I've long found fairy-tale retellings to be empowering, subversive or both. WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO RETELL A STORY? Does it mean dressing up a familiar tale in different clothes? Reading it against its grain? Replacing parts of a story like boards in a ship, until an old story's shape is built of entirely new wood? This month, I'm looking at recent books that are all retellings of one sort or another. Ortberg successfully pinpoints a kernel of real horror in each of the stories she recasts, and although her smart, weird writing might not be for everyone, it will bewitch macabre, literary-minded readers.-Hunter, Sarah Copyright 2018 Booklist There's not much classic horror writing here rather, Ortberg cultivates a deep sense of unease, both in her compellingly odd, archaic language and the gulf between characters' words and actions, like in her take on The Wind in the Willows, when Rat and Mole drive Toad to despair with honeyed but ultimately sinister words of friendship.
In The Rabbit, a plush bunny seems to draw the life force out of a little boy, all in the hope of speeding up the process of becoming real. Daughter Cells features an insouciant mermaid fixated on possessing a human soul. Ortberg infuses her stories with unsettling surrealism, sharp social commentary, a mordant sense of humor, and little in the way of true love. All rights reserved.įairy tales often have dark undertones, but Ortberg (Text from Jane Eyre, 2014) brings those tones right to the top in this collection of reimagined tales. The book brings the shock of the new and the shock of recognition into play at the same time it's a tour de force of skill, daring, and hard-earned bravura. Throughout, gender roles blur and dissolve to reemerge in unexpected shapes. "The Rabbit," a brilliant take on The Velveteen Rabbit and one of the most deeply disturbing horror stories of the last several years, uses the emotional power of the original novel to get past the reader's defenses. Toad," Ortberg's voice echoes the standard pragmatic pedagogy of the oral-tradition fairy tale narrator in a charming, bitingly ironic way. In the sheer inhumanity of her Little Mermaid's outlook in the cheerfully corrosive "The Daughter Cells" and the Kenneth Grahame-meets-Barthelme gaslighting of "Some of Us Had Been Threatening Our Friend Mr. Ortberg (Notes from Jane Eyre) has been deconstructing and rewriting fairy tales and children's stories for some time, most notably on her former website The Toast this collection of those pieces triumphantly transcends the possible pitfalls, brimming with satirical horror. Unlike most modern versions of fairy tales, Ortberg's sly, scathing renditions avoid clichés and self-referential edginess, and instead strike directly at the heart.
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