Review: Princess Bride

The Princess Bride by William Goldman

I can’t imagine anyone who hasn’t seen the movie; it’s one of our family’s iconic texts. So rather than a normal book review, here I’ll concentrate on book/movie contrasts. First, I started this book once, many years ago, and was supremely bored by it. I put it on a shelf, but didn’t get rid of it. Recently, I decided to cull my bookshelves and rather than just dumping it, I decided to give it one more shot.

I think what bored me the first time was the prologue. The movie’s frame (sick little boy being read to by grandpa) is introduced  by a lengthy and sort of whiny prologue in which the narrator (author?) relates how he’s contemplating adultery  in L.A. but instead returns home to his indifferent wife and spoiled son. He remembers the best book in the world which his father read to him, and determines to fetch it for his son. It turns out to be really boring in parts, so he revises it to just have the good parts so his son will enjoy it more.  (I know, you’re bored just by my relating this much. Imagine 20 pages of it).

Once I got to the story part, it mirrors the movie very closely, down to the dialogue. It does have little bits that aren’t in the movie, though, and of course, it was great fun to find them and imagine them as acted by our old friends. (In terms of casting, the movie nailed it, except for Prince Humperdinck.) When you love a movie this much, it’s a joy to add on to the lore. And don’t feel guilty for skipping the prologue. 5/5*

Review: Snow Child

Author: Eowyn Ivey

Title: Snow Child

Description: After the stillbirth of their child, Jack and Mabel start over in Alaska, both grieving over destroyed dreams and the implacability of aging. One day, though, they build a child from snow, and the next day, a live child appears near their cabin. Afraid to push too hard, but desperate for someone to love, they slowly come to know Faina, the mysterious girl who leaves every year when the snow melts.

Review source: I won this book from FridayReads.

Plot: Mabel believes that Faina is supernatural; in her childhood she had a book of folklore that told the story of such a Snow Girl who would die if she became too warm. Jack finds out more about her background, but nothing explains why she disappears every year along with the snow.

Characters: Jack and Mabel are characters who the reader really believes in. The secondary characters (the neighbor family who befriend them) are also fine. Faina, though, is impossible to grasp—probably by design.

Writing style: Both Jack’s and Mable’s points of view are featured. Ivey is an Alaskan, and she does have a wonderful sense of place in this novel (though not one I could warm up to, ha ha).

Audience: Literary fiction. Those who like retellings of fairy tales should give it a try.

Wrap-up: This wasn’t a particularly captivating read for me, though I did want to know how it would turn it out. 3/5*

Review: Modern Grimmoire

Title: Modern Grimmoire

Description: This is a collection of fairy tale-inspired stories, poems, and art.  

Review source: LibraryThing Early Reviewers

Writing style: This is an anthology, so each author has a little different approach, but for the most part the authors do capture that fairy tale style of everything being extreme and anything happening. The publisher is a non-profit, and the book is beautifully constructed (and the art was juried along with the stories).

Audience: It’s fantasy short stories. Those people who enjoy fairy tale retellings know who they are. (To clarify, some of these are new takes on old fairy tales, while others are totally new stories written in fairy tale style).

Wrap-up: I’m one of those people who does enjoy fairy tale retellings, so I was looking forward to this book. Those of you who read this blog know that I tend to not love collections, because I like a sustained voice/narrative. So there’s that. The contributors to this collection tend to be MFA students, some creative writing instructors, and so on. There are no really big names. And frankly, the big names are usually big for a reason. So I love fairy tales by Neil Gaiman, Tanith Lee, Robin McKinley, etc. These are a notch below that, but a good effort. 3/5*

My Favorite Reads: Books Based on Fairy Tales

Something I haven’t done for a while: a list post.

I love fairy tales, and fiction based on fairy tales in some of my favorite. Here are some of my five star reads that are at home in the world of fairy tales.  These are in no particular order; all of them have five stars from me.

The Door in the Hedge by Robin McKinley. Robin McKinley is probably my favorite writer who keeps coming back to the fairy tale genre. She’s very well known for her takes (yes, more than one) on the Beauty and the Beast story, so I picked this book of short stories which is less well known.

Shadow Castle by Marian Cockrell. This was my very favorite book as a kid. I’ve probably read it more than fifty times. Here’s the review from my most recent reading.

Stardust by Neil Gaiman. Maybe my single favorite fairy tale book. Some people were disappointed by the movie, but its soundtrack by Ilan Eshkeri is one of my very favorites.

