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Available
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Collections
Publication
Penguin Books (2010), Epub, 608 pages
Description
The founder of the literary journal "Fairy Tale Review" collects stories inspired by classic fairy tales and written by such authors as Joyce Carol Oates, John Updike, Francine Prose, Kevin Brockmeier, and Shelley Jackson.
User reviews
LibraryThing member fyrefly98
Summary: My Mother She Killed Me, My Father He Ate Me is a collection of new, modern fairy tales for adults, primarily (although not exclusively) collected from authors who are not normally known for writing fairy tales or other fantasy. They take as their inspiration both classic stories from the
Review: Bernheimer states in her introduction that we all have an intuitive sense of what constitutes the basic elements of a fairy tale, and that we can identify such stories even when the specific details are unfamiliar to us, and even when there are no fairies involved. And while I think that's true, I think her definition of those "basic elements" and my definition aren't always in agreement. In my mind, fairy tales have both a rhythm to them and a focus on telling a good story that many of the pieces in this collection lacked.
In general, I was a little bit disappointed with this collection, and I think that the widespread lack of focus on telling a story was the reason why. This is part of the reason that I tend to read more young adult novels, and less "modern" or "literary" fiction: the emphasis in young adult novels is frequently on telling an interesting story, while I've found that in "adult" fiction, the story oftentimes takes a back seat to doing fancy things with the language, or making unconventional stylistic choices, or what have you. (These aren't absolute divisions by any means; there are plenty of YA novels with breathtaking use of language, and plenty of "adult" novels that tell a great story.) In any case, I was expecting a collection subtitled "Forty New Fairy Tales" to tell me forty good stories - made into "adult" fiction by making deeper or more complex plot and character choices, and by not shying away from some of the darker realities behind the magic - but still not stinting on the story part of the story. Quite a bit of what I got, however, were short pieces that may have used fairy tale tropes as a springboard, but which seemed so focused on the style rather than the story that they no longer had a proper fairy tale feeling to them.
That's not to say that I didn't enjoy much of the book. As a whole, the stories were generally well-written pieces of work, and I could see what the authors were trying to accomplish with most of the pieces. There were also more than a few stories that I really enjoyed on multiple levels. My two favorites are pretty representative of the range of styles and settings encompassed in this collection: "The Color Master" by Aimee Bender is set in a traditional fairy-tale kingdom, and involves a series of royal orders for dresses of increasingly unlikely hues; while Stacey Richter's "A Case Study of Emergency Room Procedure and Risk Management by Hospital Staff Members in the Urban Facility" is the formal report of an emergency room incident involving a meth addict who claims she's a princess. Neil Gaiman's "Orange" was also a standout, and a nice illustration of how you can use an unconventional style while still telling an interesting story (although how he got from his stated inspiration of The Odyssey to a tale of a girl whose sister became addicted to self-tanner, I may never understand.)
So, while it wasn't quite what I was expecting or hoping for, it wasn't a bad read, either. It's just... for a collection of modern fairy tales, I would have found it more satisfying if more of the authors had focused more on the "fairy tales" and less on the "modern". 3.5 out of 5 stars.
Recommendation: Although fairy tale and fantasy aficionados might be the most likely to pick this collection up based on its title or cover, I think that it's primarily geared towards readers of modern fiction who are normally reluctant to venture into the Fantasy section of the bookstore.
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likes of the Brothers Grimm or Hans Christian Anderson, as well as lesser-known fairy tales and myths from around the world. Some are retellings, some are reinterpretations, and some are continuations of what happens after the familiar part of the story. Some stories stick very close to their source material, while others take elements of the original tale and venture much further afield. Some are set in fairy-tale time, while others are set in the modern world, but all attempt to capture traditional fairy tales in a new and modern light.Review: Bernheimer states in her introduction that we all have an intuitive sense of what constitutes the basic elements of a fairy tale, and that we can identify such stories even when the specific details are unfamiliar to us, and even when there are no fairies involved. And while I think that's true, I think her definition of those "basic elements" and my definition aren't always in agreement. In my mind, fairy tales have both a rhythm to them and a focus on telling a good story that many of the pieces in this collection lacked.
