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emmalthompson85's review
3.0
I'd really expected more of this book. It sounds like it should be my jam and parts of it definitely were but others were not. So, first this is an academic book which means that sometimes the language makes it hard to access. Sugg favours long sentences and long words and while his language is more poetic than most academic texts, that doesn't necessarily help. The first half of the book is an examination of fairy folklore. A lot of it focuses around why people believed in fairies and what it meant for their lives that they did, and that was excellent, then the whole thing takes a weird turn where the author tries to convince you to believe that fairies exist.
This effort mostly consists of pointing at witness testimony and saying, there, that one. That one must be true because it's different from the rest of the folklore or it contains a specific detail or, in one case, because every person who experiences the phenomenon experiences it differently. That last one I'd say was more an argument against it being true than for. If ten people see the thing it's more likely to be a thing than if ten people see different things. But, at their core, these are all arguments to incredulity which hinge on the idea that people couldn't and won't make this stuff up and my dude, they can and they will. People make stuff up. They lie. They add specific detail to try to make it feel more real. People enjoy fooling others and we have no proof that anything mentioned in this book happened. For example, there was a story of a woman who vanished periodically and claimed it was the fairies. The author strongly implied that she was going somewhere so why not the fairies, but how do we know that? How do we know that this old woman went anywhere, or even existed? We don't. We have a story. That's all.
And it doesn't even have to be conscious lying. People might, even, perceive something that then becomes exaggerated through retelling to these fairy stories. Human perception is unreliable, as is memory and transmission of story. Maybe the old woman I mentioned above went somewhere once and didn't want to be caught so said she was in fairy, then through the story being passed down and misremembered and exaggerated for effect we get a woman who routinely goes off with the fairies.
The thing is, if the book has just jumped into the permits that fairies, if not materially real, were at least real to the people who believed in them, I can accept that premise. I can work within that framework. But when an author is over here telling me that this story has one novel element so must be a true and accurate record of events and I'm not saying fairies exist but look at this, well, it makes you doubt then on a number of levels.
The back half of the book featured a review of some literature relating to fairies and how our views of fairies have changed over time as they've been sanitised and turned into children's entertainment.
This effort mostly consists of pointing at witness testimony and saying, there, that one. That one must be true because it's different from the rest of the folklore or it contains a specific detail or, in one case, because every person who experiences the phenomenon experiences it differently. That last one I'd say was more an argument against it being true than for. If ten people see the thing it's more likely to be a thing than if ten people see different things. But, at their core, these are all arguments to incredulity which hinge on the idea that people couldn't and won't make this stuff up and my dude, they can and they will. People make stuff up. They lie. They add specific detail to try to make it feel more real. People enjoy fooling others and we have no proof that anything mentioned in this book happened. For example, there was a story of a woman who vanished periodically and claimed it was the fairies. The author strongly implied that she was going somewhere so why not the fairies, but how do we know that? How do we know that this old woman went anywhere, or even existed? We don't. We have a story. That's all.
And it doesn't even have to be conscious lying. People might, even, perceive something that then becomes exaggerated through retelling to these fairy stories. Human perception is unreliable, as is memory and transmission of story. Maybe the old woman I mentioned above went somewhere once and didn't want to be caught so said she was in fairy, then through the story being passed down and misremembered and exaggerated for effect we get a woman who routinely goes off with the fairies.
The thing is, if the book has just jumped into the permits that fairies, if not materially real, were at least real to the people who believed in them, I can accept that premise. I can work within that framework. But when an author is over here telling me that this story has one novel element so must be a true and accurate record of events and I'm not saying fairies exist but look at this, well, it makes you doubt then on a number of levels.
The back half of the book featured a review of some literature relating to fairies and how our views of fairies have changed over time as they've been sanitised and turned into children's entertainment.
mollyringle's review
dark
funny
informative
lighthearted
reflective
5.0
Within a chapter I knew this was the fae research book I've been looking for all my life. I realize putting "fae" and "research" (or "nonfiction") in the same description may seem odd, but that's still the best description of this book: it's an exploration of people's beliefs about, and real-life reported encounters with, fairies throughout history, as well as their representation in literature and art, and how their image has changed over the years.
