A review by emtobiasz
Ruby Slippers, Golden Tears by Ellen Datlow, Terri Windling

3.0

A collection of decidedly adult retellings of fairy tales and legends. I appreciated the mix of settings (present-day, historical, fantastic, futuristic, American, European, Chinese, Japanese, Russian) and many of the tales were interesting takes on familiar stories. Still, I got into fairy tale retellings through more recent YA books (think Ella Enchanted and the Once Upon a Time series), and so the sex, violence (especially sexual violence), and overt gender politics shocked me at first. Course, then I remembered how omnipresent these issues were in so many pre-Victorian versions of folk tales, so it's only fair. Several of the stories in the book (published mid-90s) felt a bit dated, too-- personally, besides being turned off by its rape scenes, I didn't think "Match Girl" aged well.

The mother-goddess redemption-of-women language reminded me of Robin McKinley's Deerskin, another retelling that got stuck in feminism's second wave. Still, if these kinds of stories help even one abuse survivor, who am I to judge?

Favorites: "The Fox Wife" by Ellen Steiber and "The Printer's Daughter" by Delia Sherman