take a look at it. So when I needed a break from the Tearling, I turned to The Nutcracker.
Paste: Where did the inspiration for including Natasha—-Clara’s dark twin, the girl who sees things others ignore, the one who’s always passed over—come from?
Johansen: Well, Natasha is basically my sad adolescent self, and so naturally she shows up a lot in my writing. I put her into this story, however, because part of what upset me so much the last time I sat through The Nutcracker was a sense of deep inequality. Once you look, it’s everywhere in the ballet (if perhaps dependent on the production).
A velvet-clad Drosselmeyer carries his load of presents past poor children begging in the snow-filled street. He gives them a coin, and moves along. Clara pirouettes around showing off her nutcracker in front of a bunch of children on the sofa who, in the productions I saw, got two or three pretty weak presents to share among them. Then she gets a sleigh ride through an enchanted kingdom while all of its residents dance for her amusement. Dream or no, what makes Clara so damn special? It’s a lot to read into a child’s fantasy, certainly, but once I saw it, I couldn’t unsee it. A sister of at least equal worth but much deflated value seemed the best way to explore that inequality.
Paste: Clara and Natasha have such a complicated relationship, and it touches on everything from sibling rivalry to pure jealousy and even the limitations placed on women’s choices in this time period. It’s so easy to feel sympathy for them both at various points, given the constraints of the world around them. What was most interesting—or most difficult—about exploring their sisterhood?
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