Sugg's writing is lovely and lyrical, yet approachable, sometimes providing clear explanatory notes to the odd historical tales and sometimes pondering, for instance, the overlapping territory between ghosts and fairies. The reports of the harsh treatment given in centuries past to those believed to be changelings are chilling but riveting, balanced by lighter and occasionally hilarious reports of fairy-related hoaxes. (Cottingley is just one of many.)
Any pop culture fan will enjoy the trip through the evolution of fairies in fiction, from Shakespeare to Peter Pan to Disney. And did you know fairies weren't generally believed to have wings until Victorian-era painters started illustrating them that way? (Search on A Midsummer Night's Dream: you won't find a single mention of wings on any of its fairy cast, nor in the artwork for that play pre-1800.) The book sticks mainly to Celtic lands, perhaps to keep the definition of fairies more consistent, but it's easy to see how similar are the tales of local spirits or creatures in other parts of the world. If you're a fae fan and you want to scratch deeper than the sparkly, harmless, Disneyfied surface of most modern fairies, this is the book for you.
Sugg's writing is lovely and lyrical, yet approachable, sometimes providing clear explanatory notes to the odd historical tales and sometimes pondering, for instance, the overlapping territory between ghosts and fairies. The reports of the harsh treatment given in centuries past to those believed to be changelings are chilling but riveting, balanced by lighter and occasionally hilarious reports of fairy-related hoaxes. (Cottingley is just one of many.)
Any pop culture fan will enjoy the trip through the evolution of fairies in fiction, from Shakespeare to Peter Pan to Disney. And did you know fairies weren't generally believed to have wings until Victorian-era painters started illustrating them that way? (Search on A Midsummer Night's Dream: you won't find a single mention of wings on any of its fairy cast, nor in the artwork for that play pre-1800.) The book sticks mainly to Celtic lands, perhaps to keep the definition of fairies more consistent, but it's easy to see how similar are the tales of local spirits or creatures in other parts of the world. If you're a fae fan and you want to scratch deeper than the sparkly, harmless, Disneyfied surface of most modern fairies, this is the book for you.
gloamglozergay's review
3.0
I haven’t read nonfic in a few years, so I was slow about this one. I felt it was an ok synthesis of a lot of different research, although if you’re looking for something more in-depth, you might just want to pull from the works cited. The author’s voice is engaging, and he makes some very salient observations about the psychology of belief in fairies: fairy folklore largely originated with working-class rural/pre-industrial people who were at the mercy of their environment, particularly nature, and fairies were most commonly invoked to explain things that were uncontrollable, inexplicable, or cosmically unfair, such as early deaths, missing people, or natural disasters. He associates belief in fairies with closeness to nature, endangered by the industrial revolution and our increasing distance from the wilderness. He dedicates a lot of time to the scapegoating of fairies and the related abuse of “changeling” (ie physically or mentally disabled) children, which I appreciated. He does have a tendency to go on tangents - yes, practically any folklore monster could be broadly categorized as fae, and stories about malevolent ghosts have a lot in common with stories about fairies, but that wasn’t exactly what I was looking for here. Some surprising omissions, also: I was rather surprised to get to the “fairies in literature” sections and find no mention of the Child ballads, for instance. Overall an enjoyable read, a little rambly, with useful references to other works.
justabridge's review against another edition
3.0
I enjoyed this! It had a good overall point - got a bit weird in the middle when he talks about ghosts and fairies being real, but it ties together nicely at the end, and the scholarly bits that make up the majority are pretty good! I just wished that a few of the points were a bit more overt, particularly in the later chapters that cover Shakespeare on, which felt more like a literary review and a history of art essay. I understood what Sugg was trying to do - to discuss monumental portrayals of fairies that shaped the way people thought about them, but it felt like these needed a bit more shaping and a bit more groundwork to really narrow down to the point. The blurb and the introduction say that the book focuses on the question of fairies and danger, but I felt like this got a bit lost in the latter half of the book, which is why this is three stars. I did really like Sugg’s voice and style in this, and it was very well researched.
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