A Fairy Tale Revolution

The series, A Fairy Tale Revolution, consists of four picture books from Vintage Classics, that 'remix and revive' well-known fairy tales and give them a modern, feminist twist. Featuring four amazing UK authors - Jeanette Winterson, Kamila Shamsie, Malorie Blackman and Rebecca Solnit - flexing their authorial muscles in a new format.

Like most fairy tales, however, they are not really designed to be read with or by very young people. Fairy tales are cautionary tales offering up dire consequences to those who do not take heed. They're stories created to keep you safe by alerting you to the dangers of jealous partners, controlling partners, death, grief and loss. They warn you of the consequences of selfish behaviour, greed, laziness, arrogance and self-indulgence.

The old tales, pre-Disney, do not mince words. 

If you don't pay attention, you could end up dead. You could be eaten by a wolf, enslaved, lost forever in the forest, cast out of your community, orphaned or maimed. Sometimes it was a stranger you had to beware, but even way back when, everyone knew that the biggest danger lurked much closer to home. 

Domestic violence and the awful way that families can treat each other have always been the main causes for concern in fairy tales. Dressing them up as a story, only took away some of the power and pain. The Brothers Grimm struggled with this harsh image of family life, changing many of the original stories from being about mothers to stepmothers, and fathers to devils, to soften the blow.

Wicked, cruel, selfish mother-figures and strict, controlling, violent father-figures haunt the pages of most fairy tales. Obsessive husbands, manipulative wives, lying, lazy children - families were viewed as toxic danger zones. Safe families could change at the drop of a hat, or the death of a parent. The big, bad world was full of injustice and inequity. 

These were adult stories designed to frighten and instruct. There were always consequences, but not necessarily the ones you would expect. They urged you to be vigilant. Fairy tales highlighted some of the evil, wicked and unfair practices that exist in our world.

Most of the modern retellings sanitise these older tales. The lazy little pigs don't get eaten by the wolf, they merely run to the next house. The wolf doesn't get boiled alive, he jumps out the window and runs away. Cinderella's stepsisters don't lop off parts of their feet to fit into the slipper, birds no longer peck out their eyes. The consequences for being lazy, inept or selfish are watered down. Our darker selves are ignored or discounted, while all the bad stuff is removed, onto an 'other'. The modern retellings take away the morals embedded in the old tales about our own personal development, our dual natures, the good and bad inside us all. All the bad is put out there, away from us. The lesson now is that we're all fine just as we are. The bad people are out there, out of our control, but nothing to do with us. We don't have to change, we just have to be cautious and keep out the baddie (other).

Many years ago I devoured Bruno Bettelheim's The Uses of Enchantment. I was fascinated by the idea of children returning to a story over and over again to satisfy some inner conflict. I saw this in my teaching career all the time. Certain stories resonated with some groups and individuals in a very deep way. They had to be read multiple times over an extended period of time, until the need was met.

These stories were always the 'darker' ones. Stories that were considered scary or sad. Stories where someone died, got lost, faced down a fear or suffered a major disappointment. Books like Koala Lou, Dogger, Harry the Dirty Dog, The Spooky Old Tree, The Deep, The Gingerbread Man (where the GM got eaten by the fox), The Hobyahs, The Story About Ping, The Giving Tree, A Lion in the Meadow, and The Story of Ferdinand.

When I was a child, I was obsessed with two particular fairy tales - Snow-White & Rose-Red and Rumpelstiltskin. Bettelheim, observed that fairy tales about siblings often “stand for seemingly incompatible aspects of the human personality.” There was also something in there about trust, and appearances being deceiving and our wild natures that haunted me as well. While Rumpelstiltskin taught me about the perils of bragging, and making bad decisions and why it's important to name the evil forces acting upon us, to take away their power. 

Much of Bettelheim's research has been debunked in more recent times, but his ideas about the darker elements in stories, their psychological impact and how they resonate with children, still holds true. 

These new retellings of Cinderella, Bluebeard, Hansel and Gretel, and The Ugly Duckling are deep, dark and delicious. They are adult stories dressed up in picture book form. 

Jeanette Winterson in Hansel & Greta turns the known story into an environmental tale of greed, destruction and wickedness. Her word play is delicious and witty. This was probably my favourite story of the four.

