Scan barcode
thejejo's review against another edition
4.0
3.5 rounded to 4. A collection of fairy tales reimagined, they were strange and entertaining.
aquint's review against another edition
4.0
I'm giving this book 4 stars because overall I really enjoyed it. There were, as usual with a collection of stories, a few pretty awful ones.
lucysmom17's review against another edition
4.0
As with all compilations, there are good stories, and bad stories, but a few in this collection were truly great (With Hair of Handspun Gold and The Color Master we’re my favorites). As others have said, there are a few that seem too “artsy” or pretentious. Sure, ok, but nothing is stopping you from skipping on to the next one. Would recommend to any fantasy/fairy tale lover with the caveat: they’re not all about infanticide and cannibalism ;)
eletricjb's review against another edition
3.0
I think my favorite part of this entire collection was Gregory Maguire's foreword. But "The Color Master" was good too.
rachellynnmcguire's review against another edition
These stories are either too bleak or too boring. I like The Language of Thorns by Leigh Bardugo much better. That's the vibe I want in fairy tales. Harsh without being despair inducing.
juffnstuff's review against another edition
adventurous
challenging
dark
mysterious
medium-paced
4.25
Content Warnings
Graphic: Death, Rape, and Adult/minor relationship
missbookiverse's review against another edition
2.0
I can't get over how disappointing this was. I love fairy tales and retellings of them, this book had my name all over it, but out of the 40 stories I only really liked 6. Most of them were too gritty and bleak, often vulgar, there was nothing magical or warm, something I associate with fairy tales, about them. Some of them were too confusing and others simply boring. If you enjoy retellings in the vein of [a:Michael Cunningham|1432|Michael Cunningham|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1398891471p2/1432.jpg], you might like it more than I did.
The 6 stories I found enjoyable:
- Baba Iaga and the Pelican Child by Joy Williams
- The Erlking by Sarah Shun-Lien Bynum
- Dapplegrim by Brian Evenson (my absolute favorite)
- Ther Mermaid in the Tree by Timothy Schaffert
- The Color Master by Aimee Bender
- First Day of Snow by Naoko Awa
The 6 stories I found enjoyable:
- Baba Iaga and the Pelican Child by Joy Williams
- The Erlking by Sarah Shun-Lien Bynum
- Dapplegrim by Brian Evenson (my absolute favorite)
- Ther Mermaid in the Tree by Timothy Schaffert
- The Color Master by Aimee Bender
- First Day of Snow by Naoko Awa
mkaybaker07's review against another edition
4.0
I still think about some of these a month and a half later.
lannthacker's review against another edition
Although I only read a handful, these were delightfully strange tales. They were at once familiar and new. A nice book to have around for rainy or winter afternoons.
ridgewaygirl's review against another edition
4.0
Dedicated to Angela Carter, My Mother She Killed Me, My Father He Ate Me is a collection of forty fairy tales written by an impressively wide array of authors, from Neil Gaiman and Jim Shepard to Aimee Bender and Ludmilla Petrushevskaya, and adapting, reimagining or loosely basing stories on everything from our most traditional fairy tales to mythology to fairy tales from Asia and Japan. Will it surprise you to find out that Joyce Carol Oates chose Bluebeard? Or that John Updike picked the same tale, but told it from Bluebeard's point of view and set it in modern Ireland?
In any collection this diverse, some stories are amazing, a few fall flat and a handful are fantastically bizarre. It took me quite a while to read all forty tales, they not being the kind of thing to read one after another. I liked that the editor, Kate Bernheimer, chose several stories by new authors, some of whom have not yet written a full-length novel and others who are not well known. She also included several non-Western authors, who adapted stories from their own countries and made the collection a bit unexpected; without the easy handle of a familiar plot to anchor the reader they demanded a little more of me. My only complaint has to do with the book's organization; with the fairy tale each story is based on found only in the table of contents and information about each author stuck in the back, I was constantly flipping around before and after each story.
In any collection this diverse, some stories are amazing, a few fall flat and a handful are fantastically bizarre. It took me quite a while to read all forty tales, they not being the kind of thing to read one after another. I liked that the editor, Kate Bernheimer, chose several stories by new authors, some of whom have not yet written a full-length novel and others who are not well known. She also included several non-Western authors, who adapted stories from their own countries and made the collection a bit unexpected; without the easy handle of a familiar plot to anchor the reader they demanded a little more of me. My only complaint has to do with the book's organization; with the fairy tale each story is based on found only in the table of contents and information about each author stuck in the back, I was constantly flipping around before and after each story.