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lovestodancw_81 's review for:
The Merry Spinster: Tales of Everyday Horror
by Daniel M. Lavery
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.