Malorie Blackman gives us the very modern Blueblood complete with video surveillance and mobile technology. Nia Blueblood is the great-great-great-great-great-granddaughter of Bluebeard. She is a vigilante outing men who have abused other women and gotten away with it...until now. This was dark and shocking and subversive. I loved it!

Kamila Shamsie's Duckling, is a disturbing tale about body-shaming, fear of the other and bullying. The fate of the outsider, the refugee, and the loner are considered in this sad tale of belonging and being true to yourself.

Cinderella Liberator by Rebecca Solnit maintains a more traditional structure until Cinderella and the Prince just become good friends who help each other to be their best selves. Transformation, asking for help and helping others are the main themes. Economic independence and liberation from traditional roles are seen as being good things for both sexes. 

All four stories share feminist twists that delight the reader. At least, they delighted this reader. They also feature woodcut illustrations in the style of Arthur Rackman, by Laura Barrett. Check them out, I think you will love them too.

The Singing Bones by Shaun Tan

How to adequately describe Shaun Tan's work?

Phillip Pullman tries to in his Foreword of The Singing Bones -

Fairy tale characters have very little character, only characteristics. They have no interior life at all. These little figures of clay, with their simplified features, their single attributes, are perfect realisations of the strangeness of the characters they represent.

Jack Zipes discusses the power they had over him in his essay also in The Singing Bones, called 'How the Brothers Grimm Made their Way into the World'.

In many respects, the Grimms' tales, which were not their own but were more like found objects that might have died without the Grimms' creative and sensitive touch, have been given new life by Tan's highly unusual sculptures....All Tan's sculptures estrange us and beckon us to gaze and think about moving them, to discover how they have been made, and why they have been drawn from the Grimms' tales.

And in the Afterword, Tan himself, comments on his choice of materials and how they were inspired by a visit to Canada and Mexico where he searched out Inuit stone-carvings and pre-Colombian clay figurines.

These exhibit a wonderful blend of whimsy and seriousness, and a well-considered marriage of earthy material - stone and clay that never pretend to be anything but stone and clay - infused with weightless and magical ideas.

These sculptures affected me at a very basic, subconscious level.
Some made me catch my breath. Others were like a sucker punch to the gut. A few more melted my heart. A couple broke it again.

Their power comes not only from the nature of the sculpture, but from the photographic styling as well. Tan has carefully set up each sculpture with its own lighting, background and angles which creates added drama and tension.

Their seeming simplicity hides layers of meaning. Like the fairy tales they represent different ones will resonate with different people for different & very personal reasons. I've highlighted a few of the ones that captured my imagination.

Beautiful and sinister at the same time.

There's something about the tenderness of the face resting in the petals that breaks me.

Maybe one day I will talk about my thing with Snow White and Rose Red. But not yet!

Hoe wonderfully creepy and diabolical is this?

I would have loved to have seen the exhibition in Melbourne featuring Tan's work. But, sadly, it is now finished and doesn't appear to be travelling the countryside.

We will have to make do with checking out Tan's blog, The Bird King, instead.

Reluctant Romantic - It's Complicated

Katie @Doing Dewey is hosting a challenge throughout February to encourage us to read a genre we tend to avoid.

This month I am reading graphic novels and discussing what keeps me from reading more books in this genre.

Today's discussion topic is "It's Complicated".

The idea is to discuss what has kept us from reading more of our chosen genre.

However my complications have taken a completely different turn this week. As it turns out, my genre has become complicated in a way that I didn't, or couldn't, predict.

As it turns out, my genre is NOT graphic novels as I originally thought, but some kind of weird hybrid that better fits the #librariansdilemma tag instead!

Is it graphic? Is it art? Is it non-fiction of fiction?

My genre is a booksellers nightmare - of the where on earth do I shelve this book? kind.

It's a story book and it's heavily illustrated or decorated, so much so that the artwork tells at least half of the story. But it's not a children's picture book. Adult themes and concepts are explored. There are no speech bubbles but conversations can take place.

Are you confused yet?

Perhaps if I show you what I mean....

