Priscilla Galloway

It’s strange the things one remembers; take this book, for instance. I checked it out from the library once when I was a preteen, and as far as I remember only read one story from it before I returned it, but that story, a retelling of “The Little Mermaid,” has stuck with me all of these years. Thanks to Rubbah and kirstygm of the Fairy Tales Retold Group, I discovered the book’s title, which I had forgotten, and finding my library still carried a copy, checked it out yet again.

I show more still love the story that captured my interest all those years ago, which sports the terrible title “The Voice of Love.” It continues the tragedy of Hans Christian Anderson’s classic yarn, focusing on the prince after his marriage and the little mermaid’s disappearance. His relationship with his wife, beautiful, sensuous, and rather ill tempered, is fascinatingly and tragically drawn, especially as he realizes that the woman who truly loved him is now lost to him forever. There’s one particularly telling scene in which he discovers his wife designing a head ornament using various precious gems, and seeing pearls among them, he remembers his little friend and how much she loved to wear them. “Put away the jewels,” he tells the jeweler in a fury. “Another day my wife may wish a design of rubies and diamonds. Not pearls.” The story’s ending is darker and less vague than I remembered, but considering how many wonderful memories the tale had to live up to, it is really quite wonderful, and probably my favorite retelling of this fairy tale.

Unfortunately, only two of the other seven stories even remotely appealed to me—“The Name,” in which Rumpelstiltskin tells his own dark and tragic story, and “A Bed of Peas,” the story of Rapunzel’s parents told with touches of “The Princess and the Pea” and “The Arabian Nights.” Some of the other stories are more generically grim, including “Blood and Bone,” in which the Giant’s wife reveals the reasoning behind her treatment of Jack, “The Good Mother,” a futuristic “Little Red Riding Hood” complete with talking rabid animals and giant clams (why?), and “The Woodcutter’s Wife,” which applies the rather cliché wife/witch interpretation to the story of Hansel and Gretel. Rounding off the collection are “A Taste for Beauty,” which really adds nothing of substance to the character of Snow White’s stepmother, and “The Prince,” in which Cinderella’s beau becomes a guilty guy with a foot fetish.

These stories are more like back stories or alternate viewings of the traditional stories than straightforward retellings, and that kept things interesting even in the tales I didn’t particularly like, because I could rarely tell at the beginning which fairy tale was getting a sad or horrific twist this time. In general, Galloway’s prose is very good, sometimes mirroring the didactic style of her sources and sometimes reveling in the beauty of a scent or flavor, but occasionally I would come across a strangely phrased sentence or word that did not fit its setting.

If you are an adult or teenager who enjoys horror stories and fairy tales, this collection will probably be your dream come true. For those, like me, who are sensitive and have a low tolerance for gore and scares, it is probably worth a library check-out (or two, if you fall in love with one particular story), but not much more. show less

Emily and Anne are the most well-known of L.M. Montgomery's heroines, and among fans there is disagreement over which is the better character.

I am torn. Emily's character is less fanciful in some ways than Anne's character, but also less grounded. She has her head in the clouds and is oblivious, it seems, to many things that Anne takes to heart.

Emily's story seems darker overall than Anne's, which makes the stories hard to compare. Emily's story succeeds by its own merit, though, and doesn't show more pale by comparison to Montgomery's other heroines. show less

Remarkable and heart-warming stories and photographs from grown-up Canadian childrenof WWII, reminding us of the poverty and tribulations of those days, during which children could still find some fun and mateship.

a psychologically dark but engaging re-visioning of the old standard folk-tales, offering the perspectives of witches and wolves and ogres, oh my!