Culture
6 Y.A. Fairy Tale Retellings to Add to Your Reading List
Fairy tales made me fall in love with studying. After I was a child, my dad and mom would inform me bedtime tales about intelligent princesses who broke evil curses, fell in love and lived fortunately ever after. However as I grew older, “fortunately ever after” wasn’t sufficient anymore, and the type and delightful princesses so typically featured in fairy tales began to really feel bland and boring. And that was once I found retellings.
To me, a fairy story retelling is like taking the guts of a narrative we all know and giving it new bones and flesh. My favorites twist the unique, catch me off-guard and make my coronary heart swell and ache together with the characters. They characteristic flawed heroes who not solely go on journeys to avoid wasting the dominion but additionally discover themselves alongside the best way. Listed here are a number of of my favourite younger grownup fairy story retellings.
‘A Thousand Beginnings and Endings,’ edited by Ellen Oh and Elsie Chapman
I want I might have learn this anthology once I was a young person. The gathering options tales impressed by East and South Asian people tales and legends. Every features a brief introduction from the creator, with helpful perception concerning the unique and the way it impressed the remake. The gathering is a showcase of the creativeness, with tales about goblins and household bonds, about gods and star-crossed lovers and extra. With that vary, “A Thousand Beginnings and Endings” will intrigue even the pickiest of readers.
‘A Curse So Darkish and Lonely,’ by Brigid Kemmerer
Kemmerer’s reimagining of “Magnificence and the Beast” is a superb portal fantasy. It follows Harper, a young person from Washington, D.C., with cerebral palsy, who is determining the best way to present for her household whereas her mom is dying. Then she’s stolen away to the magical land of Emberfall, the place each autumn, the dominion’s inheritor, Prince Rhen, turns right into a murderous monster, a change he’s cursed to repeat yearly till a lady falls in love with him. I love the best way Kemmerer twists the curse that drives the story; Harper makes for a courageous and lovable heroine; and Rhen’s loneliness and guilt make him a extra empathetic and tortured “beast” than the monster in lots of different variations of this fairy story.
‘Pores and skin of the Sea,’ by Natasha Bowen
Loosely impressed by “The Little Mermaid,” this stunning novel follows Simi, a younger Mami Wata (a mermaid from West African lore) who collects the souls of those that die at sea. When Simi breaks the foundations by saving a drowning boy as a substitute of letting him die, she should set issues proper with the gods or threat turning into sea foam. One bothersome side of Hans Christian Andersen’s “The Little Mermaid” is that the mermaid should select between marriage or demise. I appreciated that Bowen’s story permits different paths to happiness for Simi, highlighting her power, hopefulness and spirit.
‘Home of Salt and Sorrows,’ by Erin A. Craig
I grew up loving “The 12 Dancing Princesses” for its lightness and whimsy — who wouldn’t need to be considered one of 12 princess sisters who secretly go dancing each night time in a magical realm? I by no means would have thought to reimagine it as a horror novel, but that’s what Craig does to stunning impact in “Home of Salt and Sorrows.” Craig spins the darkish and gothic into this traditional by making the story a couple of younger lady who lives in an island manor along with her 11 sisters — 4 of whom have died suspicious deaths. This retelling is as deliciously creepy as it’s charming, with attractive ballroom dances and forbidden trysts balancing the suspense at its core as Annaleigh searches for who (or what) has been threatening her household.
‘Thorn,’ by Intisar Khanani
“The Goose Lady” is a fairy story a couple of princess preventing to regain her rightful place within the kingdom after she is tricked into switching locations along with her treacherous maid. Whereas “Thorn” has loads of nods to the unique, this retelling mixes the story up a bit. The ebook follows Princess Alyrra, who’s reworked into the titular Thorn. Her world is gritty and infrequently unfair, and its prince is as flawed as he’s alluring, leaving the reader in fixed suspense of what selections Alyrra will make. Furthermore, the retelling doesn’t draw back from complicated ethical themes corresponding to justice and revenge, whereas leavening the story with hope.