Last week I read Radioactive: A Tale of Love and Fallout by Lauren Redniss. I thought it was a graphic novel, which is why I picked it out of my TBR pile.

But it wasn't; it was this -

- exquisite artwork on every page that told the story of Marie and Pierre Curie along with the text.

Which then reminded me that I had another part-read book somewhat like it by my bed -

- Shaun Tan's incredibly beautiful, haunting, grotesque clay works in The Singing Bones which depict various scenes from the Brothers Grimm fairy tales.

There's not a speech bubble in sight, and the art is the main focus of the story. Tan's creative interpretations challenge the reader/viewer to delve deeper into each of the tales hidden layers.

What is this genre?

Things at Brona's Books are not only complicated, but confused!

The Ugly Ducking performed by Justine Clarke

This is The Ugly Duckling song made famous by Danny Kaye in the 1952 movie Hans Christian Andersen (okay...I'll wait for you to finish singing it...)!

The lyrics were originally written by Frank Loesser, but now we have a lovely Australian picture book with Playschool host, Justine Clarke, singing this very familiar song.

The illustrations by Nathaniel Eckstrom are soft, earthy water colours with the animals dominating each page. The entire book has a lovely warm, nostalgic feel.

I found it impossible to read through this book without breaking into song myself!

Included is a CD which allows you to sing along with Justine or you can simply play the instrumental version and do it all yourself.

A lovely tale about image, belonging & self-discovery.

A Palace Full of Princesses by Sally Gardner

A Palace Full of Princesses contains four of Sally Gardner's Early Reader stories - The Frog Prince, Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty & Snow White.

Each story has about 6-7 chapters, large font and lots of colourful pictures on each page.

The stories are traditional with the occasional modern twist and a little humour. 

Snow White has all the dark twists and turns you expect, Cinderella is wish fulfillment personified, the Frog Prince is cheekily persistent & Sleeping Beauty ends with 

"The prince and princess lived very happily. They had sixteen children and their favourite story was, of course, the story of Sleeping Beauty."

Sixteen children!

All the pages are decorated with pretty borders, frames, stars and lots of delightful details.

A Palace Full of Princesses is the perfect gift for new readers or to read aloud with your princess-loving 4+ child.

Angela Carter's The Bloody Chamber - the rest!

For Angela Carter Week I've been reading my way through her short story collection, The Bloody Chamber.

I've already reviewed the title story, The Bloody Chamber and the three cat stories. This post is dedicated to the remaining stories in the collection.

The Erl-King was an unusual story based on a German folk story that I was totally unfamiliar with.

Traditionally, the erlking is the king of the fairies or elves, a mischievous, possibly dangerous being responsible for trapping humans to satisfy his desire, jealousy or lust for revenge.

It is also the title of a well-known poem by Goethe that ends with these chilling lines...

                           "Dear father, oh father, he seizes my arm!

The Erlking, father, has done me harm.

The father shudders, he darts through the wild;

With agony fill him the groans of his child.
He reached his farm with fear and dread;
The infant son in his arms was dead.

The Erl-King by Chloe North

I'm not quite sure what I made of Carter's version though!

There are references to Little Red Riding Hood,

"There are some eyes can eat you."

but this young woman is not an innocent child setting off into the woods, like Little Red Riding Hood.

This is a young woman battling with her competing impulses for independence and domesticity. This is a search for identity,

"It is easy to lose yourself in these woods."

"The two notes of the song of a bird rose on the still air, as if my girlish and delicious loneliness had been made into a sound."

"I know it is only because he is kind to me that I do not fall further."

"His touch both consoles and devastates me."

And in this case, her identity and quest for independence is strongest, and the Erl-King is murdered so she can be free.

The Snow Child is the shortest story in the collection and probably the darkest and most disturbing.

The original tale is also a dark one about wish fulfillment, trust, fidelity, jealousy and revenge.

Carter does all this, but also adds a Sleeping Beauty element

"So the girl picks a rose; pricks her finger on the thorns; bleeds; screams; falls."

& an unpleasant incest scene. This Snow-Child is nothing but a figment of the male imagination.

From Stranger Than Kindness

The Lady of the House of Love completes the three odd, disturbing, unrelated stories in the middle of the collection.

