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A review by salreads
Stories We Tell Our Children by Marc Nash
3.0
‘Stories’ is about the stories we tell children so they will eat, the books we choose to read them at night to feed their little brains , stories we tell them when we are too busy to spend with them, the stories we tell to explain things to children. And these little stories leave a trail; one which will inevitably trip us up. As the author demonstrates so much of it is about semantics and words are ambiguous, laden with connotations and history ..
This is a collection of stories or vignettes, each discussing one of the myths perpetuated by adults. Most of these are wrapped within a story. An example of this is a girl looking at the linking of the alphabet to specific animals in her childhood blocks. She writes down each animal and identifies its myth, it’s reality - usually brutal and cruel, debunking the myth of humans as animal loving..
This collection is very dark and very clever, and like a bitter expresso, it needs to be savoured slowly. A lot of this is about the language we use with children and the language of the writing itself is esoteric - I’m not sure whether this is deliberate.. There’s a play on words on every level.
I thought that this might be a book about the derivation of these stories; it’s not, rather it’s an intellectual exploration of how the way we use words and stories can be transformative in a way, as parents we hadn’t anticipated. It’s not an easy read, but it throws out some fascinating ideas!
This is a collection of stories or vignettes, each discussing one of the myths perpetuated by adults. Most of these are wrapped within a story. An example of this is a girl looking at the linking of the alphabet to specific animals in her childhood blocks. She writes down each animal and identifies its myth, it’s reality - usually brutal and cruel, debunking the myth of humans as animal loving..
This collection is very dark and very clever, and like a bitter expresso, it needs to be savoured slowly. A lot of this is about the language we use with children and the language of the writing itself is esoteric - I’m not sure whether this is deliberate.. There’s a play on words on every level.
I thought that this might be a book about the derivation of these stories; it’s not, rather it’s an intellectual exploration of how the way we use words and stories can be transformative in a way, as parents we hadn’t anticipated. It’s not an easy read, but it throws out some fascinating ideas!