My Mother She Killed Me, My Father He Ate Me: Forty New Fairy Tales in Into the Forest

Dec 01, 2010 Mir rated it it was ok

Shelves: short-stories, mythology, fairy-tale

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

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Oct 14, 2010 Christine rated it really liked it

Shelves: short-stories, h-c-andersen, diverse-and-women-authors, fantasy-myth-and-fairy, grimm

It's interesting using this book in a case. The Swan stories are the most popular, and the quiet ones about relationships confuse people for some reason.

Old Review
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 b It's interesting using this book in a case. The Swan stories are the most popular, and the quiet ones about relationships confuse people for some reason.

Old Review
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 fairy tales as such. The succeds very well at this and several stories are truly descendents of the French Salon writers, Andersen, and the Grimms. Some of the stories don't work (at least for me) but several stories are absolutely, jaw dropping friggin (Can I say that?) wonderful. Even the stories that I didn't like (like "Warm Mouth" by Joyelle McSweeny) were at least worthy experiments in differenty styles. Each story has a brief afterword by the author and the table of contents gives the source tale for each story.

The two best stories (and it is a very close race, a photo finish, for several stories for this title) are John Updike's "Bluebeard in Ireland", a story about a marriage; and Katherine Vaz's "What the Conch Shell Sings When the Body is Gone", also a story about a relationship. In fact, many of the stories in this collection, as in many fairy tales, focus on relationships. Updike and Vaz's short fiction are really descendents of such older as "Bluebeard" because like the older tales, they look at marriage and relationships in the modern world. The two stories are magical without having "magic" in them.

Many of the tales in the collection are not what most readers would call fantasy or horror (I brought this at Borders which had it in the horror section), but there is a good mixture of fantasy and magic realism. I heistate to use the word horror. In fact, the two most distrubing stories, "The Erlking" by Sarah Shun-lien Bynum and "With Hair of Hand-Spun Gold" by Neil LaBute, are distrubing because of thier out and out realism. "Dapplegrim" by Brain Evenson is the only true horror story, and considering the source, it shouldn't be surprising.

There is humor here as well. I didn't really enjoy Neil Gaiman's Fragile Things, but his "Orange" is really, really funny.

Overall, the collection fulfills the promise that is made in the introduction. ...more

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Dec 14, 2011 Shomeret rated it liked it

Shelves: fantasy, anthology, my-reviews

I don't recommend the anthology as a whole. Many weren't fully developed fiction. There were actually several that seemed to be written as letters to the editor. There were also quite a number that didn't hold my attention.

Yet I absolutely loved Aimee Bender's story, "The Color Master". It was written from the perspective of the tailors who created the dresses for the fairy tale "Donkeyskin". I found it riveting in its intensity.

...more

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Jun 11, 2012 Melanti rated it liked it

Shelves: anthology, library, 2012, fairy-tales-folklore-and-mythology

The great thing about anthologies is that there's a lot of variety in content. The bad thing about anthologies is that there's a lot of variety in quality.

A lot of the stories are rather contemporary - both in setting and in style. Quite a few were rather "literary", and still more were of the "magic realism" style. That would be just fine with me normally, but when I'm reading a book subtitled "new fairy tales," I really expect a sense of wonder and a greater sense of other-worldliness than man ...more

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Sep 28, 2011 Katie J Schwartz rated it really liked it

Shelves: library, suspend-reality, met-the-author, fairy-tales, short-stories, diverse-authors, favorite-authors, anthologies

From "The Swan Brothers" by Shelley Jackson:

THINGS YOU LEARN FROM READING

Women are trouble - if it isn't an evil wife, it's an evil stepmother. Or mother-in-law. Mothers are usually all right, unless they're witches - watch out for witches. And their daughters.

You might be all right with kings, princes, and fathers, unless, as is usually the case, they're under the influence of someone else, usually a woman. Men are weak. Sometimes they rescue you, but they always have help - from ants or birds ...more

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Jan 29, 2011 Kyle rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: fairy-tales, digital, 2011-reads, favorites, 2011-top-ten

This is essential reading for any admirer of the fairy tale. There are a few duds scattered throughout, but on the whole it's the best collection of modern re-imaginings of fairy tales that I've ever read, and I've read quite a few. I know I'll be coming back to this one in the future to re-read my favorites. ...more

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