This time Carter has combined aspects of Sleeping Beauty and Jack and the Beanstalk with vampire mythology to create another heroine trapped by her destiny,

"Can a bird sing only the song it knows or can it learn a new song?"

Our hero is rational behaviour personified. 

She is compelled to destroy the man who can save her; he is saved by his innocence and untapped sexuality...only to head off to the trenches of WW1 France.

The final three stories are wolf stories that reference Little Red Riding Hood.

The Werewolf is short and too the point. A tale of competing females; this Little Red Riding Hood is strong and knowing, 

"The child had a scabby coat of sheepskin to keep out the cold, she knew the forest too well to fear it but she must always be on her guard."

And, once again, murder is the only way to secure her independent future,

"Now the child lived in her grandmother's house; she prospered."

The Company of Wolves follows a similar line to The Tiger's Bride where we see the young girl bare all; shed her clothes, to become one with the werewolf,

"The girl burst out laughing; she knew she was nobody's meat."

It would seem that by accepting and embracing our 'beastly' natures, we can find true love and live out our true-to-self lives.

Gina Litherland

Finally, Wolf-Alice falls into the child raised in the wild scenario. 

Carter explores what it means to be human - frailty, flaws and all. 

Alice is raised by a pack of wolves, 

"Nothing about her is human except that she is not a wolf; it is as if the fur she thought she wore had melted into her skin and become part of it, although it does not exist. Like the wild beasts, she lives without a future."

The Duke is "damned" - half man, half beast, he

 "haunts the graveyard; he believes himself to be both less and more than a man, as if his obscene difference were a sign of grace. During the day, he sleeps. His mirror faithfully reflects his bed but never the meagre shape within the disordered covers."

Wolf-Alice becomes more human, but retains enough beastliness to save the Duke so that

"at last as vivid as real life itself, as if brought into being by her soft, moist, gentle tongue, finally, the face of the Duke."

Thank you for coming on this epic, bloody journey with me. 

Angela Carter gets under your skin; she disturbs your senses and she oozes semi-colons like blood on the snow!

Thank goodness I found an old forgotten copy of Burning Your Boats on the bottom of a TBR pile concealed behind a cheval mirror (I kid you not! How Carteresque!)

Hopefully I will fit in a few more short stories before the 15th.

In the meantime...

This post counts as one of my TBR Pile Reading Challenge and Eclectic Reader (Gothic) books.

Happy Black Friday!

Happy Full Moon!

Superstitions collide as three independent variables - moon phase, weekday & day of the month - come together. 

The next full moon, black Friday wont occur again until 2049.

Howl, hibernate and stay safe!

Angela Carter - the cat stories.

The Courtship of Mr Lyon and The Tiger's Bride are the next two tales in Angela Carter's The Bloody Chamber anthology. These two are based on the fairy tale of Beauty and the Beast.

I was a little let down, but only a little, after the heady, gothic delights of The Bloody Chamber. They seemed less dangerous and therefore, somehow, less delicious.

Beauty and the Beast is a traditional tale that asks questions about our humanity. What are the signs of civilisation? Morality? Good manners?

Mr Lyon is very courteous and generous - providing food, shelter & help to Beauty's father in an Alice in Wonderland (eat me, drink me) kind of way.

When the father steals the white rose and tries to justify his behaviour, it is the Beast who seems more honorable, in my favourite passage of this story...

"There is always a dignity about great bulk, an assertiveness, a quality of being more there than most of us are. The being who now confronted Beauty's father seemed to him, in his confusion, vaster than the house he owned, ponderous yet swift, and the moonlight glittered on his great, mazy head of hair, on the eyes green as agate, on the golden hairs of the great paws that grasped his shoulders so that their claws pierced the sheepskin as he shook him like an angry child shakes a doll."

Ultimately, of course, Mr Lyon, the Beast was rescued or transformed by Beauty, which sounds quite traditional and uncontroversial.
It's not until we read its companion story The Tiger's Bride, where it is Beauty transformed or rescued by the Beast, that we see the trademark Carter twist.

The Tiger's Bride is a darker, crueler tale.
The father is a selfish gambler who loses Beauty in a card game.
But the Beast is also more beastly and inhuman in his own right.