In general, I was a little bit disappointed with this collection, and I think that the widespread lack of focus on telling a story was the reason why. This is part of the reason that I tend to read more young adult novels, and less "modern" or "literary" fiction: the emphasis in young adult novels is frequently on telling an interesting story, while I've found that in "adult" fiction, the story oftentimes takes a back seat to doing fancy things with the language, or making unconventional stylistic choices, or what have you. (These aren't absolute divisions by any means; there are plenty of YA novels with breathtaking use of language, and plenty of "adult" novels that tell a great story.) In any case, I was expecting a collection subtitled "Forty New Fairy Tales" to tell me forty good stories - made into "adult" fiction by making deeper or more complex plot and character choices, and by not shying away from some of the darker realities behind the magic - but still not stinting on the story part of the story. Quite a bit of what I got, however, were short pieces that may have used fairy tale tropes as a springboard, but which seemed so focused on the style rather than the story that they no longer had a proper fairy tale feeling to them.
That's not to say that I didn't enjoy much of the book. As a whole, the stories were generally well-written pieces of work, and I could see what the authors were trying to accomplish with most of the pieces. There were also more than a few stories that I really enjoyed on multiple levels. My two favorites are pretty representative of the range of styles and settings encompassed in this collection: "The Color Master" by Aimee Bender is set in a traditional fairy-tale kingdom, and involves a series of royal orders for dresses of increasingly unlikely hues; while Stacey Richter's "A Case Study of Emergency Room Procedure and Risk Management by Hospital Staff Members in the Urban Facility" is the formal report of an emergency room incident involving a meth addict who claims she's a princess. Neil Gaiman's "Orange" was also a standout, and a nice illustration of how you can use an unconventional style while still telling an interesting story (although how he got from his stated inspiration of The Odyssey to a tale of a girl whose sister became addicted to self-tanner, I may never understand.)
So, while it wasn't quite what I was expecting or hoping for, it wasn't a bad read, either. It's just... for a collection of modern fairy tales, I would have found it more satisfying if more of the authors had focused more on the "fairy tales" and less on the "modern". 3.5 out of 5 stars.
Recommendation: Although fairy tale and fantasy aficionados might be the most likely to pick this collection up based on its title or cover, I think that it's primarily geared towards readers of modern fiction who are normally reluctant to venture into the Fantasy section of the bookstore.
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LibraryThing member bragan
A collection of forty short stories inspired by a variety of fairy tales from around the world. Some are easily recognizable reworkings or retellings, many of them in modern settings. Others appear to bear little or no resemblance to their progenitors, at least not outside their authors' heads.
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Most are somewhere in-between, featuring a few familiar points of contact with the traditional tales. Almost all of them have at least a touch of the surreal, which seems appropriate enough for fairy tales, but a surprising number of them are more literary experiments than stories. For me, there was only one real standout in the anthology: Neil Gaiman's clever, delightful "Orange." Otherwise, my reaction to these stories ranged from, "Hey, I quite liked that!" to "What the hell did I just read?!" By about halfway through the book, I was thinking that, while I wished there were more of the former, the anthology as a whole did have an oddly compelling, more-than-the-sum-of-its-parts quality about it. By about two-thirds of the way through, though, I was mostly thinking that while one story that sucks the enchantment out of a fairy tale and turns it into a story about drug addiction or the marital problems of middle-class couples may seem creative and interesting, reading five or six of them close together just reminds me of why I used to think I didn't like "literary" writing. In the end, I'm not at all sorry I read it, but I do have to say that it's not quite what I was hoping for. Show Less
LibraryThing member RidgewayGirl
Dedicated to Angela Carter, My Mother She Killed Me, My Father He Ate Me is a collection of forty fairy tales written by an impressively wide array of authors, from Neil Gaiman and Jim Shepard to Aimee Bender and Ludmilla Petrushevskaya, and adapting, reimagining or loosely basing stories on
In any collection this diverse, some stories are amazing, a few fall flat and a handful are fantastically bizarre. It took me quite a while to read all forty tales, they not being the kind of thing to read one after another. I liked that the editor, Kate Bernheimer, chose several stories by new authors, some of whom have not yet written a full-length novel and others who are not well known. She also included several non-Western authors, who adapted stories from their own countries and made the collection a bit unexpected; without the easy handle of a familiar plot to anchor the reader they demanded a little more of me. My only complaint has to do with the book's organization; with the fairy tale each story is based on found only in the table of contents and information about each author stuck in the back, I was constantly flipping around before and after each story.
