Far Far and Away Better than “Hansel and Gretel: Witchhunters”

 

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If you’re in search of a good summer read, try Thomas McNeal’s Far Far Away.  Jacob Grimm comes alive (well, as a ghost) in ways that I could never have imagined.  Gothic in its sensibilities but intimate and engaging in its narrative style, the novel kept me awake and reading until 2am.   Wonderfully informative about the Brothers Grimm (there’s even a Grimm quiz show), it also gives us a richly complex “Hansel and Gretel” hypertext, with two adolescents who have to escape the clutches of the witch.  You’ll figure things out halfway through but that’s part of the sheer pleasure of this pulse-pumping story.