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paracyclops's review against another edition
adventurous
challenging
dark
emotional
funny
hopeful
informative
inspiring
lighthearted
mysterious
reflective
relaxing
sad
tense
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
4.0
This is the second in a series of anthologies published by (the now defunct) Mother's Milk Books, one of whose founding principles was to help to normalise breastfeeding. These stories were selected with that in mind, but not as a strict requirement—NJ Ramsden's mythologised Colditz tale 'Icarus', for example, doesn't touch overtly on themes of motherhood. The stories are all, broadly, fairytales—some reimagined, some re-set, some simply made up with themes and structures that are inspired by folk narrative traditions. As such, they're multifarious, with the expected pre-modern settings alongside contemporary or science-fiction takes on the genre. All are short and to the point, and without exception, all of them nail the tone of the fairytale—its almost danceable rhythms, its memorability, its ritual, incantatory character, and what, in her notes on her entry 'Rumpelstiltskin', Rebecca Ann Smith notes as an absence of 'emotional shading'. There's a certain generality or non-particularity about fairytales that makes them prone to be read as allegory, and that gives them a uniquely polyvalent symbolic power when re-appropriated by contemporary writers.
That power is in evidence here, although not all the stories are equally successful. A couple fell a bit flat for me, more for reasons of execution than anything else, but there are, conversely, some entries whose prose is a key strength. 'Rumpelstiltskin' is one of these, as is Julie Pemberton's 'Bear, Hare and Ptarmigan'. Most draw on the northern European folk-tale tradition, but Anuradha Gupta's 'The Jungle Goddess' has a South Asian tribal setting, and Marija Smits's 'Little Lost Soul' is a novel SF fable. The editorial policy is a model of inclusion and diversity, but Teika Bellamy's greatest achievement is in the consistent tone and atmosphere of the stories, which makes them run on easily one to the other, and kept me turning the pages until I'd used them all up. While many of the stories do deal with motherhood and breastfeeding, none of them are one trick ponies, and between them they touch on a huge variety of themes, in varied, insightful ways. Come for the comforting familiarity of a near universal form, stay for the challenge, the colour, and the soulful, life-affirming wisdom.
That power is in evidence here, although not all the stories are equally successful. A couple fell a bit flat for me, more for reasons of execution than anything else, but there are, conversely, some entries whose prose is a key strength. 'Rumpelstiltskin' is one of these, as is Julie Pemberton's 'Bear, Hare and Ptarmigan'. Most draw on the northern European folk-tale tradition, but Anuradha Gupta's 'The Jungle Goddess' has a South Asian tribal setting, and Marija Smits's 'Little Lost Soul' is a novel SF fable. The editorial policy is a model of inclusion and diversity, but Teika Bellamy's greatest achievement is in the consistent tone and atmosphere of the stories, which makes them run on easily one to the other, and kept me turning the pages until I'd used them all up. While many of the stories do deal with motherhood and breastfeeding, none of them are one trick ponies, and between them they touch on a huge variety of themes, in varied, insightful ways. Come for the comforting familiarity of a near universal form, stay for the challenge, the colour, and the soulful, life-affirming wisdom.
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