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everything from our most traditional fairy tales to mythology to fairy tales from Asia and Japan. Will it surprise you to find out that Joyce Carol Oates chose Bluebeard? Or that John Updike picked the same tale, but told it from Bluebeard's point of view and set it in modern Ireland? In any collection this diverse, some stories are amazing, a few fall flat and a handful are fantastically bizarre. It took me quite a while to read all forty tales, they not being the kind of thing to read one after another. I liked that the editor, Kate Bernheimer, chose several stories by new authors, some of whom have not yet written a full-length novel and others who are not well known. She also included several non-Western authors, who adapted stories from their own countries and made the collection a bit unexpected; without the easy handle of a familiar plot to anchor the reader they demanded a little more of me. My only complaint has to do with the book's organization; with the fairy tale each story is based on found only in the table of contents and information about each author stuck in the back, I was constantly flipping around before and after each story.
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LibraryThing member shabacus
I love fairy tales, and with names like Neil Gaiman and Gregory Maguire in the mix, I thought I couldn't go wrong.
And that was partially true. About a third of the stories in this collection have just that air of mystery and enchantment, that certain kind of dream logic that holds in fairy tales.
Another third were more fairy-tale-inspired. They were modern literary fiction with a fairy tale character or character dynamic at the core. These are the sorts of stories that are often accused of "having no plot." That's a charge from which I usually defend literary fiction, but I feel less inclined to do so here. The story shape of fairy tales is just so important to me--although that's what a fairy tale means to me, not necessarily to everyone.
And then there were the rest, perhaps less than a third. (You can adjust the fractions above to compensate.) These stories felt very experimental in nature. Maybe they were par for the course for these writers, none of whom I knew, but they felt absurdly pretentious in the context of this collection. It was almost as if they felt they needed to compensate for a childish theme by furnishing a more adult story.
This is a collection to which I will return for my favorites, but I will not be reading it from start to finish again.
And that was partially true. About a third of the stories in this collection have just that air of mystery and enchantment, that certain kind of dream logic that holds in fairy tales.
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"The Catskin" in particular stands out as a story that embodies the nature of the fairy tale, embracing both its whimsy and its darker side.Another third were more fairy-tale-inspired. They were modern literary fiction with a fairy tale character or character dynamic at the core. These are the sorts of stories that are often accused of "having no plot." That's a charge from which I usually defend literary fiction, but I feel less inclined to do so here. The story shape of fairy tales is just so important to me--although that's what a fairy tale means to me, not necessarily to everyone.
And then there were the rest, perhaps less than a third. (You can adjust the fractions above to compensate.) These stories felt very experimental in nature. Maybe they were par for the course for these writers, none of whom I knew, but they felt absurdly pretentious in the context of this collection. It was almost as if they felt they needed to compensate for a childish theme by furnishing a more adult story.
This is a collection to which I will return for my favorites, but I will not be reading it from start to finish again.
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LibraryThing member kmaziarz
Fairy tales are not just for children. In fact, in their earliest incarnations, fairy tales were often violent and graphic, and were far from the sparling, sanitized versions popularized in cartoons and picture books today. This collection of contemporary tales inspired by the motifs and themes of
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traditional fairy tales seeks to revitalize a literary genre that has often been relegated to the nursery. It mostly succeeds in doing so. Some of the tales are written in narrative styles so postmodern as to lose some of the visceral impact of their mythic content, but others speak to the shivery origins of the fairy tale effectively. Stand-outs in the collection include “The Color Master” by Aimee Bender; “Orange” by Neil Gaiman; and “Catskin” by Kelly Link. Show Less
LibraryThing member tairngire
The majority of these stories are intriguing and interesting remakes on Fairy Tales (especially for someone who grew up with this kind of Young Adult Fiction, Francesca Lia Block etc). I especially liked The Mermaid in the Tree retelling as a Gothic sort of horror, and the vagueness of most of the
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stories, which reflect the many different versions of the original tales. Unfortunately, as many as there are good ones, there are a few that are merely dull and plodding. Show Less
LibraryThing member Krumbs
Finally finished it, and my first impression was pretty much it. I liked maybe five of the stories. Not one I would pass around to friends; most authors are just too self-consciously literary and high-brow for their stories to be enjoyable (or understandable).
