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Product Description
The fairy tale lives again in these forty new stories by some of the biggest names in contemporary fiction
Neil Gaiman, Michael Cunningham, Aimee Bender, Kelly Link, Lydia Millet, and more than thirty other extraordinary writers celebrate fairy tales in this thrilling volume-the ultimate literary costume party.
Spinning houses and talking birds. Whispered secrets and borrowed hope. Here are new stories sewn from old skins, gathered from around the world by visionary editor Kate Bernheimer and inspired by everything from Hans Christian Andersen's ''The Snow Queen'' and ''The Little Match Girl'' to Charles Perrault's ''Bluebeard'' and ''Cinderella'' to the Brothers Grimm's ''Hansel and Gretel'' and ''Rumpelstiltskin'' to fairy tales by Goethe and Calvino.
Fairy tales are our oldest literary tradition, and yet they chart the imaginative frontiers of the twenty-first century as powerfully as they evoke our earliest encounters with literature. This exhilarating collection restores their place in the literary canon.
''Spooky, shocking, and surreal narrative tricks and treats [in] forty spanking- new stories inspired by classic folktales from around the world are showcased in [this] lavish anthology.'' -Elle
''The shiveringly titled My Mother She Killed Me, My Father He Ate Me proves that the fairy tale can still mutate into new, chilling, often humorous forms... There are many surprising plums in this pie... A fine example...is Aimee Bender's 'The Color Master.'...Kevin Brockmeier's 'A Day in the Life of Half of Rumpelstiltskin'' is a grotesque, witty, and melancholy guess into what life must be like for the Rumpelstiltskin... The best story here is an old one by John Updike... Another triumph of realism is Francine Prose's 'Hansel and Gretel.'... Chris Adrian's retelling of the Irish story 'Teague O'Kane and the Corpse' is a gruesome romp. Karen Joy Fowler's 'Halfway People' is eerie and stirring. Jim Shepard's 'Pleasure Boating in Lituya Bay' is challengingly complex. And the haunting 'First Day of Snow' by Naoko Awa is a fairy tale that makes you feel like a child again.'' -The Boston Globe
''The fairy tale is not dead. This wonderful collection brings together some of our best contemporary writers and some of our most beloved (and even feared) old stories. Rumplestiltskin, Bluebeard, the Earl-King, Hansel and Gretel, Snow White-all come alive again in vivid and colloquial prose. This is a book of brilliant dreams and dazzling nightmares: perfect fare for imaginative readers of any age.'' -Seth Lerer, author of Children's Literature: A Reader's History from Aesop to Harry Potter and dean of arts and humanities at the University of California, San Diego
''I cannot remember a time I had more fun reading a book! Many of these contemporary tales rival the originals in creepiness, joy, and impact.'' - Darcey Steinke, author of Easter Everywhere
''Let's open the door to the green room and peek to see who is waiting. A bevy of beauties . . . an evanescence of sprites . . . an abundance of adversaries . . . a passel of princes . . . Maybe we should have brought that bubbly; but there's something being served here more deeply inebriating than champagne. Hush.'' -Gregory Maguire, from the Foreword
Neil Gaiman, Michael Cunningham, Aimee Bender, Kelly Link, Lydia Millet, and more than thirty other extraordinary writers celebrate fairy tales in this thrilling volume-the ultimate literary costume party.
Spinning houses and talking birds. Whispered secrets and borrowed hope. Here are new stories sewn from old skins, gathered from around the world by visionary editor Kate Bernheimer and inspired by everything from Hans Christian Andersen's ''The Snow Queen'' and ''The Little Match Girl'' to Charles Perrault's ''Bluebeard'' and ''Cinderella'' to the Brothers Grimm's ''Hansel and Gretel'' and ''Rumpelstiltskin'' to fairy tales by Goethe and Calvino.
Fairy tales are our oldest literary tradition, and yet they chart the imaginative frontiers of the twenty-first century as powerfully as they evoke our earliest encounters with literature. This exhilarating collection restores their place in the literary canon.
