moonpie 's review for:

The Merry Spinster: Tales of Everyday Horror by Daniel M. Lavery

4.0

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I enjoyed most of the retellings in The Merry Spinster; they reminded me of some of my favorites of Ortberg's contributions to The Toast. The looseness with pronouns/familial roles made a few of the stories confusing until I got the hang of it (and I had to figure it out anew with each story) and a couple of the stories didn't work for me—I wouldn't have missed "Some of Us Had Been Threatening Our Friend Mr. Toad" and "The Frog's Princess" if they'd been cut from the collection—but I loved a few of them and liked almost all of the rest.

There's a list of source material in the back of the book, which I found helpful. Sometimes I didn't know the original stories well enough to get all the jokes/references in the twisted versions, but I could still enjoy the writing. This was most noticeable in "The Wedding Party," which is built from a few stories I don't recognize; there's a lot of referential dialogue between the two main characters that I just didn't get, but it has a great ending so I was glad I stuck with it.

I was also happy to see a story that referred to Biblical characters in the mix, because I love a remixed Bible story almost as much as I love a remixed fairy tale (not quite, but close) and I couldn't help but highlight lines like these:

[T]he making of the world caused a great noise that has not stopped resounding yet, and all of us have had a ringing in our ears ever since. The Voice of God, once heard, is not easily unheard. The sun burned the sky by day, and the moon spoiled the darkness by night. I don’t mean to make it sound like I didn’t like them, only that it was an adjustment.

There's a definite Very Clever vibe going on here, but I don't mind it too much. I feel like Ortberg has the talent to back it up.


(three and a half stars)