Is friendship stronger than death itself? Author Sophie Anderson’s ‘The House with Chicken Legs’ has the answer [Review]

Marinka’s home isn’t like most people’s: she lives with her ancient, loving grandmother, Baba Yaga, in a chicken-legged house, which can get up and move wherever it wants, when it wants.

A yaga’s job is to help people who have just died, as they are confused and don’t know what to do. A yaga takes them one by one into her house and shows them how to pass through The Gate into the other life. Baba Yaga helps many dead people every night, and Marinka is her apprentice, training to become a yaga when her grandmother’s time is done.

But Marinka is lonely. Her life involves moving from one town to another, never settling, and repairing a fence made of bones every day. She doesn’t know whether she wants to become a yaga, and she just wants to make friends with someone her own age.

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Sophie Anderson’s The House With Chicken Legs is an imaginative retelling of the Baba Yaga myth from Slavic folklore. There are many stories about Baba Yaga in Eastern European fairytales, and the character has many forms. She can be a cruel witch, a benevolent old nanny, or the ancient goddess of death. Here in Anderson’s YA novel, she takes on another dimension. She is a teenager’s grandmother, and she has a problem. How can she impress upon Marinka that she has a destiny to fulfil?

Each evening, Marinka stands and watches as her grandmother guides the dead along the next stage of their journey. Every few days, the house picks itself up and runs to another part of Europe. The problem is, Marinka wants a normal life, and now is the time to do something about it.

Every time Marinka almost befriends someone living, the house intervenes and ruins things. In the first few pages of the story, she meets Benjamin, an inquisitive living boy who comes across Marinka’s house on the edge of town. Initially, the two get on well, but the house with chicken legs cannot allow this friendship to grow.

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The relationship between the house and Marinka is just one of the intriguing building blocks that make up this original and clever YA novel. It is so refreshing to read a book that presents original characters brimming with personality, and an engaging plot that doesn’t echo anything that has been done before.

There is a lot going on in Anderson’s impressive novel, and it all makes for a fascinating, thought-provoking, and highly recommended read.

John Millen can be contacted on [email protected]