Title: How to Fracture a Fairy Tale
Author: Jane Yolen
Published: November 2018
Publisher: Tachyon Publishing
Readership: Young Adult
Genre: Fantasy
Rating: ★★★.5
I received a copy of How to Fracture a Fairy Tale from Netgalley in exchange for a fair and honest review. All thoughts and opinions are my own.
Fantasy icon Jane Yolen, adored by generations of readers of all ages, returns with this inspired collection of wholly-transformed fairy-tales, legends, and myths.
Yolen fractures the classics to reveal their crystalline secrets: a philosophical bridge who misses its troll; spinner of straw as a falsely-accused moneylender, the villainous wolf poorly adjusting to retirement. Each offering features an intimate new author note and poem, allowing readers to discover stories old, new, and beautifully refined for the complicated world in which we live.
I don’t know how it’s happened, but it feels like I’ve been reading a whole lot of different fairytale reimaginings and retellings lately, and it’s fantastic. I’ve not read any of Jane Yolen’s previous works (although my research since reading How to Fracture a Fairytale leads me to understand that she is quite a prolific writer) and this was a lovely introduction to her work through the familiar lens of fairytales.
This is, essentially, a collection of fractured fairytales – both the very famous ones and some of the more obscure tales – with a spin on them I haven’t seen before. It also served to highlight just how few traditional tales I actually know well, because I was constantly having to look up the original source material to understand the changes that we made.
I have to say, my favourite stories were the retellings of The Three Billy Goats Gruff (from the Bridge’s perspective) and the Cinderella retelling – which I would not have originally thought to be stories I’d gravitate towards but I ended up loving and am still thinking about them now.
If you enjoy fairytale retellings, this is definitely worth a look when it’s released in November 2018.
Noveltea Corner 