''Spooky, shocking, and surreal narrative tricks and treats [in] forty spanking- new stories inspired by classic folktales from around the world are showcased in [this] lavish anthology.'' -Elle
''The shiveringly titled My Mother She Killed Me, My Father He Ate Me proves that the fairy tale can still mutate into new, chilling, often humorous forms... There are many surprising plums in this pie... A fine example...is Aimee Bender's 'The Color Master.'...Kevin Brockmeier's 'A Day in the Life of Half of Rumpelstiltskin'' is a grotesque, witty, and melancholy guess into what life must be like for the Rumpelstiltskin... The best story here is an old one by John Updike... Another triumph of realism is Francine Prose's 'Hansel and Gretel.'... Chris Adrian's retelling of the Irish story 'Teague O'Kane and the Corpse' is a gruesome romp. Karen Joy Fowler's 'Halfway People' is eerie and stirring. Jim Shepard's 'Pleasure Boating in Lituya Bay' is challengingly complex. And the haunting 'First Day of Snow' by Naoko Awa is a fairy tale that makes you feel like a child again.'' -The Boston Globe
''The fairy tale is not dead. This wonderful collection brings together some of our best contemporary writers and some of our most beloved (and even feared) old stories. Rumplestiltskin, Bluebeard, the Earl-King, Hansel and Gretel, Snow White-all come alive again in vivid and colloquial prose. This is a book of brilliant dreams and dazzling nightmares: perfect fare for imaginative readers of any age.'' -Seth Lerer, author of Children's Literature: A Reader's History from Aesop to Harry Potter and dean of arts and humanities at the University of California, San Diego
''I cannot remember a time I had more fun reading a book! Many of these contemporary tales rival the originals in creepiness, joy, and impact.'' - Darcey Steinke, author of Easter Everywhere
''Let's open the door to the green room and peek to see who is waiting. A bevy of beauties . . . an evanescence of sprites . . . an abundance of adversaries . . . a passel of princes . . . Maybe we should have brought that bubbly; but there's something being served here more deeply inebriating than champagne. Hush.'' -Gregory Maguire, from the Foreword
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
4 of 5 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
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, 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
These are just a few of a truly impressive collection, I would recommend it to anyone with even only a passing interest in fairytales
-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
These are just a few of a truly impressive collection, I would recommend it to anyone with even only a passing interest in fairytales
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
20 reviews
27 of 28 people found the following review helpful
A Must-Have
19 Nov 2010
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
I'd been eagerly awaiting this book's publication for months, and my expectations have been greatly exceeded. These are fairy tales for grown-ups...or, I should say grown-up children. The authors and stories are diverse; there is no consistent literary style. As the editor writes: "The goal was to bring together a variety of writers...whose work had suggested 'fairy tales' to me."
Here are the writers and the fairy tales each used as inspiration:
Joy Williams, Baba Yaga
Jonathon Keats, The Snow Maiden
Ludmilla Petrushevskaya, Ivan Tsaevich
Alissa Nutting, The Juniper Tree
Francine Pose, Hansel and Gretel
Kevin Brockmeie, Rumpelstiltskin
Neil LaBute, Rumpelstilstskin
Shelley Jackson, The Six Swans
Joyelle McSweeney, The Bremen Town Musicians
Lydia Millet, Snow White and Rose Red
Saah Shun-Lien Bynum, The Erlking
Brian Evenson, Dapplegrim
Michael Cunningham, The Wild Swans
Kaen Joy Fowler, The Wild Swans
Rikki Ducornet, The Little Match Gil
Timothy Schaffert, The Little Mermaid
Katherine Vaz, The Little Mermaid
Karen Bennan, The Snow Queen
Lucy Corin, The Tinder Box
Ilya Kaminsky, The Teapot
Michael Martone, Jack and the Beanstalk
Kelly Link, Catskin
Chris Adrian, Teague O'Kane and the Corpse
Jim Shepard, Jump Into My Sack
Kathryn Davis, Body Without Soul
Kellie Wells, The Story of Grandmother
Sabrina Orah Mark, The Young Slave
Aimee Bender, Donkeyskin
Marjorie Sandor, The White Cat
Joyce Carol Oates, Bluebeard
John Updike, Bluebead
Rabih Alameddine, Sleeping Beauty
Stacy Richter, Cinderella
Neil Gaiman, The Odyssey
Francesca Lia Block, Cupid and Psyche
Lily Hoang, The Story of the Mosquito
Noako Awa, A Kamikakushi Tale
Hiomi Ito, Sansho the Steward
Michael Mejia, Tales from Jalisco
Kim Addonizio, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs
Kate Bernheimer, The Oval Portrait
Don't expect the stories to stick too closely to the source material. But do expect to find some new favorite writers.