"I never saw a man so big look so two-dimensional."

"only from a distance would you think The Beast not much different from any other man, although he wears a mask with a man's face painted most beautifully on it."

"He wears a wig too, false hair tied at the nape with a bow....And gloves of blond kid that are yet so huge and clumsy they do not seem to cover hands."

"He is a carnival figure made of papier mäché and crëpe hair."

"he has such a growling impediment in his speech that only his valet, who understands him, can interpret for him."

Carter plays with the idea of baring oneself - one's skin, one's heart, one's soul - until, finally, the Beast is unmasked and Beauty is uncloaked. She feels 'flayed', 'stripped' and 'peeled'.

"'He will lick the skin off me!'"

leaving behind  "a nascent patina of shining hairs...my beautiful fur."

Rather satisfying, I have to say!

Puss-in-Boots follows the traditional tale of success and survival of a very cheeky and worldly ginger cat.

Carter's version is a naughty delight from start to finish.

The story is told from Puss' point of view, with saucy humour and savoir faire. Below are two of my favourite quotes to show you how much fun Carter has with the language in this tale...

"I observe with my own eyes the lovely lady's lubbery husband hump off on his horse like a sack of potatoes to rake in his dues."

"they strip each other bare in a twinkling and she falls back on the bed, shows him the target, he displays the dart, scores an instant bullseye. Bravo!"

Carter explores her usual themes of morality and feminism. Adultery, trickery and murder have to be done to achieve this happy ever after. And the happy ending clearly provides all parties with choices in a very un-fairy tale like way...

"So may all your wives, if you need them, be rich and pretty; and all your husbands, if you want them, be young and virile; and all your cats as wily, perspicacious and resourceful as: 

PUSS-IN-BOOTS."

What's not to love?

The Bloody Chamber by Angela Carter

The Bloody Chamber is the main story in Angela Carter's short story collection, of the same name, first published in 1979.

It turned out to be a tremendous way for me to start off Angela Carter Week. The general consensus seems to be that it is one of her most perfectly constructed tales. Full of evocative language, saucy details, oodles of allusions and symbols and a lovely feminist twist.

The Bloody Chamber is an intense, dark, luscious, stirring, eerie tale in the style of Perrault's fairytale, Bluebeard, that explores the nature of curiosity & destiny.

We are constantly & beautifully reminded of these two themes,

In the train en route to the castle 

"Our destination, my destiny."

In the castle library

"The picture had a caption: 'Reproof of curiosity.'"

Upon receiving the keys to the castle

"I lay in our wide bed accompanied by, a sleepless companion, my dark newborn curiosity."

On being discovered

"I had played a game in which every move was governed by a destiny as oppressive and omnipotent as himself, since that destiny was himself; and I had lost."

Fairy tales traditionally require the maiden in distress to be rescued by their father, brother or lover.
But from the very beginning of The Bloody Chamber we know there are no brothers and no father. The lover who presents himself half way through is young and blind.

Will she be a victim or a heroine?

How will she escape her destiny? 

Her acceptance also seems her doom:

"I knew no good Breton earth would cover me, like a last, faithful lover; I had another fate."

That is until her wild haired, horse riding, service revolver toting mother bursts through the castle gates and she discovers that 

"her future looks quite different now that she has escaped from the old story and is learning to sing a new song." 

(from Helen Simpson's Introduction 2006).

I thoroughly enjoyed this old tale retold with a modern sensibility & I hope the rest of the collection lives up to my raised expectations.

Angela Carter Week Begins

I'm excited!

Caroline from Beauty Is A Sleeping Cat is co-hosting Angela Carter Week with

Delia from Postcards From Asia .

Caroline has a fabulous post (link above) highlighting all of Carter's books while Delia has a list of all the participants (link above). 

For me half the fun of a readalong is meeting new bloggers and becoming reacquainted with old favourites.

I have chosen to read The Bloody Chamber.

My edition has an Introduction by Helen Simpson that had me a little concerned. I learnt that Carter was always drawn to "Gothic tales, cruel tales, tales of wonder, tales of terror, fabulous narratives that deal directly with the imagery of the unconscious."