‘Echo North,’ by Joanna Ruth Meyer
A retelling of “East of the Solar and West of the Moon” and “Tam Lin,” this sweeping novel follows Echo Alkaev, a lady with a scarred face whose father is imprisoned by the very wolf who attacked her as a baby. “East of the Solar and West of the Moon” is commonly described as a Norwegian variation of “Magnificence and the Beast,” and although many fairy tales spotlight the wonder saving the beast along with her kindness and compassion, what I like most in Meyer’s retelling is how Echo initially thinks of herself as a monster and comes to acknowledge her personal power and value.
Elizabeth Lim is the creator of “Six Crimson Cranes,” a reimagining of the traditional “Wild Swans” fairy story. Earlier than changing into a author, she was a composer.
Welcome to Great Adaptations, the Book Review’s regular multiple-choice quiz about books that have gone on to find new life as movies, television shows, theatrical productions, video games and more. With the summer-movie season here, this week’s challenge is focused on novels that went on to become big-screeen adventures. Just tap or click your answers to the five questions below. And scroll down after you finish the last question for links to the books and their filmed versions.
THE MÖBIUS BOOK, by Catherine Lacey
The first thing to know about “The Möbius Book,” by Catherine Lacey, is that it is actually two books. One is a novella with a hint of murder mystery. Start from the opposite side, flipping upside down — how will this work on a Kindle? — and you’ll find the other: a memoir of breakup and friendship during the pandemic, interspersed with musings on religion.
Where will bookstores put this loopy blue thing? Amazon, with unusual resourcefulness, has nested it for now under Self-Help/Relationships/Love & Loss (though I’d wager the author’s core audience avoids Amazon).
One has come to expect such formal experiments from Lacey, especially after her bravura “Biography of X”: not a biography of anyone real, but a footnoted, name-dropping, time-melting fourth novel that made many best lists in 2023.
There are plenty of names pelted into “The Möbius Book,” too — author friends like Heidi Julavits and Sarah Manguso, and many others — but one notably missing in the memoir part is that of Lacey’s ex, which gentle Googling reveals is yet another writer, Jesse Ball. Here he is referred to as The Reason: the literary-circle equivalent, maybe, of The Weeknd.
He is the “reason” why she has become a visitor to, rather than a resident of, the house they bought together, after receiving an email he sent from another room, composed on his phone, telling her he’d met another woman. (At least not a Post-it?) He is also, or so she believed, a pillar of masculine rationality. With tattoos.
The Reason has control and anger issues. He noticed when Lacey, or her memoiristic avatar, put on weight and advised her how to take it off. After they split she found it hard to eat for a time.
The Reason, unreasonably, refused to use a laptop, so she had done most of his paperwork, participating “in the long lineage of women licking stamps for their geniuses.” He once called her “a crazy, sexist autocrat” when she wanted to leave a light on in a stairwell for a female guest. Sometimes he would surprise her — “playfully,” he insisted; unpleasantly, she felt — with a smack on the rear. When not threatening or cold, he seems a little absurd in this telling, playing funeral hymns on a shakuhachi.
There was a time when such narratives were lightning bolts cast down on the world of letters, causing considerable shock waves. (I’m thinking of Catherine Texier’s 1998 “Breakup,” about the dissolution of her marriage to Joel Rose, and even Rachel Cusk’s 2012 divorce memoir “Aftermath.”) But Lacey isn’t scorching earth — she’s sifting it, flinging fistfuls of dirt and thought at us.
With characteristic keenness she notes how “The Reason’s name had burrowed into everything, like glitter in shag carpet.” How mundane language pops out with new meaning in the fog of post-relationship grief (“Even the copy on a jar of peanut butter tried to offer advice — Separation is natural”). She reflects on her religious childhood and her once-authoritarian, now-infirm father. She consults — and sometimes curses — Simone Weil, Seneca and William Gass. She hooks up with a new fellow she dubs, naturally, The Bad Idea.
Lacey runs the same list of acknowledgments and credits at the end of both novella and memoir. There are similar themes, but also an element of “Hey, you got your chocolate in my peanut butter!” in their juxtaposition. The fiction is shorter, noirish and elliptical. Was yoking it to the fiction an organic, creative act — whatever that is, we’re maybe meant to consider — or a clever packaging solution for two not-quite stand-alones?
