A review by fearandtrembling
Kassandra and the Wolf by Margarita Karapanou

4.0

One of the most distinctive books I've read. Perhaps the one that comes closest to it is Unica Zürn's Dark Spring. Surreal, poetic, fable-like short chapters told from the voice of a child narrator. Nightmarish fairytales that are, to borrow from one of the blurbs, lovely and sinister. Some of the images here will haunt me for a long time. Absolutely cannot recommend to anyone because I feel it's a book you will have to page through and decide for yourself, since it touches upon sexual abuse, parental neglect, death, suicide, mental illness without quite naming these things for what they are. It's a book that I'm glad I read and will probably always remember in terms of its brutal, whimsical images, but it's hard to rate in terms of stars because "like" and "love" or even "enjoy" are not quite the words to capture the experience of reading this book.