Reviews tagging 'Eating disorder'

Tangleweed and Brine by Deirdre Sullivan

2 reviews

unlikelyplaces's review against another edition

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dark emotional

3.0

I listened to Savage Her Reply by this author last year and it was one of my favourites of the year so I was excited when I saw that my library had the audio for this one as well but I probably should have predicted that this one wouldn’t work as well for me.

I would describe this as somewhere in between a short story and poetry collection of retellings of classic fairytales. Now I know for a lot of people that sounds like the dream and to those people I would absolutely recommend this book. 

However for me, although I love mythology retellings, for some reason I’m really not a fan of fairytale retellings (which I realise does not make much sense, I can’t explain it) and I often struggle with an overly poetic writing style.

I think my main issue with this was that I didn’t always understand the point the stories were trying to make. The book has obvious feminist themes and in some of the stories the author’s message was clear, but there were a few that either I just missed it or it was unclear what was happening and what the point was. This wasn’t helped by the fact that I didn’t know all of the original stories so when the author was taking just one character or a snippet of the story, I didn’t have the context for it which made it difficult to follow at times.

This book did cover a wide range of stories and a lot of them have very heavy and difficult subject matter (as do many of the original tales) and there were definitely some that I liked more than others. Please do check for trigger warnings if you feel like you need to as there are many.

I would recommend this book to anyone who likes fairytale retellings, especially with a feminist lens, and who likes poetic writing. This was definitely a case of “it’s a me problem” but I actually think this was very well written and would work for a lot of people.



Content warnings (I’m not sure if I’ve got all of them as I didn’t follow all of the stories very well so there may be some missing from this list): Gore, sxual abuse, child abuse, domestic abuse, incst, binge eating, alcoholism
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swordsmith's review against another edition

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dark mysterious reflective fast-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

2.0

I was so excited to read my first Deirdre Sullivan but honestly this really disappointed. This is a collection of short stories, retellings of classic European fairytales, and while there are a few good ideas in there the execution mostly fell flat for me. The writing reads like it thinks its really profound but only like, one in five lines actually resonated with me. I quite enjoyed the respective retellings of Rapunzel, Hansel & Gretal and Bluebeard, but three stories out of thirteen are not good odds. Ultimately I was glad they were short stories because I don't think I could have read a novel in this style. Beautiful illustrations.
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