What's the Name of That Book??? discussion
SOLVED: Children's/YA
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SOLVED. Children’s book retelling fairy tales within a larger, original fairy tale story of an aspiring author (the old unappreciated man) and his one reader (the young whippersnapper homeless girl). Spoilers.
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Found the book! Title: Teller of Tales
Author: William J. Brooke
Plot: (POTENTIAL SPOILERS)
An unknown aspiring author (MC) writes his own versions of fairy tales. (I think, from what I remember) they are based on “real life events” within the book’s universe/what the MC observes - the setting is fairytale-esque; if i had to guess, something like old English or so (think cobblestones, milkmaids, cotton dresses and aprons) He lives in an attic and when he writes, he has a habit of rubbing his temples when he’s thinking hard. One of the stories is the emperor’s new clothes (I think; and I don’t remember the others).
His foil comes in the form of a little girl off the street who enters his life when she tries to steal from him (if I recall correctly) and he tolerates her presence and her constant ingratitude and attitude and her criticism of his stories. She becomes his first reader. The book takes place over many years and several fairy tale retellings, all within the larger context/story of the slowly becoming-old man and the girl, who always reads his stories and most often has some negative feedback for him. She never tells him her real name, or perhaps she doesn’t have one (wouldn’t be surprised as a homeless street urchin); every time she appears, she tells him her name is something different: one day it is Tailor, because she is working for (?) a seamstress, another time Tiler because she scampers about on the tiles of the rooftops, I think another time Toiler because she is unhappy with how much work she feels she must do to survive. (For this post we’ll call her T.) The MC is always kind to her even though she never thanks him.
Eventually MC writes an original story of his own and excitedly waits for the girl to come read it. The story is about a girl and her dog - it’s a Cinderella-like story (I think), and the girl trains the dog not to bark or make any sound that could give her away (I guess she is in hiding… details are fuzzy). Then the dog is separated from her for some reason - he is found by the trainers and they take him to become a hunting dog (or something like that). He learns to bark and to make a lot of noise, and he nearly forgets who he was and the relationship he had with his original owner (a la Black Beauty). But in the end, the dog and the girl are reunited. The girl is no longer in hiding and the dog remembers who he is and who she is. Although the girl tells the dog he can now bark as much as he likes, in honor and respect, the dog never barks again.
MC excitedly shows T the story but is disappointed when she hates it. Overall, however, her reaction is in keeping with her character.
Over the years, MC tries to sell his stories, at one point I think even printing them himself and handing out sheets of paper in the streets, but they never catch on. T, meanwhile, is growing up, and one day she comes to MC’s attic with someone who presumably is a boyfriend. She announces her departure and thereafter disappears from MC’s life for an extended period of time.
In the end, MC is old and dies (?) and T eventually comes back to an empty attic. The feeling is one of regret and years lost, of unappreciation for the father-like figure that MC was for her all those years. She finds, however, the old papers at MC’s desk and ends up sitting and seeing the unfinished story there. She begins to write, and as she does, she rubs her own temples as she thinks hard. She is now and finally Teller, the teller of tales.
Other details: I probably read this book sometime between the mid-2000s to maybe early 2010s after finding it in a public library. I think the cover was mostly red (but I could be completely off). The book seemed fairly old, but it could be just because it was a library book and used/worn.