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kelseythefancyhatladyreads's review against another edition
5.0
I received a digital ARC from the publisher via NetGalley.
This collection of fairy-tale-inspired stories and poems is wonderfully structured. I know that's an odd way to start a review, but it's one of the elements that was most striking to me about the experience of reading Snow White Learns Witchcraft. The stories and poems included here are ordered so that most pieces feel like they flow from the previous, either turning around to give a startlingly different approach to the same fairy tale, or picking up on a symbol, story element, or theme, and telling a different story with that element. So you'll get several pieces about bears in a row, or roses, or snow, though they'll be very different from one another, or two Rumpelstiltskins or Sleeping Beauties, again very different. And it feels like it comes full circle, ending with the same fairy tale (Snow White) with which it begins.
There are a number of themes in Theodora Goss's writing that recur throughout the collection. These are fairy tales of self-determination, of storytelling, and of introspection. Many of the poems, like "Thumbelina" and "The Sensitive Woman" feel like they must be very personal, leading to the sense that you've been allowed inside the author's private world, but you can see the same authorial voice in even the strangest fantasies, and it all feels of a piece. I loved everything about this book, and purchased myself a print copy as soon as I had finished it so that I could have it on my shelves.
The feeling of Goss's writing itself doesn't differ significantly between the poems and the stories, so the collection is pretty cohesive. That said, the poems are more likely than the stories to feel like snapshots, extrapolations from one idea in a fairy tale, or explorations of a character's perspective, while the stories have fully developed narratives. I think that with the poems, it's probably helpful to come to them with a strong fairy tale background, since they don't stand alone from their source material as well as the stories do.
About half of the total pieces in this book are original to this collection. That said, the five longest stories that serve as the centerpieces of the book are, with only one exception, reprints. Two of them I'd read before, and I am pleased to report that they are just as good on a second reading.
"The Rose in Twelve Petals" is a Sleeping Beauty retelling with an unusual, melancholy, and ambiguous ending. It's told in twelve parts, following different characters, with the theme of roses recurring in each part. It's also alternate history, in low-key way that doesn't upstage the fairy tale.
"Blancefleur" borrows some of the appealing imagery from The White Cat (the castle of cultured felines, the title character), and a bit of its three-part quest structure, without feeling like an actual retelling. A miller's son with fairy ancestry is known as the village idiot until he is apprenticed to his aunt, the Lady of the Forest, who sends him to spend a year each under three very different teachers accompanied by his cousin, the talking white cate Blancefleur. I enjoyed it tremendously.
"Red as Blood and White as Bone" was the first re-read for me (you can read it online here), and it's an original fairy tale as far as I can tell (I fully acknowledge that I won't always recognize a retelling's source material). Set in a fictional European country as World War II looms, it's a dark story about a serving girl who takes in what she believes to be a princess in disguise and helps her to attend a royal ball. This one is ultimately all about stories and the passion to learn and preserve them, but it gets bloody and disillusioned along the way.
"The Other Thea" was the second re-read for me (it first appeared in [b:The Starlit Wood: New Fairy Tales|27370017|The Starlit Wood New Fairy Tales|Dominik Parisien|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1487554469s/27370017.jpg|47416361]). It's a contemporary story based on Hans Christian Andersen's The Shadow, and it's about an alum of a school for witches who returns to campus for help during a gap year. Since her grandmother's death, she's felt apathetic and depressed, and she's told that she will continue to fade away unless she can retrieve the shadow that her grandmother cut away from her as a child, a journey that takes her into the fae Other Country. Along the way, she has to learn to think for herself and use her skills as a witch... skills that manifest in the form of poetry. Miss Lavender's is a magic school I'd have loved to attend, the Other Country is both mysterious and modern, and there's another talking cat, so what's not to like?
And finally, "A Country Called Winter" is the only lengthy story that's original to this collection. It's another contemporary-set one, a Snow Queen retelling where the elements of the story and the roles of the characters are all jumbled up a bit. The theme of academia continues here, and it's also about growing up as an immigrant in America, separated from cultural roots. We also see Goss's ability to blend etherial magic into a real-world setting with a nation that is both a real country with politics and diplomacy and the actual magical source of winter itself in the world. This may have been my least favorite of the longer stories in the collection, but it still had plenty that made me happy, including a lost princess reveal and a mythic, etherial female Santa Claus figure.
I can't talk about all of the poems here, or even most, since there are so many, but I'll mention that my favorites (at least this time through) included, "Thorns and Briars," about keeping one's heart in a box, "Goldilocks and the Bear," a more straightforward, narrative retelling about the lifelong bond between a young thief and the bear cub who once helped her escape his family's home, and "The Nightingale and the Rose," a gorgeous take on Oscar Wilde's story of the same title. But I can imagine that different poems will stick out to me if I re-read this book at a different point in my life, just as the stories that were re-reads this time around struck me slightly differently than they first did.
It's very hard for a story collection to rank a full five stars from many reviewers (myself included) because inevitably some pieces will seem stronger than others, or appeal more to the individual reader. The miracle of this collection for me was that there wasn't a single dud. Every story and every poem feels like it has something precious to offer, be it intellectually, emotionally, or both. And Goss is a writer in whose hands I feel safe, not because she doesn't take the reader to dark places (she does), but because she leads you through them and out the other side richer for the experience.