The Rose and the Beast by Francesca Lia Block. I reviewed this one a few months back, too.

Enchantment by Orson Scott Card. I was sort of surprised to come across this one by Orson Scott Card, but he makes nice use of the Russian setting to bring in the ultimate fairy tale baddie, Baba Yaga.

The Ladies of Grace Adieu and Other Stories by Susanna Clarke. I don’t count her better-known book Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell as a fairy tale, even though it is about fairy land. (I do love it better, too). But this book has short stories based on fairy tales and it still worth a read.

The Book of Lost Things by John Conolly. Sometimes the land of fairy tales is a scary and creepy place.

Book Review: Shadow Castle (Expanded ed.)

Author: Marian Cockrell

Title: Shadow Castle expanded ed.

Description (source): In the middle of a deep forest is an enchanted valley and a castle where only shadows live, shadows of kings and queens who have waited for hundreds of years for the spell cast upon them to be broken. One day, a girl named Lucy follows a little dog through a tunnel into the valley and meets the mysterious red-haired Michael, who takes her into the shadow world to meet Prince Mika and his mortal wife Gloria, their children and their children's children, and learn the magic that will lift the spell. This new expanded Author's Edition contains additional chapters never published before! (Amazon)

Review source: purchased

Plot: Some basic information: this was my favorite, favorite book when I was a child. I would read it at least once a year, sometimes more. I never knew anyone else who had even heard of the book or the author. As an adult, I’ve found that there’s a small group of us who love this book—apparently enough to produce a reissue, with two additional stories. So, the review is mostly about the two new stories, since it’s a given that the rest of the book is 5*.

Characters: One of the new stories is about Robin and Mika when Robin was a toddler. It gives a little more backstory to Robin’s interest in goblins, as he is abducted by them, and Mika has to go to the rescue.  The second new story is about a descendant of Meira and Julian, Princess Flame, and her recalcitrant genie, and a fire fairy we meet in the Robin/Mika story.  The first story is mostly action; the second is mostly romance, although the second story does introduce witches and genies, who have been absent from the book until now.

Writing style: There are some phrases in this book that are so familiar to me that when I read them, they just echo, because I’m repeating them as I read them. The new writing is similar, but of course, it’s new and not so well-known, so doesn’t have that same reverberation. Nonetheless, the new segments aren’t a let-down.

Audience: Me. Other than me, girls from the age of five on up (though the younger ones might have to have some help with the reading. If they can sound out Flumpdoria, they’re good). My son liked the book as well when he was a preteen, though he would never admit it.

Wrap-up: I think one reason I loved the book as a youngster was the beautiful illustrations. They are still there in this edition, for which I’m grateful. The pictures of Mika and Gloria at their wedding and Robin and Bluebell alone are worth the price of the book. I still have my old copy; now the new one sits next to it. 5/5*

Book Review: The Rose and the Beast

Author: Francesca Lia Block

Title: The Rose and the Beast: Fairy tales retold 

Description: This book is a selection of nine retellings of fairy tales, all set in contemporary  United States.

Review source: nope, this one I wanted and purchased on my own (I know, you didn’t think I did that…)

Plot: The short stories are not connected, other than stylistically and by the fact that they are fairy tales.

Characters: Block’s most memorable characters are her heroines. A book like this one really brings it home how victimized women were and are. Fairy tale has to be one of the most misogynistic, brutal genres around. It’s a wonder more children aren’t traumatized by them (though I have to admit that I was pretty traumatized for awhile as a youngster, worried about wolves getting in to my house).

Writing style: Just beautiful. Vivid imagery, unique metaphors. Normally when I think about someone updating folk tales, it means that they are made less archetypal and at the same time less poetic, since modern life strikes me as prosaic and grungy. This book, though, defies that characterization.

Audience: me! I have to admit I do love retellings of fairy tales, and these are lovely. I think the book is characterized as YA, but there is some pretty grim (ha!) subject matter (though not graphic depictions of sex or violence).

Wrap-up: When I opened this book, I was disappointed, because the type is pretty large, and margins on all sides of the page were generous (to put it nicely). I wondered how such an insubstantial book could be fulfilling. By the time I finished it, though, I had completely forgotten that criticism. Writing as dense as Block’s doesn’t need dozens of words to convey its message, and as emotionally gripping as these stories are, too much more of each story would have been overkill. I give it a rare 5/5*