Kim Addonizio is the first writer featured, with a story called ‘Ever After’. Though it finds its roots in Snow White and the Seven Dwarves, ‘Ever After’ challenges the reader’s expectations. These dwarves are modern men in a modern city with modern habits - drinking, drug-taking, and conflicting personalities. They live together because one of them found an old book with a story that seemed to predict the arrival of a woman. Though the reader might identify her as Snow White, she takes on a more divine role in this story - as the goddess. These men who wait for her believe that she will change their lives in some way, and some entertain romantic notions which anyone who has actually read the story will know does not occur. The Prince is not a dwarf. Snow White chooses the Prince, and the dwarves who have only the fragments of a book, do not know the real ending. Working in a Wizard of Oz themed restaurant where they appear as munchkins, their diminutive form makes them a tourist attraction and undermines them as men. The story of their hopeless wait for transformation reflects to some extent religious ideology, and indeed there’s a comic image of the Virgin Mary at one point. This is a story though that seems to promise no happy ending. Just a world in which there is nothing left to wish for. ‘Ever After’ is one of the best works in this issue of Fairy Tale Review.

The four short tales by Joshua Beckman and Matthew Rohrer that follow did not work for me as well. They are very well written, and there’s a cryptic quality to them. In some respects they resemble poetry or prose poetry and display the wider remit of the publication.

Aimee Bender’s story ‘Appleless’ is a lush but ultimately dark piece. It starts with juicy mouth watering descriptions of apples, but leads to the characters apparently assaulting a passing woman. The assault, clearly sexual, is told in the same sensual way which makes it all the more disturbing. Meanwhile apples drop from the trees, to fall on the ground unnoticed. The woman leaves afterwards and is never seen again, though they wait for her to return. The story could in some way be said to link to the Garden of Eden myth, where the consumption of a fruit led to a fall from innocence. But the characters here don’t seem to realise the implications of their actions, even as the trees turn bare and the snow seems on its way. This also brings to mind the Persephone story and its seasonal nature.

Stacey Richter’s ‘A Case Study of Emergency Room Procedure and Risk-Management by Hospital Staff Members in the Urban Facility’ is an amusing and extremely well written story told like a report of a patient’s admission to a hospital. The patient is called Princess, and she talks of a Prince who abducted her, and who appears to have had her working at creating Crystal (methaphetamine). The drug plot, and the patient’s ability to get the staff to sample her product provide a darkly funny thread. This is one of the strongest pieces in Fairy Tale Review.

Mary Caponegro’s ‘Carrion Comfort’ sees a couple lying in a bedroom where something appears in their skylight. The woman in particular seems disturbed by it. The dark patch is a bird, a vulture we learn. This story has a particularly dark ending, but this is preceded by some striking imagery. There’s a beautiful and poetic simplicity to this story.

Similarly Marjorie Sandor’s ‘The White Cat’ is a beautifully written and meditative story that ends on a memorable note. Marina Warner’s ‘Rapture: A Girl Story for Kiki Smith’ interweaves the Persephone myth with a 1950s account of a young girl’s awakening to the darker possibilities in the world. The Persephones of this story are also the missing girls in the news. Norman Lock’s ‘Thirteen Tales’ is a shorter piece containing thirteen dark stories as brief as a simple sentence in some cases. And yet even with the briefest, there’s a sense of something greater than the few words, a larger tale that lies behind what’s told.

The poetry in FTR is also of high quality: from Julie Choffel’s ‘Rapenzelus Goldilocksii’ lyrical and wonderfully juxtaposed images and words, to Monica Fambrough’s slightly menacing ‘Girls Will Be Girl Scouts’; while the two poems by Sarah Hannah are rooted more in family and roots. Brent Hendricks’ ‘Hansel’ sees memories dropped in place of breadcrumbs, which leads to a succession of wonderfully poetic images ending on a transcendent note that to me represented a trail of images through life to death. Sarah Veglahn’s two poems both show an exquisitely pared down lyricism, particularly in the first work.

Donna Tartt’s writes on Barrie and Stevenson, which is personalised through her powerful love for her great grandmother whose nursery talk was delivered in a Scots accent learned from her own Scottish grandparents. Tartt weaves her childhood and family around the writings of JM Barrie and Robert Louis Stevenson so that the characters in ‘Peter Pan’ and ‘Treasure Island’ and ‘Kidnapped’ seem to become a part of her upbringing. Writing about Barrie’s novel, and her grandmother, Tartt says:

I suppose in the end Peter Pan was such an important book to us both because it is ultimately such a dark book, about change, loss, aging, mortality, death: the very questions that hung so heavy between us. She was in her eighties; our days together were short and we knew it, which was why our every goodbye on the corner of Levee Street held within it the vertiginous terror of permanent separation.

In addition to these things, there’s artwork from Kiki Smith, and a transcript of a panel discussion between FTR editor Kate Bernheimer, Francine Prose, Kiki Smith, Wendy Weitman, and Jack Zipes on Retelling Little Red et al: Fairy Tales in Art and Literature. The Blue issue ends on a editorial piece and author bios.

Fairy Tale Review is a high quality, beautifully put together book that anyone interested in fairy tales, folklore, and mythology ought to look up. Prospective readers should check out the website here.

© 2006 Laura Hird All rights reserved.