Some of the stories are okay. A couple are good. An unusual preponderance struck me derivative, boring, and/or pretentious. It bothered me that the publisher tried to present this volume as doing something new and important when it is not. At all. "Reinterpreting" fairy tales as coming-of-age stories or coded depictions of sexual abuse has been done for decades, frequently better than it is here. And to be honest, I think the modern view that this was ever new is kind of embarrassing in its naiv More...

Sarah Montambo and Marie saw me looking longingly at this morbid book, picking it up to read the back and putting it down several times, and since they're both generous, attentive, kind, and LOADED$$$...j/k on that last one, but the rest of it is true and they got me this book! Present!!

It looks much cooler than it's turning out to be, for my uncultured and poorly educated taste. But I love it for being a gift from friends who noticed and acted. Who has people like that in their lives? Lucky one More...

Award-winning short story collection from all your favourite adult literary powerhouses. Aka, not something I would read on my own, but since it's fairytale retellings, I'd happily leave me fantasy-and-YA-hole for it. (Just kidding, I do actually read other stuff.)

Like all anthologies, this one is a mixed bag, but I really loved Kate Bernheimer's conception and Gregory Maguire's introduction. Fairytales are not something that leave us after we are no longer children--the themes and motifs can wh More...

This was the book that sustained me for a week during the power outage after Hurricane Sandy.

Although it's a book full of "fairy tails," the stories can be considered modernized versions of the originals they were based upon. Maybe it wasn't for me, but I thought this book was so so. There were too many times in which I fell asleep reading the book because I was bored by it. There were some stories I found interesting, such as the one about the a boy, a girl, and a mermaid. That story was based More...

I know many people think fairy tales are dark and creepy if you get to the REAL ones. But I read that the Brother's Grimm "updated" their book several times, each time making it darker and darker because that's what people liked. NOT because it was authentic. And reading fairy tales from non-European sources shows a huge range of human condition, not just the kind that wants to kill and eat small children.

Unfortunately, many of the authors of this short story collection went for the most distur More...

I enjoyed most of the stories and I agree with the editor's views on the importance of fairy tales despite the way they are received in literary circles. Fairy tales get into some deep, primal shit (before they get sanitized by Disney). Many of us who grew up on the Andrew Lang collections of fairy tales have come to some troubling realizations about the messages passed along by these ancient tales, although they are also full of magic and possibility. You don't have to be a pysch major to feel More...

I'm not through with this book yet, but so far, this has to be one of the most imaginative books I've read in literally, years!!

It's a collection of "new" Fairy Tales, but such widely diverse authors as Neil Gaiman, Neil LaBute, and Joyce Carol Oates --- absolutely fascinating!!

Just one quick note, after finishing this delightful collection -- Read it, there's at least one story, or play on a "fairy tale" that you'll never forget!~

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 al More...

Okay. It's difficult being an anthology. A few stinkers in the collection and people rate it a 3 or 4. But there is no anthology that doesn't have a handful of stories that are weaker or less appealing than the others. For me, the real test is How many excellent stories does it contain? And this book has about 14 really good stories and 4 absolutely superb ones. (My favorites: "The Erkling," "Halfway People," "The Mermaid in the Tree," and "The Color Master"; authors Sarah Shun-Lien Bynum, Karen More...

My Mother She Killed Me, My Father He Ate Me: Forty New Fairy Tales Edited by Kate Bernheimer is the book I bought myself for Christmas. This volume is a treasure chest of the fantastic and strange, vaguely familiar stories from childhood remade. Not to mention that title - which would have made me pick up this book no matter what it was about. Lucky for me what lay inside was individually as unique as the title and accompanied with a short explanation of how they came to be written by each auth More...

Talk about an attention grabbing title! I’m enjoying telling people about this book just so that I can have the opportunity pronounce the titillating title, and watch the reactions of my friends. But no, My Mother She Killed Me, My Father He Ate Me is not about cannibalism. Or at least, not all of it. But since the theme of this short-story collection is fairy tales, you can expect to encounter some pretty gruesome stories in the style of the original Grimm tales, along with stories of adventure More...