This collection of fairy-tale-inspired stories and poems is wonderfully structured. I know that's an odd way to start a review, but it's one of the elements that was most striking to me about the experience of reading Snow White Learns Witchcraft. The stories and poems included here are ordered so that most pieces feel like they flow from the previous, either turning around to give a startlingly different approach to the same fairy tale, or picking up on a symbol, story element, or theme, and telling a different story with that element. So you'll get several pieces about bears in a row, or roses, or snow, though they'll be very different from one another, or two Rumpelstiltskins or Sleeping Beauties, again very different. And it feels like it comes full circle, ending with the same fairy tale (Snow White) with which it begins.
There are a number of themes in Theodora Goss's writing that recur throughout the collection. These are fairy tales of self-determination, of storytelling, and of introspection. Many of the poems, like "Thumbelina" and "The Sensitive Woman" feel like they must be very personal, leading to the sense that you've been allowed inside the author's private world, but you can see the same authorial voice in even the strangest fantasies, and it all feels of a piece. I loved everything about this book, and purchased myself a print copy as soon as I had finished it so that I could have it on my shelves.
The feeling of Goss's writing itself doesn't differ significantly between the poems and the stories, so the collection is pretty cohesive. That said, the poems are more likely than the stories to feel like snapshots, extrapolations from one idea in a fairy tale, or explorations of a character's perspective, while the stories have fully developed narratives. I think that with the poems, it's probably helpful to come to them with a strong fairy tale background, since they don't stand alone from their source material as well as the stories do.
About half of the total pieces in this book are original to this collection. That said, the five longest stories that serve as the centerpieces of the book are, with only one exception, reprints. Two of them I'd read before, and I am pleased to report that they are just as good on a second reading.
"The Rose in Twelve Petals" is a Sleeping Beauty retelling with an unusual, melancholy, and ambiguous ending. It's told in twelve parts, following different characters, with the theme of roses recurring in each part. It's also alternate history, in low-key way that doesn't upstage the fairy tale.
"Blancefleur" borrows some of the appealing imagery from The White Cat (the castle of cultured felines, the title character), and a bit of its three-part quest structure, without feeling like an actual retelling. A miller's son with fairy ancestry is known as the village idiot until he is apprenticed to his aunt, the Lady of the Forest, who sends him to spend a year each under three very different teachers accompanied by his cousin, the talking white cate Blancefleur. I enjoyed it tremendously.
"Red as Blood and White as Bone" was the first re-read for me (you can read it online here), and it's an original fairy tale as far as I can tell (I fully acknowledge that I won't always recognize a retelling's source material). Set in a fictional European country as World War II looms, it's a dark story about a serving girl who takes in what she believes to be a princess in disguise and helps her to attend a royal ball. This one is ultimately all about stories and the passion to learn and preserve them, but it gets bloody and disillusioned along the way.
"The Other Thea" was the second re-read for me (it first appeared in [b:The Starlit Wood: New Fairy Tales|27370017|The Starlit Wood New Fairy Tales|Dominik Parisien|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1487554469s/27370017.jpg|47416361]). It's a contemporary story based on Hans Christian Andersen's The Shadow, and it's about an alum of a school for witches who returns to campus for help during a gap year. Since her grandmother's death, she's felt apathetic and depressed, and she's told that she will continue to fade away unless she can retrieve the shadow that her grandmother cut away from her as a child, a journey that takes her into the fae Other Country. Along the way, she has to learn to think for herself and use her skills as a witch... skills that manifest in the form of poetry. Miss Lavender's is a magic school I'd have loved to attend, the Other Country is both mysterious and modern, and there's another talking cat, so what's not to like?
And finally, "A Country Called Winter" is the only lengthy story that's original to this collection. It's another contemporary-set one, a Snow Queen retelling where the elements of the story and the roles of the characters are all jumbled up a bit. The theme of academia continues here, and it's also about growing up as an immigrant in America, separated from cultural roots. We also see Goss's ability to blend etherial magic into a real-world setting with a nation that is both a real country with politics and diplomacy and the actual magical source of winter itself in the world. This may have been my least favorite of the longer stories in the collection, but it still had plenty that made me happy, including a lost princess reveal and a mythic, etherial female Santa Claus figure.
I can't talk about all of the poems here, or even most, since there are so many, but I'll mention that my favorites (at least this time through) included, "Thorns and Briars," about keeping one's heart in a box, "Goldilocks and the Bear," a more straightforward, narrative retelling about the lifelong bond between a young thief and the bear cub who once helped her escape his family's home, and "The Nightingale and the Rose," a gorgeous take on Oscar Wilde's story of the same title. But I can imagine that different poems will stick out to me if I re-read this book at a different point in my life, just as the stories that were re-reads this time around struck me slightly differently than they first did.
It's very hard for a story collection to rank a full five stars from many reviewers (myself included) because inevitably some pieces will seem stronger than others, or appeal more to the individual reader. The miracle of this collection for me was that there wasn't a single dud. Every story and every poem feels like it has something precious to offer, be it intellectually, emotionally, or both. And Goss is a writer in whose hands I feel safe, not because she doesn't take the reader to dark places (she does), but because she leads you through them and out the other side richer for the experience.
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