A review by jmbz38
The Lilac Fairy Book by Andrew Lang

1.0

Both Lang and the people quoted on the book cover sing the praises of the translations of the stories in this book. I for one wish they'd focused more on storytelling and less on the translation, because if these translations are accurate then the source material they came from is garbage. Most of the stories in this book make zero sense. I don't just mean because they're fantastical tales meant for children. I mean that the plot points of many of the stories don't connect, the focus of the story changes midway through and the original focus never mentioned again, characters are named that were not mentioned before, or simple details contradict one another. An example of that last one: in one tale a fairy plucks three hairs and throws them into the wind. There they "each transform into four tailors." I don't know much French (the language the story was translated from) but I know that 'trois' and 'quatre' look nothing alike. Or a farmer takes a bushel of wheat, plants it in three fields, then suddenly two of the fields are corn. Those two crops have their own words in French too; it's just baffling and confusing. It's also annoying that there's little background on the stories. At the end of each tale, there's a citation of which source it was translated from, but no mention of the year or country of origin. Avoid this book, even a monkey could make up more coherent stories than the ones contained in The Lilac Fairy Book.