I found this an uneven collection. I suppose I carry Terri Windling's The Armless Maiden as my template for updated fairy tales, so the bar is set high. Some of the stories bordered on nonsensical as authors tried to recreate the tone of fairy tales by just stringing together strange events as paltry vestments, lacking then the cultural mores and lessons that give traditional stories their real meat. Other stories seemed like ersatz versions of the originals--adding or subtracting nothing. There More...

I remember fairy tales being one of the most easiest narratives in the world to read on a surface level. When you grow up you learn of the story's origins, and something almost always changes.

The "Forty New Fairy Tales" here are re-tellings and/or derivations of well-loved and obscure tales from childhood. Some story sources will have you looking up its origins online (the contents pages also mention which tale the story originated from), which is recommended.

I loved most of the tales here. Sta More...

There is a misnomer on the cover of this book. Some short stories in this volume have not been commissioned for the book. Several of them have appeared in various magazines and collections (some have appeared over a decade ago).

This is okay, for this is the first time that they are all collected together and I hadn't read any of them before.

The purpose of this collection in part, according to Bernheimer, is to present fairy tales as an acceptable source of literature, at least to present modern More...

With collections of short stories, it is always hard to give stars - some inevitably deserve 5 and some...

So, those that deserve 5 stars (or more), in my humble (or not so humble) opinion:

"Orange" by Neil Gaiman
"The Color Master" by Aimee Bender
"The Story of the Mosquito" by Lily Hoang
"Ardour" by Jonathon Keats
"Teague O'Kane and the Corpse" by Chris Adrian
"The First Day" of Snow by Naoko Awa

2 that were good but disturbing:

"The Mermaid in the Tree" by Timothy Schaffert
"The Brother and the Bird" b More...

"My Mother She Killed Me, My Father He Ate Me," edited by Kate Bernheimer, is a collection of short stories inspired by traditional fairy tales and their tropes/themes.

This is an excellent collection of short stories that are based on, inspired by, or retelling fairy tales. Bonus points go to the fact that not all the fairy tales are from Western European canon. There's some Baba Yaga up in there, but there's also some Asian fairy tales as well. Most fairy tale collections that I've seen are pre More...

It is hard for me to put my feelings towards this anthology into words. I was moved by certain stories in such a way that I felt as though I could not bare to remain seated; silently flipping through pages on the floor of my apartment. After reading Ardour by Jonathon Keats I was stricken. I found myself longing for the bitter cold; to see my warm breath linger in the air and to hang precariously until it fluttered away. I want see ice and snow clinging to branches above my head as I walk the pa More...

The concept is fabulous - what could be better than modern retellings of fairy tales? And I was worked up to fever pitch excitement after the foreword by Gregory Maguire. Some of these tales are better than others, though. I especially liked the ones in which you could get a flavor of the original tales that inspired them. I will be forever indebted to this book as it has introduced me to Shelley Jackson, Sarah Shun-Lien Bynum, and Aimee Bender. I think their tales were my favorites ("The Swan B More...

I often think of books as gateways into other worlds, some weirder than others. "My Mother She Killed Me, My Father He Ate Me" has been one of the strangest in a long time - and not just one odd world. This is a collection of modern day fairy tales, or stories based on fairy tales, for adults. The book is full of many extraordinary places, many extraordinary characters, e.g. a performance artist who sews shirts out of nettles so her brothers won't be trapped in swan shape.
In some of the stories, More...

As with any collection of short stories, some are better than others. As it turned out, most of these stories were not to my taste, but they did make me think about the traditional tales in different ways, which I did like. My favorite story was "The Color Master."

Interesting thing to note--I bought an ebook version of this and then was given a paper version later, but continued reading the ebook (as it's short stories, it was a good on-the-go book, but the print version was a bit too hefty for More...

Wonderful re-tellings of classic "grimm" (and other) fairy-tale tropes. The 7 Dwarfs live in a high rise in Manhattan and have a variety of modern problems.

