Reviews

My Mother She Killed Me, My Father He Ate Me: Forty New Fairy Tales by Kate Bernheimer

saevers's review against another edition

2.0

This book ultimately earned a "meh" from me. It started out with one star, nearly redeemed itself with a handful of five star stories, and went back downhill at the end. There were enough really good stories that I'm not entirely sorry that I read it, but I wouldn't read it again or recommend it as a whole body of work to someone else.

It wasn't this book's fault, but I was also disappointed that the Kelly Link story was a republished piece I'd already read in another collection of hers.

books_blackcats's review against another edition

2.0

With a title as horrific as this one, my expectation was that the stories would be spooky and dramatic. However, they lacked atmosphere and did not hold my attention.

cursedartichoke's review against another edition

This short story collection is not, I think, meant to be read all at once—giving each contained story room to breathe by not immediately crushing with the next tale is key to its richness But, by doing that, it came due at the library before I could make my way through very many of its tales. will absolutely come back to it. 

mihye's review against another edition

emotional mysterious

3.0

chrispy's review against another edition

adventurous mysterious slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? N/A
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated

2.5

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Adult/minor relationship and Rape

trulybooked's review against another edition

3.0

I wanted to love this book and I'm not sure why I didn't. It may just be that it has the normal problem with anthologies where some of the entries are beyond incredible which makes the average ones seem even worse by comparison. There was something about this whole collection that left me feeling blue-balled. I won't deny that it's brilliant and worth your money, but I felt ambivalent when I finished it. Maybe that's the problem of working with fairy tales as your baseline. They're interesting, but they're overdone. There were no reimaginings that were as bold as the ones done by Angela Carter in the Bloody Chamber and somehow, the change in tone from stories that set to emulate fairytales to the ones that tried to modernize them could be jarring. Still, I would recommend reading it simply because there isn't much like it out there.

rustedtrains's review against another edition

Kindle got ruined by someone else, lost book and all progress. Going to go through and re-highlight and finish!

yanghx92's review against another edition

1.0

I was in actual physical pain trying to get through 500 over pages of what-the-actual-fuck-is-this. 7 chapters in and I could already see the direction this book was going in. Downfuckinghill.

I decided to tough it out and see if it gets better. Spoiler alert! It doesn’t.

The sad thing is this book had so much potential but it just never reached it. The authors talk about what their inspiration is and we just don’t see it appearing in their stories. If you had such a good idea going, why didn’t you use it????

This book was just an odd, sad compilation of school essays. Some of them made little to no sense. Some of them just didn’t want to subscribe to the theme given. Some of them talk about what they wanted their stories to present and proceed to submit a completely different essay.

It would have been great if a wider variety of fairy tales had been added. We see a lot of “white” fairy tales taking up 80% of the book and fairy tales/folktales from other countries (Japan, Mexico) taking up the last few pages toward the end of the book, like a ‘by the way’ afterthought.

Would not recommend.

laura_cat's review against another edition

4.0

I found many of these contemporary tales delightful. Like other reviewers, I found a wide range in the stories' appeal, though I imagine much of that is due to personal literary preferences. My favorites from this collection are:

"I'm Here" by Ludmilla Petrushevskaya

"Snow White, Rose Red" by Lydia Millet

"The Erlking" by Sarah Shun-Lien Bynum

"Halfway People" by Karen Joy Fowler

"The Mermaid" by Timothy Schaffert

"What the Conch Shell Sings When the Body Is Gone" by Katherine Vaz

"Teague O'Kane and the Corpse" by Chris Adrian

"Pleasure Boating in Lituya Bay" by Jim Shepard

"My Brother Gary Made a Movie and This Is What Happened" by Sabrina Orah Mark

"The Color Master" by Aimee Bender

"Psyche's Dark Night" by Francesca Lia Block

"First Day of Snow" by Naoko Awa

i_hype_romance's review against another edition

5.0

I loved reading a short story every night. So many varied takes on both traditional and unfamiliar fairy tales. I felt like I had rediscovered all of the Andrew Lang collections