The Ogre's Wife - Fairy Tales for Grownups

by Richard Parks

THE OGRE'S WIFE is a collection of short stories by Richard Parks. The introduction was written by Parke Godwin, who has followed the author's career from first bloom in 1978 until today. All but one of the stories have been previously published in either magazines (mostly Realms of Fantasy) or anthologies. That one, Doing Time in the Wild Hunt, was written especially for this collection.

Genres: Fantasy, Fiction, Short Stories

272 pages, Paperback

First published August 1, 2002

About the author

I write mostly fantasy, both short stories and novels. My third short story collection, On the Banks of the River of Heaven was published in November, 2010. My second novella with PS Publishing, The Heavenly Fox, was released in early 2011. I've been a finalist for both the World Fantasy Award and the Mythopoeic Award for Adult Literature.





Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name. See this thread for more information.

Reviews

[Janice · Rating 4 out of 5]

I quite liked many of the stories in this book. I'm especially fond of stories that riff on myths or tales from other cultures, and this book had some good ones. "Golden Bell, Seven, and the Marquis of Zeng" was a lovely story to end the book on. This story and "A Place to Begin" made me remember Barry Hughart's novels too. This is a good thing. :)

I thought the Eli Mothersbaugh stories were the weakest in the book. They made me think of Carnacki the Ghost Finder, by William Hope Hodgson, though Parks' stories are gentler and less dramatic than Hodgson's.

There were quite a few typos in my ebook edition. It looked more like one from the early days of ebooks, when OCR errors and artifacts were more common than they are now. That's a shame.

[Sarah · Rating 3 out of 5]

I ended up quitting early. The first few stories were nice enough, more complex and deep than most fairy tales. But the complexity, and the writing style, actually felt a little clunky so I didn't feel compelled to finish all the stories.

[Samantha Penrose · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book really went above and beyond the expectations that I had for it. Of the 15 stories, I found 9 of them to be excellent, 5 of them good, and 1 of them amazing. I would say that it is definitely worth an evening or two to read this eclectic collection of insightful stories.
fyi...the amazing one is called How Konti Scrounged the World

EXCERPTS....

It was the most beautiful country Jack had ever see.
He looked around with a rising sense of futility, trying to imagine a time, if any, when he would look back on the moment he was now in. What would he tell himself? What images, sounds, or emotions filtered through imperfect memory could recapture what he saw, what he heard, what he felt right now? Could there actually be a truth so strong or a lie so golden to be a match for it? (page 79)


All human beings have potential all their lives. To be something greater than they are, or something worse. To choose one path and not another. To hone one skill and let another go fallow. Yet, before one path is chosen, all paths have almost equal potential, and are just as real. There is power in that potential, Umi. Power that one such as I knows how to tap, and use. Everyone has it to some degree, as I said, but no one has potential without limit. Some, however, come very close. (page 209)

[Paul Black · Rating 3 out of 5]

Imaginative short stories! Ghosts, fairies, gods, sorceresses, and magic. Set in Brothers Grimm age or modern days, and even two in the near future. Many of them deal with the passion and heartache between husbands and wives and people's compassion for each other, so these are for grownups.

Parks has a powerful almost epic-ballad writing style. It is wonderful to read. My wife was delighted when I read "THE OGRE'S WIFE" to her.

I gave this edition three stars because of occasional cursing and a surprising number of edit errors, like "... in front his father's brand-new Edsel." ("of" obviously missing) and extra blank lines in the middle of paragraphs. I'd stumble across one and fall out of the fantastic world Park had led me into. At those times I also noticed the font seemed, well, mundane. I'm no expert, but I got the sense of an inexpensive self-published font, not a professional font.
Park often employs compound words as adjectives (also called phrasal adjectives), but rarely uses hyphens. For instance, "the leaf blocked sky". I mentally tripped over these a few times, too.

[Ben Rowe · Rating 4 out of 5]

Richard Parks is a great short story writer and there is much to enjoy in this, his first collection. I do feel that Parks has improved as a writer since this collection and also that this volume shows him dabbling in a wide range of story types before finding areas in which he can work best as is seen in later stories. As such I would suggest if you are new to Parks you might want to start with his more recent collections but there is much to love here for any reader of fantasy/ sf who can appreciate a well told short story.

[KristenR · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a nice mix of fantasy/fairy tales and science fiction stories.

I usually like fairy tales, but in this collection those stories fell a little flat for me. I liked the title story and then the more science fiction stories ("Doppel" and the Mothersbaugh stories where ghosts have been scientifically proven real)

[Bridgett · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this book though it isn't much like fairy tales. There's some fantasy, some paranormal/ghost stories, some mythology and some science-fiction. The stories seemed to connect to each other, though, which I thought was very clever.

[Kagama-the Literaturevixen · Rating 3 out of 5]

Read for the titular story "The Ogres wife'

[Tina · Rating 5 out of 5]

excellent collection of short stories