The Witch
And Other Tales Re-Told
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- £4.99
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- £4.99
Publisher Description
National Book Award finalist and New York Times bestselling author Jean Thompson’s new collection of “bewitching improvisations on fairy tales” are “spellbinding” (Booklist, starred review).
Capturing the magic and horror in everyday life, The Witch and Other Tales Re-told revisits beloved fables that represent our deepest, most primeval fears and satisfy our longings for good to triumph over evil (preferably in the most gruesome way possible). From the wolf in “Little Red Riding Hood” to the beauty asleep in her castle, The Witch and Other Tales Re-told triumphantly brings the fairy tale into the modern age.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In this spooky, enthralling, and morally complex collection, National Book Award finalist Thompson (Who Do You Love) reimagines classic fairy tales, such as "Cinderella" and "The Pied Piper of Hamelin," as eight realistic narratives of family, sexuality, and faith. Announcing in a preface that she doesn't aim to write "recountings or versions of the old tales but something looser," Thompson sets all but one in the modern-day U.S. In each, she shows evil, wonder, and majesty originally symbolized by witches, magical creatures, and fantastical kingdoms as separate vectors of the divided self. In the title story, Hansel and Gretel are recast as foster children placed with an elderly woman whose crankiness one of them mistakes for malevolence, with tragic consequences. "Candy" locates innocence (such as Snow White's) and cunning (such as Maleficent's) in a single teenage girl, who oscillates between her identities as a self-conscious loner at school and a power-wielding temptress in online chat rooms. Thompson skillfully infuses our banal world of technology, reality TV, and pop psychology with genuine horror. Indeed, many of the entries the Rapunzelesque "Your Secret's Safe With Me," in particular are as eerie as anything you'll find in the Brothers Grimm.