That she wrote The Bloody Chamber "not to do 'versions' or, as the American edition of the book said, horribly, 'adult' fairy tales, but to extract the latent content from the traditional stories to use it as the beginnings of new stories."

Carter admired "science fiction with its utopian perspectives and speculative thinking...found, the indirection and metaphor of fantasy can be helpful when airing controversial subject matter."

I wasn't surprised to hear of the influence of the Marquis de Sade, Baudelaire, Perrault and even Colette. But I was curiously surprised by an appearance of Isak Dinesen - I've always wanted to read and know more about Dinesen and here is another prompt to do so.

Simpson litters her Intro with phrases like "Carter was an abstract thinker with an intensely visual imagination."

"The Bloody Chamber is packed with signs, symbols and signifiers."

"passivity is not an intrinsically virtuous state."

"The heroines of these stories are struggling out of the strait-jackets of history and ideology and biological essentialism."

"full of cultural and intertextual references."

"The short story is not minimalist, it is rococo. I feel in absolute control. It is like writing chamber music rather then symphonies."

I was beginning to feel overwhelmed by this undertaking!

But this particular paragraph grabbed me and has left me gasping to get stuck in.

"'I do put everything in to be read - read the way allegory was intended to be read,' she declared; but also 'I've tried to keep an entertaining surface...so that you don't have to read them as a system of signification if you don't want to.' And it is true that you could ignore the ideas in these stories if you wanted to, and still enjoy the colour, beauty and vivid sensuousness of the language, the densely allusive prose alight with sly verbal jokes, cross-cultural references and dandified wit."

Phew!

I won't need a post doctorate in literature to read Carter after all!

What will you be reading this week?

Angela Carter Week 8 - 15th June 2014

Well, this is a lovely little find.

Caroline @Beauty Is A Sleeping Cat and Delia @Postcards From Asia are co-hosting an Angela Carter month on their blogs.

I have a copy of The Bloody Chamber which I've been meaning to read for simply ages.
(Actually, I started reading it years ago but for some reason I didn't finish it.)

It will also fit nicely into my TBR Reading Challenge & Gothic Fiction selection for the Eclectic Reader Challenge.

It's time.

What will you be reading this during Angela Carter Week?

Ophelia and the Marvellous Boy by Karen Foxlee

Every now and again it happens.

That perfect alignment of stars, fate and luck.

When you take up a story that sweeps you away with it's beauty, it's gothic horror and it's magic.
Everything is so perfect from start to finish, that you are completely enthralled. So much so, that you realise you're holding your breath - with fright, with pleasure, in anticipation and wonder - to see what happens next.

This is one of those stories.

It has only been 1 day, 23 hours and 12 minutes since I started this book & I can't get it out my mind.
Ophelia and the Marvellous Boy is a real gem. It's fantasy/fairytale with a few frights & shivers, lots of adventure and an incredibly brave but anxious heroine.

This is my second Hot Key book (the first being The Cloud Hunters) and so far their success rate with me is not only 100% but 100% with bells, whistles and balloons!

Ophelia will delight you, Yoko Tanaka's atmospheric illustrations will draw you in and Foxlee's writing will leave you spellbound.
I promise!

Perfect for mature 10+ readers who love mysterious, creepy fairy tales with a heart of gold.

A couple of scenes could be upsetting or distressing, but that's the nature of fairy tales. And this ride is definitely worth it.
I promise!

I will definitely hunt down Foxlee's two adult novels to see if the magic continues.

This book is part of Jenny's Alphabe-Thursday meme for the letter O.

F is for Fantasy

Over the years I have seen some curious books sitting in the fantasy section of bookshops which has prompted me to think about the literary definition of fantasy.

I've always thought of fantasy as involving elements of magic, supernatural powers, invented worlds, mythical creatures like dragons, vampires and elves combined with a sense of history (usually medieval) and otherworldliness. Do fairytales fit into this genre? Or are they a separate genre in their own right?

When I googled fantasy I quickly found that there was no straight answer.

The first confusion was between fantasy and high fantasy.

High fantasy is usually described as one consisting of a made-up, parallel world. I associate this type of fantasy with special languages, intricate maps and fantastical characters. Think Lord of the Rings by JRR Tolkien and Narnia by CS Lewis.

