I had to keep myself from reading this in one big gulp. The premise of a woman who's been missing for 20 years coming back and saying she's been with the fairies is appealing to me by itself, but this book has much more to offer than a good humans-encounter-fairies story. It is also a beautifully detailed story about family relationships and healing of friendships. In particular I loved the side story about the young boy Jack unwillingly being drawn into a friendship with Mrs. Larwood, the "mad old bitch" across the street. I really loved this book and wish there was more of it to read!

A thoroughly intoxicating story. Despite the title I kept expecting a rational, non-fairy-tale explanation for everything, or for the book to pop into a more fairy tale-like tale, but what I expected is not what the book is--it's meant to upset expectations a bit, expectations of genres and expectations of characters and what we do and don't, or think we do and don't, know. The family scenes are the most poignant to me, and I particularly loved the thread of the story surrounding a teenage boy's accidental shooting of a neighbor's cat and his sad-comical-ineffective attempts to hide the fact and squash his guilt. Those who don't much like fairy tales will find much "real life" to love in this book, and those who don't much like real life will find a little fantasy to take the edge off.

A few thoughts here: http://crossreferencing.wordpress.com/2012/09/27/a-bit-more-on-adaptations/

Great premise, strong build up, LAZY ending. Very disappointing for such good plot and character development. The mystery of Tara's 20 year disappearance and her love stories with Hiero and Richie deserved a better resolution than what they were given.

An intriguing setup and some very interesting casting work that winds up being a bit undone for me by a rushed ending that takes us out of the POVs we care about most, and leaves most of the characters' eventual responses to the story's ending offstage. The take on "fairies" here, in the traditional British "inhuman bastards who'll whisk you off to their world without regard for what it does to your life" sense is intriguing and told very well, but I couldn't have been more tuned out of the dry chapters where a psychiatrist analyzes the fantasy story here in terms of female hysteria and rape trauma, among a thousand other things. I found it really hard to square where the story eventually goes with the first half of the book, and it was disappointing to not really check back in with Tara to find out how she feels about the big decision she makes. To some degree this feels like a book where the stalker/jealous ex wins, because we don't get enough details about the outcome to see whether she gives in to all of his demands, or just the ones we can see. Pretty depressing messaging all around, in terms of a character's fate largely being taken out of her hands, and her life being stolen without recompense or even enough time with her to understand what it means in the end.

20 years passes in the blink of an eye, or so finds Tara who in the spirit of Rip Van Wrinkle and the Brothers Grimm finds herself in the middle of a fairy tale. Of course no one ever tells you about the aftermath.

Fantastic - read it.
challenging dark mysterious slow-paced

This was a surprisingly delightful story. It centers around Tara, who disappeared when she was just 16. Twenty years later she turns up at her parents' door. In some ways she still looks like a teenager, and in some ways she is much more mature. She tells a fantastic and unbelievable story about crossing into another world, where to her, only 6 months have passed.

In that time, her parents have become elderly. Her brother, Peter, now has a wife and 4 children and has become a typical adult. Her ex-boyfriend, Richie, seems stuck in time. Richie was suspected in Tara's disappearance, and never seems to have moved on from that experience. He is still a musician (Peter has long since given up on that hobby), and makes a meager living playing in local bars and writing songs for people who have become legitimate stars.

Peter sends Tara to a psychiatrist, Mr. Underwood, who offers an alternate and entirely rational explanation for Tara's story, believing she suffered a trauma (perhaps associated with her abduction) and the story she creates to explain her absence has all sorts of underlying meaning.

Perhaps my favorite part of this was the side tale of Jack, Peter's 13 year old son, and the neighbor's cat.

The story leaves the reader guessing. Was she really living in a fairy world for six months? Or did something horrible happen to her and she's choosing to forget it and substituting an alternate explanation for events?

Certain clues are left for us - Tara's apparent age and certain things that happen to Richie. Tara's age may have a scientific explanation. Richie's problems may be unrelated. But they are clues.

A really different and not very pretty look at fairies.