A review by labyrinth_witch
Kissing the Witch: Old Tales in New Skins by Emma Donoghue

5.0

I loves everything about this book- the cadence, the characters, the structure, the challenge. I feel this is a book to read many times and each time discover more nuance. First, I love that all the characters are women and all the male characters are incidental- it’s so refreshing to read something that truly and consistently flips the patriarchal script. By doing this, it allows each female character to be vividly complex and I felt an intense compassion for all the complexity. Second, I loved how it flowed by each woman turning round to ask the other woman who she was before she played this role in her life. I feel in a world of competition, this vulnerable curiosity is lost. Makes me want to write my own tale before I came to play this part for you. Third, I loved that each tale pivots around the transition from girlhood to womanhood or to elderhood. Fourth, I loved that each female character was trying to figure out the life that most aligned with her, making mistakes, but eventually finding herself right where she wanted to be. It makes them so...human, it almost takes my breath away. Finally, and most of all, I love she took “traditional” fairytales- the stories that impressed upon our youth a certain worldview, expectation, and perception of behavior- and challenges all those preconceived notions. The idea that the beast is a woman! I feel as if my life has been cracked open and reoriented in the most exquisite way.

Thank you for writing this book.

“Perhaps we do not get what we deserve, but what we demand”