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3.37 AVERAGE
3.37 AVERAGE
Daniel Mallory Ortberg brings all of his former feminist website The Toast's wit and cleverness to The Merry Spinster, his collection of dark fairytale, folklore and biblical retellings. His stories range from the weird and uncomfortable (Little Mermaid retelling The Daughter Cells, The Frog Princess), to the downright terrifying (The Rabbit, Some of Us Had Been Threatening Our Friend Mr Toad) with all sorts of genderfuckery and feminist revenges along the way. These stories feel like natural successors to the horror of the Grimms' original fairytales and I loved that about them.
This turned out not to be for me, but that is purely due to personal preferences and feelings; this is an excellent book that excels at what it tries to do, and Ortberg is a fantastic writer I will be keeping a (wary!) eye on. I truly loved several of the stories, and I think all of them make excellent commentary on various issues - generally feminist ones, but a bunch of others as well. There were a lot of small details that delighted me and/or made me laugh, and I would cheerfully recommend this collection to anyone made of sterner stuff than myself. A few of the stories, particularly the endings, hit me a bit too hard, but that's solely due to me being me. If you're happy to have genuinely horrifying endings to your fairytales - psychological horror - then you should definitely pick this up. I am going to have nightmares, but that's what I get for underestimating a collection of horror stories!
There are two stories I liked, some so-so ones, and the rest I won't remember tomorrow.
This book was a hodgepodge. I spent several stories trying to figure out what fairy tale they were supposed to represent and failed. Many of the stories had abrupt or disappointing endings and pointless. I thought that many of the stories were building toward something but then they didn't.
The stories I liked best were "The Daughter Cells" and "Six Boy Coffins." The Daughter Cells started off the book on a great footing. It was a retelling of The Little Mermaid with a big twist and shocking ending. It had a sense of humor that I wasn't expecting. The narrator speaks to the reader in the tone of a conspiratorial friend.
I haven't time to explain to you...There are other books about that sort of thing.
Although I read Grimm's Fairy Tales awhile ago, I did not remember reading The Six Swans or The Twelve Brothers before. "Six Boy Coffins" might have made such an impression on me because it seemed new to me and I couldn't predict where it was going.
As I was reading the stories, I felt like I was left out of a private joke that everyone was getting but me. Ortberg made some weird choices about gender, including male and female characters who debated about who would get to be the husband and who would get to be the wife. Two of her characters in different stories, Paul and Sylvia, were the opposite genders of what their names suggest and I got confused when their pronouns did not match their names. In several stories, she would refer to daughters as "he" instead of "she" and it made the reading needlessly confusing and frustrating. I didn't know if this was all part of some statement on gender fluidity but if it was, I missed the point Ortberg was trying to make.
Overall, I was disappointed by The Merry Spinster. I thought I would see more horror see a twist on more recognizable fairy tales but I got neither. When only a couple of the stories in the collection were worth reading, I wouldn't recommend this book to others.
This book was a hodgepodge. I spent several stories trying to figure out what fairy tale they were supposed to represent and failed. Many of the stories had abrupt or disappointing endings and pointless. I thought that many of the stories were building toward something but then they didn't.
The stories I liked best were "The Daughter Cells" and "Six Boy Coffins." The Daughter Cells started off the book on a great footing. It was a retelling of The Little Mermaid with a big twist and shocking ending. It had a sense of humor that I wasn't expecting. The narrator speaks to the reader in the tone of a conspiratorial friend.
I haven't time to explain to you...There are other books about that sort of thing.
Although I read Grimm's Fairy Tales awhile ago, I did not remember reading The Six Swans or The Twelve Brothers before. "Six Boy Coffins" might have made such an impression on me because it seemed new to me and I couldn't predict where it was going.
As I was reading the stories, I felt like I was left out of a private joke that everyone was getting but me. Ortberg made some weird choices about gender, including male and female characters who debated about who would get to be the husband and who would get to be the wife. Two of her characters in different stories, Paul and Sylvia, were the opposite genders of what their names suggest and I got confused when their pronouns did not match their names. In several stories, she would refer to daughters as "he" instead of "she" and it made the reading needlessly confusing and frustrating. I didn't know if this was all part of some statement on gender fluidity but if it was, I missed the point Ortberg was trying to make.
Overall, I was disappointed by The Merry Spinster. I thought I would see more horror see a twist on more recognizable fairy tales but I got neither. When only a couple of the stories in the collection were worth reading, I wouldn't recommend this book to others.
Like most short story collections, a mixed bag. I love fairy tale retellings, and the ones I liked best here tended to stick to one tale and subvert the expectations in a amusingly horrific way (ex. "The Daughter Cells", "The Six Boy Coffins"). "The Rabbit" is truly the creepiest of them all, but some of the others ("The Wedding Party", "The Frog's Princess") were just weird and baffling.
Funky and clever retellings and remixings of classic and lesser-known fairy tales. Some readers might not be familiar with the versions that Lavery uses, as he tends to keep closer to the original Grimm-style tales, rather than the Americanized, Disnified versions that many people grew up with. The motifs throughout the stories offer a very interesting modern commentary on some of the givens in our fairy tales, and whether they really espouse great values through and through. Definitely a book for anyone who delves into fairy tales a lot.
Ortberg takes familiar things - fairy tales, the gender associated to names, marriage roles- and twists them, forcing me to examine societal expectations so ingrained they had become invisible. Almost every story poignantly explores abusive relationships and power dynamics whether between friends, partners, or family.
Many of the stories were genuinely entertaining and thrilling (these are horror fairy tales, after all.) A couple were a little out there, even for me.
A couple of real gems. The Thankless Child, The Rabbit, and Some of Us Had Been Threatening Our Friend Mr. Toad are excellent and creepy. Most of the others are okay. I feel like sometimes the author's wittiness got in the way of the story. I did like that he worked with more than just the classic fairytale stories.
This collection of retellings is a mixed bag -- some truly creepy fairy tale retellings, and some stories that simply failed to make an impression. I particularly loved The Daughter Cells (a retelling of The Little Mermaid) and The Six Boy-Coffins, and thought The Rabbit was splendidly creepy. Worth reading, especially with a familiarity with the original stories.
This book was alright overall! Some pretty great stories and some kinda boring stories. I liked more of the stories than I disliked. Overall a fun book to read when I was bored!