If I could have bought only one book this year, it would be collection.
Here are the writers and the fairy tales each used as inspiration:
Joy Williams, Baba Yaga
Jonathon Keats, The Snow Maiden
Ludmilla Petrushevskaya, Ivan Tsaevich
Alissa Nutting, The Juniper Tree
Francine Pose, Hansel and Gretel
Kevin Brockmeie, Rumpelstiltskin
Neil LaBute, Rumpelstilstskin
Shelley Jackson, The Six Swans
Joyelle McSweeney, The Bremen Town Musicians
Lydia Millet, Snow White and Rose Red
Saah Shun-Lien Bynum, The Erlking
Brian Evenson, Dapplegrim
Michael Cunningham, The Wild Swans
Kaen Joy Fowler, The Wild Swans
Rikki Ducornet, The Little Match Gil
Timothy Schaffert, The Little Mermaid
Katherine Vaz, The Little Mermaid
Karen Bennan, The Snow Queen
Lucy Corin, The Tinder Box
Ilya Kaminsky, The Teapot
Michael Martone, Jack and the Beanstalk
Kelly Link, Catskin
Chris Adrian, Teague O'Kane and the Corpse
Jim Shepard, Jump Into My Sack
Kathryn Davis, Body Without Soul
Kellie Wells, The Story of Grandmother
Sabrina Orah Mark, The Young Slave
Aimee Bender, Donkeyskin
Marjorie Sandor, The White Cat
Joyce Carol Oates, Bluebeard
John Updike, Bluebead
Rabih Alameddine, Sleeping Beauty
Stacy Richter, Cinderella
Neil Gaiman, The Odyssey
Francesca Lia Block, Cupid and Psyche
Lily Hoang, The Story of the Mosquito
Noako Awa, A Kamikakushi Tale
Hiomi Ito, Sansho the Steward
Michael Mejia, Tales from Jalisco
Kim Addonizio, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs
Kate Bernheimer, The Oval Portrait
Don't expect the stories to stick too closely to the source material. But do expect to find some new favorite writers.
If I could have bought only one book this year, it would be collection.
11 of 11 people found the following review helpful
Strange as the title and enchanting
18 Feb 2011
Format:Paperback
My Mother She Killed Me, My Father He Ate Me: Forty New Fairy Tales Edited by Kate Bernheimer is the book I bought myself for Christmas. You could probably tell by now that I am enchanted with fairy tale retellings and this volume is a treasure chest of the fantastic and strange, vaguely familiar stories from childhood remade. Not to mention that title - which would have made me pick up this book no matter what it was about. Lucky for me what lay inside was individually as unique as the title and accompanied with a short explanation of how they came to be written by each author.
My favorite was "Catskin," by Kelly Link, who states that although she borrowed some elements from Donkeyskin and Rapunzel, she wanted to invent her "own fairy tale" about inhabiting a skin, literally and figuratively. There are orphans, a powerful witch, and many, many cats.
"Since witches cannot have children in the usual way---their wombs are full of straw or bricks or stones, and when they give birth, they give birth to rabbits, kittens, tadpoles, houses, silk dresses,...even witches wish to be mothers---the witch had acquired her children by other nmeans: she had stolen or bought them....One girl she had grown like a cyst, upon her thigh. Other children she had made out of things in her garden, or bits of trash that the cats brought her: aluminum foil with strings of chicken fat still crusted to it, broken television sets, cardboard boxes that the neighbors had thrown out."
Another favorite is "The Mermaid in the Tree" by Timothy Schaffert, the first story I read, which was in the middle of the book. Flipping through the table of contents, the title and the incongruous image it conjured beckoned to me. A version of The Little Mermaid, the story is told through the woman the prince marries instead of the mermaid. Set in a world where mermaids are common and treated no better than laboratory animals, this one was easily the most haunting of the stories I read.
"Many mermaids washed up each year on the shore of Mudpuddle Beach, the ocean air too thick for them to breathe, slowly choking them as if they were swallowing, inch by inch, a magician's endless rope of handkerchiefs...often before they were even spotted by a fisherman or a yacht party, before they'd reach the sand castles abandoned on the beach, they'd breathe their last...."
