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A review by nssutton
My Mother She Killed Me, My Father He Ate Me: Forty New Fairy Tales by Kate Bernheimer
3.0
Depending on what day and story you caught me, I either loved this anthology or absolutely hated it. I planned to make a list of the stories I preferred best, but so much time has passed that I would rather spend those extra few minutes reading. I will know to turn to this anthology whenever wanting to read that story of mermaids that I really like, or to read my favorite short story -- Pleasure Boating in Lithuya Bay, or to remember the stories about the juniper tree and the wild swans. I'll also remembered the eye rolls I spent flipping through some impossible to read stories that shall remain nameless. I guess I shouldn't be surprised I preferred the stories by authors I already knew I loved -- Kelly Link, Jim Shepard, Neil Gaiman -- to some of the others, but I still was. That sort of surprise is always my reader's delight, when you can learn an author and return to them again and again, never receiving the same gift twice, but always leaving satisfied.
I turned to fairy tales -- dark fairy tales -- in all corners of my life during this read. I am watching A Series of Unfortunate Events with my classes through testing, which I feel is a very dark and modern take on fairy tales (go ahead, argue me like my sixth graders -- absence of parents, precious children, evil adults, having to outsmart those in charge of you) There is one part I liked watching over and over with the kids.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FRV5v1Rl8IA
I like observing that moment where my students get it. Violet and Klaus find the inheritance law book, then the train schedule, then we see the train in the distance and all of a sudden the whole vibe in the room would shift. I loved watching that click over and over again.
And my penchant for dark movies extended to more adult ones as well, as I watched Black Swan for the first time. I was totally terrified of watching it - it's not the sort of thing I could handle in a movie theater, as I can't even really bring myself to watch scary movie trailers. I found myself getting really into it. Not only was it one of the best executed movies I've ever seen, it serendipitously fit into everything else that was going on in my pop culture life.
And this dark theme found it's way into my morning commute soundtracks, as I listened to Kanye West's My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy every day for over a week. I found I could only listen to it in the morning or at the beginning of a journey -- only when I was going somewhere, never when I was returning from one.
The anthology seemed to tie together all of these little things that would have seemed like isolated incidents without this point to fix them. I like how longer reads can extend themselves into this sort of mood, like how reading Justin Cronin's The Passage will forever cement in time the first few weeks I moved into the back bedroom of my apartment that I didn't know how I was going to afford the rent for as my hours at the library remained reduced.
I turned to fairy tales -- dark fairy tales -- in all corners of my life during this read. I am watching A Series of Unfortunate Events with my classes through testing, which I feel is a very dark and modern take on fairy tales (go ahead, argue me like my sixth graders -- absence of parents, precious children, evil adults, having to outsmart those in charge of you) There is one part I liked watching over and over with the kids.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FRV5v1Rl8IA
I like observing that moment where my students get it. Violet and Klaus find the inheritance law book, then the train schedule, then we see the train in the distance and all of a sudden the whole vibe in the room would shift. I loved watching that click over and over again.
And my penchant for dark movies extended to more adult ones as well, as I watched Black Swan for the first time. I was totally terrified of watching it - it's not the sort of thing I could handle in a movie theater, as I can't even really bring myself to watch scary movie trailers. I found myself getting really into it. Not only was it one of the best executed movies I've ever seen, it serendipitously fit into everything else that was going on in my pop culture life.
And this dark theme found it's way into my morning commute soundtracks, as I listened to Kanye West's My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy every day for over a week. I found I could only listen to it in the morning or at the beginning of a journey -- only when I was going somewhere, never when I was returning from one.
The anthology seemed to tie together all of these little things that would have seemed like isolated incidents without this point to fix them. I like how longer reads can extend themselves into this sort of mood, like how reading Justin Cronin's The Passage will forever cement in time the first few weeks I moved into the back bedroom of my apartment that I didn't know how I was going to afford the rent for as my hours at the library remained reduced.