- Joyce Carol Oates

Libraire Romantique by Eugene Grasset

Tender Morsels by Margo Lanagan

Tender Morsels is at once painful and tantalizing. It challenged me as a reader in ways I haven’t been, in a very long time. It is a bitter tale, one that takes time with its telling because you are expected to split and grow like the main character, where you nurture an understanding, a difficult knowledge, that is at once tender, raw, and true.

Margo Lanagan’s book is far more than a simple retelling of the Snow White and Rose Red fairy tale. It takes the basic arc of the story and rips out the seams, sewing a completely fresh take on that classic fable.

The story starts off with Liga, who endures an unspeakable trauma at the hands of her father, and again by a gang of local boys. The lens in these moments is always held away from the scene so we develop our comprehension of the situation through Liga’s evasive and fragmented language, her speech even garbled at times. Through her fractured telling, we are able to piece together what horrors she is coming to terms with.

From all this terror comes some brightness: two babies. Even so, Liga attempts to end her life but magic intervenes and sends her to a parallel world where all the people who wished her ill, no longer exist, where money is never used, and alcohol is unknown. It is in this parallel safehouse of a world that Liga raises her two daughters, Branza and Urdda. Through raising them she seems to regain aspects of her own humanity, although the stronger sense of self she develops, the less the dream world she created for herself seems to be enough. As her daughters grow, they too become impatient with the safety and restraints of Liga’s world and after encounters with strange, foreign bears who wander at the edges of their world, they develop a desire to learn what lies beyond their boundaries.

For me, the relationship between the sisters was the lynchpin of this book. They are very different from each other, but Lanagan has managed to weave a delicate balance between the two that brought to mind my own strong relationship with my sister. Branza and Urdda are constantly challenging each other, pushing slightly at one another’s borders as they seek the physical edges of the world that binds them to their mother’s fears of reality.

One of the provocative elements of this book were the many different points-of-view through which the story is told. I found myself impatient when the focus was taken away from Liga and her daughters. Although this took some adjustment at first, I grew to appreciate the sensitivity that Lanagan took in crafting this narrative and how she let the poetics of language connect the themes, coaxing forth a complex meaning from the story.  The author is an incredible wordsmith, twisting the tongue in all directions, changing the dialect from character to character.

She also has the frustrating, yet uncommon fortitude, as a writer to leave loose ends and not tie up each character’s story with a neat, little bow. In the moment, I agonized over this lack of knowledge, but then I realized it was Lanagan’s intent to leave the narrative flawed and open. I respect and admire her prudence as an author who helps her readers to push at their own limits.

KH

Cinderella by John Everett Millais

Undine by Pat Brennan

- H.P. Lovecraft

The White Queen by M. K. Čiurlionis

As soon as Wolf began to feel
That he would like a decent meal,
He went and knocked on Grandma’s door.
When Grandma opened it, she saw
The sharp white teeth, the horrid grin,
And Wolfie said, “May I come in?”
Poor Grandmamma was terrified,
“He’s going to eat me up!” she cried.
And she was absolutely right.
He ate her up in one big bite.
But Grandmamma was small and tough,
And Wolfie wailed, “That’s not enough!
I haven’t yet begun to feel
That I have had a decent meal!”
He ran around the kitchen yelping,
“I’ve got to have a second helping!”

Then added with a frightful leer,
“I’m therefore going to wait right here
Till Little Miss Red Riding Hood
Comes home from walking in the wood.”

He quickly put on Grandma’s clothes,
(Of course he hadn’t eaten those).
He dressed himself in coat and hat.
He put on shoes, and after that,
He even brushed and curled his hair,
Then sat himself in Grandma’s chair.

In came the little girl in red.
She stopped. She stared. And then she said,
“What great big ears you have, Grandma.”
“All the better to hear you with,”
the Wolf replied.
“What great big eyes you have, Grandma.”
said Little Red Riding Hood.
“All the better to see you with,”
the Wolf replied.
He sat there watching her and smiled.
He thought, I’m going to eat this child.
Compared with her old Grandmamma,
She’s going to taste like caviar.

Then Little Red Riding Hood said, “
But Grandma, what a lovely great big
furry coat you have on.”

“That’s wrong!” cried Wolf.
“Have you forgot
To tell me what BIG TEETH I’ve got?
Ah well, no matter what you say,
I’m going to eat you anyway.”

The small girl smiles. One eyelid flickers.
She whips a pistol from her knickers.
She aims it at the creature’s head,
And bang bang bang, she shoots him dead.