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I expected this to be
I took the collection with me to my parent's house and didn't bother packing it to bring it back with me. I'll probably pick it up to give it another chance when I visit again. Plus, I haven't read the Neil Gaiman story yet!
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I expected this to be
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dark and disturbing, but the first few stories just go beyond what I was expecting. It also has a bit too much of a thread of "aren't I literary and smart and just so awesome" from the authors. I'm not sure why, as I don't know who most of these people are, but they seem convinced that they're pretty great and it comes through clearly in some of the stories. I took the collection with me to my parent's house and didn't bother packing it to bring it back with me. I'll probably pick it up to give it another chance when I visit again. Plus, I haven't read the Neil Gaiman story yet!
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LibraryThing member weeksj10
I was a little disappointed with this book only because I was expecting something different, not because it was bad. I thought it was going to be a collection of new fairy tales in the theme of classic fairy tales. However, the stories where seemed to be abstract retellings of old fables, often
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transplanting a plot into modern setting with less magic. Despite not being what I was looking for the stories where very good and may actually appeal to people who wouldn't normally read fairy tales. Show Less
LibraryThing member jlparent
40 fairy tales, some are retellings, most are inspired by or different interpretations - lots of great authors contributed and each has a note about what their inspiration was, which I found interesting. If you like retellings, fairy tales, myth, or any of these authors, you might want to check it
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out. Show Less
LibraryThing member deadgirl
I felt like I was reading two books when I read this as I had to read up some of the original versions of the fairy tales I was not familiar with.
A lot of these retold stories are clever and funny. As always with collections, some stories were mind blowing while a few I didn't get or didn't like at
I picked up this books because it had my two favorite authors in it: Francesca Lia Block and Neil Gaiman. It was worth the read.
A lot of these retold stories are clever and funny. As always with collections, some stories were mind blowing while a few I didn't get or didn't like at
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all. I especially enjoyed the stories retold from another point of view or in reverse.I picked up this books because it had my two favorite authors in it: Francesca Lia Block and Neil Gaiman. It was worth the read.
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LibraryThing member beabatllori
Gah, I hate rating anthologies. How are you supposed to do that? Do you just begin at the top and start substracting half a star for every lame story you find? It seems unfair. So I'm giving this 5 stars because I absolutely love the idea and because there were a more than a few stories in it that
It was interesting that the ones I liked the most weren't always the ones inspired in tales I already knew (incidentally, how did I not know about Catskin? Its retelling is one of the best stories in the book, if only because it's the one that best brings back that dreamlike, suspended feeling of reading classic fairy tales).
Most of the The Wild Swans spinoffs were awesome, but not all of the Bluebeard references were. And I was only meh about both the Snow Queen and The Little Match Girl references, which sucked, seeing as those are probably my favoritest storiestest ever.
I didn't really care though, because half the fun of reading this book comes from working at reaching those conclusions. Tracing back the stories to their sources, pondering where exactly the twist is, carefully sampling the tone and whining at the result? That's what reading metafiction is all about.
Seriously though, there are far more great stories here than I dared to hope. And it also brought back a few tales I didn't even know I remembered, which was a nice bonus. Great fun.
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were great, either in concept or execution.It was interesting that the ones I liked the most weren't always the ones inspired in tales I already knew (incidentally, how did I not know about Catskin? Its retelling is one of the best stories in the book, if only because it's the one that best brings back that dreamlike, suspended feeling of reading classic fairy tales).
Most of the The Wild Swans spinoffs were awesome, but not all of the Bluebeard references were. And I was only meh about both the Snow Queen and The Little Match Girl references, which sucked, seeing as those are probably my favoritest storiestest ever.
I didn't really care though, because half the fun of reading this book comes from working at reaching those conclusions. Tracing back the stories to their sources, pondering where exactly the twist is, carefully sampling the tone and whining at the result? That's what reading metafiction is all about.
Seriously though, there are far more great stories here than I dared to hope. And it also brought back a few tales I didn't even know I remembered, which was a nice bonus. Great fun.
