Since the beginning of 2025, I’ve been interested in revisiting some of the classic works in the genres I enjoy. Originally the revisit was brought on by an interest in the Traveller Roleplaying Game and a list of influential science fiction works. From there, I got an interest in some of the classical urban fantasy works. Especially after reading the list of personal recommendations from Seanan McGuire. Neither this book, nor this author, appears on McGuire’s list, but Newford and Charles de Lint come up often enough in urban fantasy recommendations that when The Onion Girl went on sale in ebook form, I decided to take a look.

Note however, that The Onion Girl is not the first Newford book. I don’t know how I missed that fact myself when picking it up, but it was published about a decade into the original releases of the series. While the Newford stories each stand alone pretty well, and I did not have issues getting to know the characters starting with this one, those who find the very beginning a very good place to start may wish to look at Dreams Underfoot instead.

CW: Sexual Assault, Drug Use, Family Abuse, and 1990s Depictions of Sex Work

How can who you meet affect how you get to grow beyond the traumas you faced as a child?

There are two parallel stories told in The Onion Girl: painter of the fantastic Jilly Coppercorn lies in a bed recovering from injuries she received in a car crash, while Raylene Carter tells the story of how she fought against the brother who sexually abused her and escaped the home where she was abandoned by her older sister, her brother’s first victim. Their tales interweave and continue in parallel, each adding a context of “what if” to the other.

Jilly’s story involves a theme that she must first heal what’s inside her before friends and magic can help her heal her physical body. Raylene’s story largely involves her and her best friend Pinky on a cross-country spree inflicting upon others what was inflicted upon them as teens. The two parallel each other as Jilly tries, and sometimes fails, to revisit what happened to her as a girl while Raylene largely continues to live in that abused headspace unable to move beyond it. Jilly meets friends in Newford who get her off drugs, get her into art school, get her away from the work she did as a teen prostitute. Raylene has Pinky who pushes the pair of them into ever more trouble until Pinky ends up in prison and Raylene hatches an idea to go take revenge on the sister who abandoned her all those years ago.

Largely these story parallels between the two women carry on a theme that while we might be shaped and informed by the traumas we’ve endured, each of us still retains the choice to be who we want to be. That theme remains consistent throughout the book as Jilly continually makes choices about who she wants to be and who she wants to help while Raylene remains concerned with immediate desires for herself and maybe occasionally Pinky.

I was talking to friends as I went through this book joking about how the 90s edginess is strong in this one. It opens with the main character being hit by a car and then basically being told to deal with the trauma of being a sexual assault victim or she’ll be stuck with her injuries. While that was my initial thought, I really enjoyed sitting with the found family that Jilly has in her trio, “the Tribe of Small Fierce Women”, with Sophie and Wendy helping her. Along with all the others around Newford who come to her side.

The pacing of this one is a bit slower than a lot of other books I’ve read recently, the conflicts the characters are dealing with are a lot more internal and a lot more contemplative. For a good portion of the book, those issues are actively being ignored by the characters. This is maybe not the best book for someone looking for a lot of action and excitement. But, if you’re a fan of getting immersed in the millieu of a book, and sitting alongside the characters and just experiencing their lives for a bit, I think this is a story you might enjoy. After this one, I’m sold on checking out the other Newford books, because I really did like what de Lint set up with the setting.