A few weeks later, in the wood,
I came across Miss Riding Hood.
But what a change! No cloak of red,
No silly hood upon her head.
She said, “Hello, and do please note
My lovely furry wolfskin coat.”

In to the Woods by Little Red Arrow

Sympathy of Wolves by Louise Robinson

White Bear King Valemon by Theodor Kittelsen

Bodleian Library, Oxford University, England

When I think of the quintessential library, I inevitably think of the Bodleian Library at Oxford University. During my first college spring break I ventured to London with two close friends. We had many eye-opening experiences in and around the city itself, but the last day of our trip we decided to take a bus to the countryside and explore Oxford. I remember the quaint cobbled lanes and alleyways that ran in to the countryside, the rolling hills, the pub known as the Eagle and the Child where C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien used to meet up after teaching classes, to conduct their Inklings meetings, but most of all I recall the layer of magic that permeated the entire city. We wandered freely in and out of the gates of the schools, meandering in to sleepy courtyards and imagining all the different people that had passed through, and marked history over the last thousand years. It was truly bewitching.

Then of course there was the Bodleian. I was instantly enchanted by its grandeur, its secrets buried deep within its archives and its perfectly timeless reading room. This library’s collection is second in size only to the British Library. In fact the Bodleian served as the unofficial Library of England until the British Library was formally established in 1753. In 1610, Thomas Bodley (a well-to-do diplomat and scholar) made an agreement with the Stationer’s Company in London to keep a copy of every book they printed in his eponymous library at Oxford. This long standing order has continued over the centuries. Before any student is granted access to this collection of marvels and bookish delights, she must agree to a formal declaration:

I hereby undertake not to remove from the Library, nor to mark, deface, or injure in any way, any volume, document or other object belonging to it or in its custody; not to bring into the Library, or kindle therein, any fire or flame, and not to smoke in the Library; and I promise to obey all rules of the Library.

Part of the library might look familiar to you as it served as the location for the Hogwarts Library in the Harry Potter films. It also played an integral role in A Discovery of Witches, as Diana’s encounter with a mysterious manuscript in the Bodleian sets off a chain of events that lead her on the literary adventure of a lifetime. And while I personally haven’t run in to any demons, vampires, or witches off the page (that I’m aware of), my time in Oxford certainly left an imprint on me.

KH

Svipdag Transformed by John Bauer

- Carl Sagan

Children of the Forest by Elsa Beskow

Ambush from The Princess and the Goblin by Nick Harris

Snow in Summer by Mia Araujo

Departure by Dean Kuhta

Alice and the Gryphon by Cory Godbey

- Jill Paton Walsh

Grimm's Fairy Tales by Gustaf Tenggren

Mary Shelley

Mary Shelley (1797-1851) was a trailblazer, a fire cracker, and a brilliant writer. The daughter of a suffragette (her mother published one of the earliest books promoting the equal treatment of women and men) and a philosopher, she left her own mark on the world at the bright, young age of 19, when she published The Modern Prometheus, more commonly known as Frankenstein.

A free spirit, Mary ran away from home at the tender age of 16, with one of her father’s political followers, a renowned liberal, rogue, and all-around forward thinker, not to mention a luminary poet, Percy Shelley. In him, she found a genuine partner, who respected her and inspired her creatively, who she wrote and read collaboratively with until he died. She even participated in one of the greatest ‘boys clubs’ of her day, swapping ideas and advice with Lord Byron and his friends at his Swiss Villa. It was there that she created the story of Frankenstein in a bid to come up with a remarkable scary story. Of that life-changing, elusive dream of a summer, Mary said:

“It was the moment when I first stepped out from childhood in to life.”

She was a woman who faced trauma and pain, time and again, suffering multiple miscarriages and rejection from society for her modern sensibilities, but instead of succumbing to these pressures, she used them to drive her writing forward in to uncharted territory. Frankenstein is even said to be a birth myth (you’ll never read it as a straightforward monster tale again), through which Shelley came to terms with her guilt for causing her mother’s demise (she died in childbirth) as well as her own failings as a parent. Mary went on to write many other short stories, novels and plays including: Matilda, Valpera, The Last Man and Lodore, among others, each underpinned with a sense of wit and uncanny depth.

Mary Shelley reminds me of one of Kristin Cashore’s contemporary, feminist heroines in Fire or Graceling, because she made choices in life where she followed her instincts in order to shape and challenge herself as a woman, and a writer, becoming a strong individual in her own right. She definitely deserves a closer look…

KH

Impossible Enchantment by Unknown

Red Riding Hood by Manuhell

- J.M. Barrie