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LibraryThing member IsotropicJoseph
Like the bedtime stories of childhood, these new fairy tales transform the reader's world into something a little like allegory and a little like a fun house mirror. These tales are moths: owned by the dark realms of imagination even as they yearn for the pyrogenic light of reality. They flutter in
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the shadows where the conscious mind cannot see clearly. Show Less
LibraryThing member Rubbah
A brilliant anthology of brand new fairytales. As someone who has read nearly all the Windling/Datlow anthologies, I was thrilled to hear of the iminent release of 'My mother she killed me, my father he ate me', and Im gald to say i was not dissapointed. The collection spans Russia, America,
-The Snow Maiden, by Jonanthon Keats, a chilling tale about winter searching for a mortal love
-A day in the life of half od Rumplestiltskin by Kevin Brockmeier, an interesting look at what happened to the fairytale villain after he tore himself in two
-Catskin by kelly Link- a tale about a witch, the children she collects, cats and revenge
Teague O'Kane and the Corpse by Chris Adrian, creepy story that sent shivers up my spine, as Teague is charged with burying a dead body that keeps talking to him
The Colour Master by Aimee Bender, is I think my favourite in the collection, its about the seamstresses who made the dresses the colours of the sun, the moon and the sky for the unfortunate heroine of Perrault's Donkeyskin
The Story of the Mosquito by lily Hoang, about how the mosquito was created
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England, Germany, Italy, Norway, Denmark, France, Greece, Vietnam and japan, and includes retellings, mash ups of fairytales, and brand new ones, so you can see the kind of scope that this book deals with. However as a whole it works perfectly, transporting the reader to the realm of faery. As with all anthologies there are a couple of weaker stories, but these were very much in the minority, and if it wasn't for the fact that i was comparing them to the stories they were collected with, i may not have found them so weak. Some highlights for me include;-The Snow Maiden, by Jonanthon Keats, a chilling tale about winter searching for a mortal love
-A day in the life of half od Rumplestiltskin by Kevin Brockmeier, an interesting look at what happened to the fairytale villain after he tore himself in two
-Catskin by kelly Link- a tale about a witch, the children she collects, cats and revenge
Teague O'Kane and the Corpse by Chris Adrian, creepy story that sent shivers up my spine, as Teague is charged with burying a dead body that keeps talking to him
The Colour Master by Aimee Bender, is I think my favourite in the collection, its about the seamstresses who made the dresses the colours of the sun, the moon and the sky for the unfortunate heroine of Perrault's Donkeyskin
The Story of the Mosquito by lily Hoang, about how the mosquito was created
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LibraryThing member LaurieGienapp
Is there no rating less than 1?
LibraryThing member jnmegan
An eclectic collection of re-imagined tales by some well-known and respected authors, primarily hailing from the fantasy/science fiction section. As in most anthologies, there is variation in the quality of the stories-hence the three-star rating. Some were pretty experimental, while others more
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closely aligned themselves to the conventions of traditional fairy tales. Judging the degree of success is a bit subjective, so it would be recommended that a reader skim through the forty and select whichever ones seem to appeal to them the most. Bernheimer also released a second collection in 2013, this time geared toward re-telling of myths entitled: xo Orpheus: Fifty New Myths. Show Less
LibraryThing member LoriFox
I only read half of the book because I got bored with it. A few of the stories stood out (Gaiman's and a few others) but a lot of the stories weren't as good as the synopsis promised or seemed to end up in a different place than the author's stated intention.
LibraryThing member jennybeast
Again with the books I wanted to like and just couldn't get into. There are some gems of story in here, but it's pretty slow going to get to them. I found that most of the stories were either slavish retellings of original stories, or wild philosophical ramblings that were difficult to follow. In
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both instances, they were tedious in the extreme. The exceptions were tremendous, but were almost always from writers who don't forget that tale implies storytelling. Show Less
Awards
Shirley Jackson Award (Nominee — Anthology — 2010)
World Fantasy Award (Nominee — Anthology — 2011)
Language
Original publication date
2010
Physical description
608 p.; 5.51 inches
Local notes
More than thirty writers celebrate fairy tales in this collection of short stories.
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