Book Reviews by CdF — Meet our Reviewers
March 2009
Complete Fairy Tales of Oscar WildeOscar Wilde, Signet Classic edition 1990
Reviewed by Deborah J. Brannon Oscar Wilde is well known for his wit, his plays, his poetry, his scary aging portrait, and the trials regarding his homosexuality — famous perhaps for everything he's ever done except his fairy tales. Well, here's a tidbit for you: those fairy tales represented one of his first major works to see print in the form of The Happy Prince and Other Stories published in 1888. Read more...
LamentMaggie Stiefvater, 2008
Reviewed by Amal El-Mohtar Deirdre Monaghan's life takes a turn for the strange when a charming, enigmatic stranger named Luke appears at an arts festival and helps calm her pre-performance anxiety; suddenly she's finding four-leafed clovers by the handful, seeing things others can't, and discovering new strengths in herself that attract the unwelcome attention of the Fae. Read more...
Little, BigJohn Crowley, 1981
Reviewed by Tanya Avakian Any visitor to Boston's Readercon will overhear a fair share of references to Little, Big. That in itself begins to tell you something about John Crowley's masterpiece, but it isn't in any way definitive of it. It is that rare intellectual fantasy that can also be enjoyed as a story without any interpretive work at all. Read more...
A Curse Dark as GoldElizabeth C. Bunce, 2008
Reviewed by Navah Wolfe ...for much of the book, you simply forget there's an older story going on here, because Charlotte's very personal story matters so very much. And when the pieces of the fairy tale come together, they fit in such a satisfying way that you become convinced that this is actually the origin of the tale — this is the real story. Read more...
The Magician's Book: A Skeptics Adventures in NarniaLaura Miller, 2008
Reviewed by Erzebet YellowBoy In The Magician's Book: A Skeptic's Adventures in Narnia, Laura Miller explores her love affair with the works of C.S. Lewis and with Narnia itself, and make no mistake — these are affairs, with all of the passion and heartbreak that entails. Miller is a staff writer for Salon.com and has contributed works to the New York Times Book Review, The New Yorker, the Wall Street Journal and more, and her obvious love of literature shines through. Read more...
Tam LinPamela Dean, 1991
Reviewed by Tanya Avakian Like many people, I first heard the story of Tam Lin in Sandy Denny's rendition of the traditional ballad on Fairport Convention's magnificent record, Liege and Lief. And like the skilled singing actress she was, Denny drew out the suspense, intimating for stanzas that the threat to its heroine Janet lay in "young Tam Lin" and his designs on her virginity. Read more...
Fitcher's BridesGregory Frost, 2002
Reviewed by Laurie Thayer Gregory Frost's Fitcher's Brides is the eighth volume in the Fairy Tale Series created by Terri Windling. These novels — aimed not at children, but at grown-ups — are all based on traditional fairy tales. In Fitcher's Brides, Frost combines elements from two similar fairy tales, "Bluebeard," originally written by Charles Perrault, and "Fitcher's Bird," collected by the Grimm Brothers, into a creepy dark fantasy. Read more...
The SparrowMary Doria Russell, 1996
Reviewed by Tanya Avakian Globalization has accomplished many things in the seventeen years since the end of the Cold War, but one of the less expected is the standardization of niceness. Any nation's folk music can now be had on CD in luscious, soporific, over-Celted arrangements; any religious tradition can, it seems, be subsumed under the category of spirituality, a noble word but one which has come too often to mean only the vaguest sort of emotional uplift. Read more...
The Real Reason the Queen Hated SnowAnnette Marie Hyder, 2006
Reviewed by Erzebet YellowBoy In The Real Reason the Queen Hated Snow, Annette Marie Hyder has put together a neatly packaged "collection of poems, stories and mythos miscellany" in which she explores the archetypal meanings of some of our best-loved fairy tales. Read more...
September 2008
Black Thorn, White RoseEllen Datlow and Terri Windling (editors), 1994
Reviewed by JoSelle Vanderhooft In the 1990s legendary editors Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling assembled a six book anthology series of "fairy tales for adults." Beginning with 1992's Snow White, Blood Red and concluding in 2000 with Black Heart, Ivory Bones, these magnificent anthologies not only revolutionized the fantasy genre but laid the groundwork for much of the daring folklore-inspired fantasy (much of it written by young women) being written today. Read more...
Snow White and Rose RedPatricia C. Wrede, 1989
Reviewed by Laurie Thayer Terri Windling's Fairy Tale series first appeared in 1987. Originally published by Ace, the series was later taken up by Tor. The series consists of eight fantasy novels aimed at adults, each based on a traditional fairy tale. Snow White and Rose Red is the fourth volume in the series. Read more...
The Girl in a SwingRichard Adams, 1980
Reviewed by Tanya Avakian Alan Desland is a young Englishman in Copenhagen. Presumably around thirty, he is still a virgin; he describes himself as "a non-starter in the Aphrodite sweepstakes." All this is about to change when he meets a gentle and beautiful German girl named Käthe (Karin in some editions), who appears to be entirely alone in the world. Read more...
An Encyclopedia of FairiesKatharine M. Briggs, 1976
Reviewed by Tanya Avakian While there are other sources for British fairy lore, many older than Briggs' (and quoted extensively in her work, as she would be all but plagiarized later), there is no other oeuvre quite like Briggs' and no other book like this one. Read more...
Fairy Tales And The Art Of SubversionJack Zipes, 1985
Reviewed by B. Haro Fairy tales — whimsical stories for youth, timelessly heralded for their universal truths and innocuous beauty... or maladjusted tools of the power elite for compulsory indoctrination of children to socialized norms? The answer, rather complicated and frighteningly situated with the latter, forms the analysis of Jack Zipes' Fairy Tales And The Art Of Subversion. Read more...
Canuck and Other StoriesEdited by Rhea Côté Robbins, 2006
Reviewed by Tanya Avakian Rhea Côté Robbins is the distinguished director of the Franco-American Women's Institute at the University of Maine (http://www.fawi.net). She has recently edited the translations of works of fiction and theater by three Québéçoise women in America: Camille Lessard Bissonette, Corinne Rocheleau Rouleau, and Alberte Gastonguay... Each work is addressed self-consciously to the Franco-American condition as experienced by women. Read more...
Into the Wild & Out of the WildSarah Beth Durst, 2007
Reviewed by Navah Wolfe In her two-book series Into the Wild and Out of the Wild, Sarah Beth Durst creates a twist on fairy tales and the time-honored tradition of "happily ever after." Into the Wild introduces Julie Marchen, who lives with her mother, Zel, (formerly Rapunzel of the Tower; she now runs a hair salon) in a small Massachusetts town. Read more...
The Neverending StoryMichael Ende, 1979
Reviewed by JoSelle Vanderhooft It was only in 2008 when revisiting Fantastica again that I realized something: Ende's book is not only an anodyne for isolated, bookish people, it is also — like most literary anodynes — a beautiful fairy tale. Read more...