I love these tales and I love writers who are willing to invest their time in creating short stories - a form that is generally unremunerative. I would have given this book a higher rating, but for the fact that the stories are uneven - several of them are entirely brilliant, a "read in one sweeping gasp" kinda story, the kind of story where More...

When I got the book out of the libary, I was really excited about the concept--how could the odd magic of fairy tales be translated into something new, perhaps something modern? But I was disappointed with the result, because instead of a unique batch of stories, instead of something new, these stories were all off in fantasy worlds, suspiciously akin that from which the inspirations were born.

Instead of odd, unique tales, many of these were simply revised versions of the originals. Instead of t More...

This book had a lot of potential to be good, but what ended up happening was each writer got the "school assignment" of writing a new sort of fairy tale, and each submission was to be accompanied by an explanation by the author as an end-note. As I went along, my reaction went from "Huh, that was good.......okay that one was a dud...........ho-hum.....oh yay a good one!" as far as stories went.

But the author notes just went from pretentious to ULTRA SUPER POWER PRETENTIOUS. Consider the note fro More...

This book contains many stories by authors that have taken a fairy tale (some more famous than others) and retold, reinterpreted, or riffed on it. I should admit that I actually only read a few of these stories, but I think I'm going to return it to the library soon anyways, because there are LOTS of them and I haven't heard of most of the authors. I enjoyed most of the ones I did read, especially "The Color Master" by Aimee Bender and Joyce Carol Oates's very short Bluebeard. Neil Gaiman's was More...

The nice thing about anthologies is that you can skip stories you dislike. Something's gotta appeal to you if there are forty different writers. I enjoyed quite a few stories in here, and it seems like a lot of authors had fun playing with the ideas of fairy tales. Some followed the story to the letter, others took a concept and ran with it.
In particular I enjoyed John Updike's wry take on 'Bluebeard'. Joyce Carol Oates chose the same and gave a marvelous little gem, of course totally different. More...

This is one of the best collections of short stories I've read, maybe ever. I'm a little bit in love with fairytales, particularly modern or bizarre twists on existing stories, and this book is a fantastic collection of creative, dark, twisted fairy tales by a range of great authors. In particular I loved Aimee Bender and Neil Gaiman's contributions. I also enjoyed being exposed to some Russian fairy tales that I had never heard of before. As with any collection of stories, there were some that More...

This was a book I had to force myself to finish. I hate to let a book defeat me, and that's how I felt trying to get through the more than 500 pages in Bernheimer's collection. The premise of the book is 40 new fairy tales by well-known, contemporary authors. Unfortunately, I wasn't sold. I LOVE fairy tales, and always have, but these stories mostly just bored me.

To give a couple of examples:

"Bluebeard in Ireland" is the story of a couple on vacation in Ireland. He's older, and has been married More...

This was completely bizarre. I started reading the stories in order, but when I got to the one that was purportedly a Hansel and Gretel-inspired story, but which was really about visiting an artist who photographed herself in sexytimes with her cat (!!!!!!!!!!!!), I just skipped to the Neil Gaiman one, enjoyed it IMMENSELY (duh, of course I would! He's amazing.) and turned the book back in to the library. I would recommend Gaiman's story in the anthology, but as for the others, I would go with t More...

What a fantastic collection! Yes I'm biased, I adore fairy tales, myths and magical realism. BUT this really is one of the most well balanced short-story collections I've come across, regardless of genre. The stories here provided a lovely mix of re-tellings, re-imaginings, blends of tales, and occasionally a backstory to a well known tale.
Of course there were stories that stood out above the rest. 'The Color Master' is a very dear favorite of mine. This was a story about the team of seamstresse More...

Equally creepy and uplifting, these modern takes on fairy tales were a treat for me to read. Some, of course, were better than others, whether in character, plot, or theme. I especially appreciated the authors' comments after each story- they provided agreat deal of insight. My favorites were The Erkling by Sarah Shun-Lien Bynum, Halfway People by Kare Joy Fowler, What the Conch Shell Sings When the Body is Gone by Katherine Vaz, Bluebeard in Ireland by John updike, and Orange by Neil Gaiman. Th More...