The story with the most memorable first line is "Hansel and Gretel" by Francine Prose: "Tacked to the wall of the barn that served as Lucia de Medici's studio were 144 photographs of the artist having sex with her cat."
While there are multiple variations of the same fairy tales like The Little Mermaid, Rapunzel, Bluebeard, and Rumpelstilskin, I found that quite a few of the authors were surprisingly fixated on The Wild Swans: in particular, the youngest brother in the original fairy tale who does not quite fully transform back into a human, but instead is left with one swan wing.
I was introduced to some not so well known fairy tales like The Erlking, The Snow Maiden, as well as some from Mexico, Italy, and Japan.
Some stories deviated so far from the original in style and tone that they didn't quite work for me. Too stylized, too literary, and not enough magic.
Overall, however, I was delighted with this new addition to my fairy tale collection, which auspiciously enough, is dedicated to Angela Carter.
Oh, and the title comes from Alissa Nutting's retelling of The Juniper Tree, "The Brother and the Bird," and yes, it does describe exactly what happens in the plot.
My favorite was "Catskin," by Kelly Link, who states that although she borrowed some elements from Donkeyskin and Rapunzel, she wanted to invent her "own fairy tale" about inhabiting a skin, literally and figuratively. There are orphans, a powerful witch, and many, many cats.
"Since witches cannot have children in the usual way---their wombs are full of straw or bricks or stones, and when they give birth, they give birth to rabbits, kittens, tadpoles, houses, silk dresses,...even witches wish to be mothers---the witch had acquired her children by other nmeans: she had stolen or bought them....One girl she had grown like a cyst, upon her thigh. Other children she had made out of things in her garden, or bits of trash that the cats brought her: aluminum foil with strings of chicken fat still crusted to it, broken television sets, cardboard boxes that the neighbors had thrown out."
Another favorite is "The Mermaid in the Tree" by Timothy Schaffert, the first story I read, which was in the middle of the book. Flipping through the table of contents, the title and the incongruous image it conjured beckoned to me. A version of The Little Mermaid, the story is told through the woman the prince marries instead of the mermaid. Set in a world where mermaids are common and treated no better than laboratory animals, this one was easily the most haunting of the stories I read.
"Many mermaids washed up each year on the shore of Mudpuddle Beach, the ocean air too thick for them to breathe, slowly choking them as if they were swallowing, inch by inch, a magician's endless rope of handkerchiefs...often before they were even spotted by a fisherman or a yacht party, before they'd reach the sand castles abandoned on the beach, they'd breathe their last...."
The story with the most memorable first line is "Hansel and Gretel" by Francine Prose: "Tacked to the wall of the barn that served as Lucia de Medici's studio were 144 photographs of the artist having sex with her cat."
While there are multiple variations of the same fairy tales like The Little Mermaid, Rapunzel, Bluebeard, and Rumpelstilskin, I found that quite a few of the authors were surprisingly fixated on The Wild Swans: in particular, the youngest brother in the original fairy tale who does not quite fully transform back into a human, but instead is left with one swan wing.
I was introduced to some not so well known fairy tales like The Erlking, The Snow Maiden, as well as some from Mexico, Italy, and Japan.
Some stories deviated so far from the original in style and tone that they didn't quite work for me. Too stylized, too literary, and not enough magic.
Overall, however, I was delighted with this new addition to my fairy tale collection, which auspiciously enough, is dedicated to Angela Carter.
Oh, and the title comes from Alissa Nutting's retelling of The Juniper Tree, "The Brother and the Bird," and yes, it does describe exactly what happens in the plot.
10 of 10 people found the following review helpful
Delightfully Dark
13 Feb 2011
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
If you think you're a fan of fairy tales but all you know are the watered-down, Disneyfied versions, steer clear of this book. These are real fairy tales, not magical stories with happy endings to read to your kids at bedtime. They don't flinch away from cannibalism, bestiality, incest, abuse, insanity, death, and general deviance. These modern tales don't stick very closely to the specific stories that inspired them but they DO honor the spirit of them and of fairy tales in general. I LOVE updated/modern/fractured fairy tales and I read them often but most of the time I find one or two good stories amidst a bunch of weak, sugary stuff. This is the first collection I've ever found that didn't disappoint.
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