Sword and Sorcery fantasy is another sub-genre that pops up regularly. Lord of the Rings fits into this category as well as Harry Potter.

Wikipedia has really thrown me though.
Here is a list of possible fantasy sub-genres...
comic, dark, contemporary, heroic, magical, mythic, paranormal, superhero, fantasy of manners, low, hard, historical, wuxia and urban!!

High fantasy is then further divided into Primary world, Portal or World-within-a-World. Primary worlds do not really exist (Discworld), Portals take the characters from the real world into the fantasy world (Narnia, The Dark Tower, Alice in Wonderland) while worlds within exist in a real world but are somehow separated from them (like Hogwarts and His Dark Materials).

Wuxia? Really?
Ahhhhh, this is sword and sorcery fantasy Chinese style - martial arts, chilvary, retribution and righteousness!

Fairytales and fables are on their own under 'non-fiction'. Although a lot of fantasy writers claim fairytales as early inspirations...closely followed by Tolkien.

Below are some examples of what you can find in the various sub-genres...

Comic Fantasy: Discworld
Dark: Anne Rice
Contemporary: Neil Gaiman, The Master and Margarita, Artemis Fowl, Percy Jackson
Heroic: Star Wars
Fantasy of Manners: Mervyn Peake 
Paranormal: Twilight
Hard: George R R Martin
Low: The Indian in the Cupboard, The Borrowers
Historical: (also known as sword and sandal) Juliet Marillier, Naomi Novik
Urban: Gone by Michael Grant, Anita Blake series, Evernight

And just for fun, I've included several covers of Lord of the Rings.

A-Z Blog Hop

Bitter Greens by Kate Forsyth

You know how it is when you get one of those perfect books?

The kind of book where you savour every line, every chapter, every character. The kind of book that sweeps you away to another time, another place. The kind of book that makes you sigh and cry and laugh out loud. The kind of book you hug to your chest between chapters.

The kind of book that's hard to talk about because it's so personally perfect that you want to keep it to yourself in case others don't love it as much as you.

These perfect books don't come along as often as they should or as often as they used to.

Bitter Greens was one of those perfect books for me. 

The specific elements that make up a perfect book for me have evolved over the years. And I'm sure that my idea of a perfect read will be different to yours.

However, Bitter Greens ticked all my boxes.

We have two interwoven stories; one set in France during the reign of Louis the Sun King (late 1600's) and one set in Venice in the 1590's.
One story follows the life of Charlotte-Rose de Caumont de la Force (1650-1724) and one is a retelling of the Rapunzel fairytale.

Both Charlotte-Rose and Kate Forsyth have a passion for fairytales and story-telling. This passion is sumptiously imagined on every single page of Bitter Greens.

If you love seductively good story-telling, biography dressed up as historical fiction, fairytales, strong female characters, Eurpoean history and romance then Bitter Greens will be perfect for you too.

Bitter Greens is an April release through Random House.

A Monster Calls by Patrick Ness

Patrick Ness' Chaos Walking Trilogy was on my list of "bad books". To show it wasn't anything personal (just an inexplicable dislike of talking animal stories) I decided to tackle his latest book.

A Monster Calls came to Ness upon the death of writer Siobhan Dowd. According to Ness' author note at the front of the book, Dowd had "outlined the characters, a detailed premise and a beginning." He didn't feel that he could write a novel in her voice, but the idea grew and evolved until it felt like he had "been handed a baton".

The result?

An incredible, atmospheric, dark fairytale of a story. Complete with creepy, eerie etchings by Jim Kay.

I loved it.

As mentioned in the previous post, this is a modern day fable exploring grief and the search for truth.

Conor has a lot to deal with - at home and at school. He is haunted by nightmares and bullies. Until his nightmare becomes real and he is forced to face his demons head-on.

Ness, with the guiding spirit of Dowd behind him, creates a masterful story.
I devoured this book, I shuddered, I poured over the illustrations and I ooh-ed and aah-ed with satisfaction.

This story will haunt you in the way all powerful fairytales creep under your skin and slip into your dreams.

Keep me away from talking animals, but talking trees are okay!

http://www.patrickness.com/