A woman named Marie welcomes a friend, Edie, into her grim apartment on Christmas, noticing — is this a nightmare? — a pool of blood spreading outside a neighbor’s door. They both write it off as “just paint” so they can sip mezcal, eat crustless sandwiches and talk about failed relationships, some mediated or complicated through another, friend, Kafkaesquely called K.
They are both reputed in their circle to be in some kind of “crisis.” (Marie’s Crisis happens to be an excellent piano bar in the West Village of Manhattan, but, as Lacey writes, “no one cares about anyone else’s coincidences.”) Their interlocked stories drip with aphorism (“it is a fact that when one living thing rests its chin on another living thing, everything is fine”), defy summary and might all be a fever dream anyway.
“The Möbius Book” invites the reader to consider the overlaps between its two parts, an exercise both frustrating — all that turning back, forth and upside down — and exhilarating, because Lacey is imaginative and whimsical when considering reality, and sees truth in make-believe. The curving strip is like Lewis Carroll’s looking glass. Both halves share a broken teacup. Twins! A violent man. Bursts of sarcastic laughter. A dying dog (God?) with important spiritual wisdom to share.
Depending on how you twist, this book — defying the linear story, homage to the messy middle — is either delightfully neo-Dada or utterly maddening.
Or, as Lacey puts it: “Symbolism is both hollow and solid, a crutch, yes, but what’s so wrong with needing help to get around?”
THE MÖBIUS BOOK | By Catherine Lacey | Farrar, Straus & Giroux | 240 pp. | $27
You can hear a reading of this poem, and play our game, at the bottom of the page.
Poetry teems with charismatic beasts, from Shelley’s skylark to “Aunt Jennifer’s Tigers.” A comprehensive anthology of zoological verse would be fat with doggerel and birdsong, limericks and nursery rhymes, nightingales, foxes and toads.
But let’s slow down and take it one creature — and one poem — at a time. Consider the turtle, as captured by Kay Ryan.
Turtles may not have the charm or charisma of other beasts — they don’t dominate the human imagination like eagles or lions, or domesticate it like dogs or cats — but they have a notable presence in literature and myth. They are symbols of wisdom and longevity; their shells are sturdy enough to hold up the world. The cosmos, in one famous account, consists of “turtles all the way down.”
In Aesop’s fable, the turtle (traditionally called a tortoise, which is a type of turtle) is a winner, a perpetual underdog who defeats the arrogant hare. The tortoise’s slowness turns out to be a virtue.
In Ryan’s poem, the turtle’s physical attributes — her cumbersome shell and short legs, above all — seem only to be liabilities. That armor may have evolved as protection against predators, but it’s a lot of baggage for a poor, halting herbivore to lug around. Her patience isn’t going to win her any races: It’s her best response to a tough break; a way of making light of a heavy situation.
But at the same time, the poem’s mood and manner, its sense and sound, defy the constraints of turtleness. To read it a second time — or aloud — is to note how nimbly and swiftly it moves.
Want to learn this poem by heart? We’ll help.
Hearing a poem can make it more memorable. Listen to A.O. Scott read this one:
Who would be a turtle who could help it?
A barely mobile hard roll, a four–oared helmet,
she can ill afford the chances she must take
in rowing toward the grasses that she eats.
Her track is graceless, like dragging
a packing case places, and almost any slope
defeats her modest hopes. Even being practical,
she’s often stuck up to the axle on her way
to something edible. With everything optimal,
she skirts the ditch which would convert
her shell into a serving dish. She lives
below luck–level, never imagining some lottery
will change her load of pottery to wings.
Her only levity is patience,
the sport of truly chastened things.
Get to know the poem better by filling in the missing words below. Start on easy mode, and
when you’re ready, try hard mode.
Question 1/7
We’ll take it one step at a time.
Who would be a turtle who could help it?
A barely mobile hard roll, a four–oared helmet,
Tap a word above to fill in the highlighted blank.
Question 1/7
Strap in.
Who would be a turtle who could help it?
A barely mobile hard roll, a four–oared helmet,
Tap a word above to fill in the highlighted blank.
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