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3.37 AVERAGE
3.37 AVERAGE
Read “The Rabbit” and then put it back. I just couldn’t get into it - the writing was hard to follow.
I was utterly confused while reading this book. I’m not sure I understood the authors meaning at all.
These stories take famous tales you think you know and turn them upside down with acerbic wit and acute insight. Many of the stories are Grimm's fairytales, but Ortberg also sources from the Bible, The Velveteen Rabbit, The Wind in the Willows, and others.
Overall, I enjoyed this story collection. I give it four stars because while I loved some of the stories, I didn't care for a few of the others.
Throughout the collection, Ortberg challenges traditional gender roles and pronouns -- in one story, three daughters discuss whether they will be husbands or wives when they get married. In another, the "he" pronoun is assigned to a character named Silvia, while another character, Caroline, never gets any pronouns. It was noticeable since most authors don't write this way, but I didn't have any trouble following the stories or figuring out which character was speaking. Turns out pronouns aren't that essential for reading comprehension.
One recommendation I'd make to any reader is to flip to the back of the book, where Ortberg provides the names of the stories that served as source material, and to then go read those stories. I found I enjoyed the stories more if I was familiar with the underlying tale.
My favorite tales:
1) "The Daughter Cells": This take on The Little Mermaid was one of the funniest stories and probably my favorite in the collection. The mermaid in questions falls in love with the prince when she saves him from drowning, and is attracted to his reserved demeanor (he's passed out from almost drowning). She is less into him when she makes a bargain to get legs, and finds he is not the quiet and humble man she had fallen for.
2) "The Thankless Child": This story gave me serious Handmaid's Tale vibes! Strong recommend.
3) The Six Boy-Coffins: Good story and one of the most fairytale-ish ones. (Read the originals first!)
4) "The Rabbit": What if, instead of being the saddest story ever, The Velveteen Rabbit was actually the creepiest story ever? This tale answers that question.
5) "Cast Your Bread Upon the Waters": Another good mermaid story, and darkly humorous.
Overall, I enjoyed this story collection. I give it four stars because while I loved some of the stories, I didn't care for a few of the others.
Throughout the collection, Ortberg challenges traditional gender roles and pronouns -- in one story, three daughters discuss whether they will be husbands or wives when they get married. In another, the "he" pronoun is assigned to a character named Silvia, while another character, Caroline, never gets any pronouns. It was noticeable since most authors don't write this way, but I didn't have any trouble following the stories or figuring out which character was speaking. Turns out pronouns aren't that essential for reading comprehension.
One recommendation I'd make to any reader is to flip to the back of the book, where Ortberg provides the names of the stories that served as source material, and to then go read those stories. I found I enjoyed the stories more if I was familiar with the underlying tale.
My favorite tales:
1) "The Daughter Cells": This take on The Little Mermaid was one of the funniest stories and probably my favorite in the collection. The mermaid in questions falls in love with the prince when she saves him from drowning, and is attracted to his reserved demeanor (he's passed out from almost drowning). She is less into him when she makes a bargain to get legs, and finds he is not the quiet and humble man she had fallen for.
2) "The Thankless Child": This story gave me serious Handmaid's Tale vibes! Strong recommend.
3) The Six Boy-Coffins: Good story and one of the most fairytale-ish ones. (Read the originals first!)
4) "The Rabbit": What if, instead of being the saddest story ever, The Velveteen Rabbit was actually the creepiest story ever? This tale answers that question.
5) "Cast Your Bread Upon the Waters": Another good mermaid story, and darkly humorous.
Completely bizarre stories that often end with no resolution or clear message, but I think that's the point. What really won me over was the playing with gender roles - calling daughters "he," married couples deciding who would be the husband and who the wife, etc. Really interesting reading experience.
I admit I'm just not sure what the author's doing with this very short collection of revamped fairy tales, which also includes a reimagined version of "The Velveteen Rabbit" where the rabbit is a horrific monster that steals the Realness from other Real things, and a dark mashup of Wind in the Willows Donald Barthelme's short story "Some of Us Had Been Threatening Our Friend Colby" where Mr. Toad's friends endlessly abuse and gaslight him. That latter story has an interesting insight in it, about how in the original Wind in the Willows, the other animals are awfully invested in what Mr. Toad is and isn't allowed to do. But the story is very repetitive and circular, and it doesn't reach any sort of conclusion, unlike Barthelme's story — it just kind of stops in the middle of one awful, oppressive go-round. There's a lot of gaslighting and emotional abuse in these stories, but virtually none of the catharsis that comes with a good fable, because several of the stories don't really reach conclusions, and in the ones that do, the protagonists don't have much emotional awareness to realize when they've won. One of the more baffling stories here for me was the sorta-modern "Beauty and the Beast" retelling that makes the hapless father into an investments-driven mother, but doesn't otherwise do much to update that story. It's never really clear what the Beast in this version is, and in the end, when Beauty refuses to marry him, he just dies. Okay, I can see that being a sort of dark feminist twist — it's not her responsibility to fix him by giving herself to him — but again, the execution is somewhat circular and heavily externalized, and I never had any idea what either of the main characters were feeling. At least one of these stories (the Little Mermaid retelling) was part of the author's "Children’s Stories Made Horrific" series over at The Toast, but none of the stories here had the insight and impact of Ortberg's "Curious George" retelling from that series. Fairy tales are the last thing that should need explanation, but I wound up feeling like I needed more of an explanation of what the author was trying to do here.
Mostly a “meh” for me. There were a good couple of stories in here, but a bunch of filler stories that left me with the feeling when you’re walking upstairs and you think that there’s one more stair but your foot just falls through the air searching for it and then you’re frustrated and disappointed. I don’t like giving less than 3 star reviews but I personally wouldn’t recommend this one.
I have a soft place in my heart for fairytale adaptations, particularly dark and experimental ones like this. There is a lot of playfulness and wit in these stories as well as different shades of horror. I really enjoyed quite a few of the stories and the weaker entries were still entertaining.
I thought a few of these stories were well done, but Lavery missed the mark with most of them for me. I like the concept, but felt that for some the weirdness/"meta" nature of the story overpowered the plot. Bummed to say this didn't work for me :(