Reviews tagging 'Animal cruelty'

Happily: A Personal History-With Fairy Tales by Sabrina Orah Mark

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5.0

“The reason fairy tales last is that they allow us to gaze at ourselves through a glass that is at once transparent and reflective. They give us a double gaze to see ourselves from the inside out and the outside in, and they exaggerate our roles just enough to bring into focus the little pieces of monster that grow on our hearts.”

TITLE—Happily
AUTHOR—Sabrina Orah Mark
PUBLISHED—2023
PUBLISHER—Random House

GENRE—memoir, essays
SETTING—modern day u.s.
MAIN THEMES/SUBJECTS—motherhood &
stepmotherhood, marriage (specifically being your partner’s third spouse), fairy tales, Jewish culture & identity, life in america, queer author, the cov*d pandemic, a loved one with cancer, mother-daughter relationship, writing / being a writer, heritage & inheritance, navigating generational divides in your family

WRITING STYLE—⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️—my absolute favorite thing about this collection
CHARACTERIZATION—⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
STORYTELLING/FLOW—⭐️⭐️⭐️

BONUS ELEMENT/S—Absolutely loved her exploration of all the different themes commonly found in fairy tales in the context of her own life and experiences, especially against the backdrop of the particular idiosyncrasies of modern life.

PHILOSOPHY—⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
PREMISE—⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
EXECUTION—⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

“The citizens of fairy tales have lived under these laws long enough to know the tale they're in has stitched a ‘y’ to the end of ‘fair’—it's a weirdly shaped wing that carries fairness away. The word ‘fairy’, from ‘fata’, is rooted in fate but lifted by magic. Here comes the wind.”

My thoughts:
This was my most anticipated read of 2023 and was also one of those books that I really wanted to inhale but kept trying to slow down my reading pace because I would be so sad when it was over. I have been a fan of Sabrina Orah Mark’s fairy tale-inspired memoir-ish essays since I started reading them on The Paris Review five years ago so when I saw that she was finally publishing a book of them I immediately had to preorder it.

And this book exceeded my expectations with its gorgeous writing and beautiful use of fairy tale themes, imagery, and reimaginings.
I also especially loved all the reflections on her childhood, growing up Jewish in NYC and how learning (& unlearning) fairy tale lessons informs her navigation of motherhood.

I was surprised to see so 👏🏻 many 👏🏻 essays 👏🏻 were about being her husband’s third wife. At first it started to feel repetitive until I realized that that was because this is an experience that just has an effect on so many different parts of her life and is one of the things that she has turned to writing in particular in order to work out all the complex feelings and situations that come with being a person’s third spouse. It was the same with the motherhood essays which felt kind of repetitive (to me) too after a while but were still all very intentionally written.

“Like marriage, the cultural resilience of "Bluebeard" is mystifying. And like a fairy tale, marriage belongs to a never-ending circulation of happily-ever-afters in the shape of a cliff.”

My favorite essays were: “I Am the Tooth Fairy”, “The Silence of Witches”, “Bah, Humbug”, “Sleeping with the Wizard”, “U Break It We Fix It”, and “An Epilogue: After Ever”.

I would recommend this book to readers who are interested in fairy and folk tale themes and subjects and enjoy memoir essays. This book is best read slowly, maybe even one essay a day, first thing in the morning or before bed.

Final note: I feel like I’m horrible at writing reviews for my favorite books. I never make them sound as good as they are. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Oh well. 😂 Can’t wait to see what Mark writes next!

“It's a shard of glass that fits with my shard of glass perfectly. When I put the two pieces together, it looks like a transparent hand reaching out to help someone up. I want to jump for joy. We have only one hundred million billion pieces to go.”

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

CW // animal cruelty (she describes the lemmings thing from that horrible 1958 “documentary”) (Please feel free to DM me for more specifics!)

Further Reading—
  • “A Psychotronic Childhood,” by Colson Whitehead, published in The New Yorker, May 2012—TBR
  • THE SECRET COMMONWEALTH, by Robert Kirk—TBR
  • Helen Oyeyemi
  • Gregory Maguire
  • HOW TO BE EATEN, by Maria Adelmann
  • HAG: FORGOTTEN FOLKTALES RETOLD, edited by Carolyne Larrington
  • THE BLOODY CHAMBER, by Angela Carter
  • LETTERS TO MY WEIRD SISTERS, by Joanne Limburg—TBR
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