This post was from a couple years ago, but blogger Dina over at
SFF Book Review has gathered quite a comprehensive (although not exhaustive)
list of Fairy Tale retellings. They're sorted by fairy tale, and the ones she's read include a brief review. I'm sure I'm not the only one who's found themselves overwhelmed by all the fairy tale books out there, but skeptical of quality! I find it helpful to read people's honest opinions (although, she thought Robin McKinley's "Beauty" was boring, so clearly we don't have exactly the same tastes...) but still, a great resource with titles I wasn't aware of!
Goodness, that's an impressive list! And that's only retellings, not sequels such as Jim C Hines's delightful Stepsister Scheme series. I agree with you about the McKinley book. I hadn't realised it inspired the Disney movie, but I think it rather sad that someone who saw the movie first could then be bored by such a wonderful book. Ah, well.
ReplyDeleteNo accounting for tastes, right? I try to read Amazon reviews before deciding which books to read, but even then, what do they really tell you? Books like "Twilight" get tons of 5 star reviews and "Jonathan Strange" gets 1 star from some people! For the record, I watched the Disney BATB first, and read McKinley's Beauty later, and I don't at all think it's a more boring version of the Disney! There are so many key differences, and the characters have so much more developed personalities. Disney inspired my childhood obsession with BATB, McKinley inspired my lifelong obsession
DeleteI myself, have been attempting to write novelizations of the fairy tales over the years. I based my versions on the older, darker variants of the stories, because I thought that the dark feel of the stories would make them more interesting. So yeah, the evil queen from Snow White is her actual mother, and not her birth mother, in my novelization. I actually gave a backstory to the queen where she didn't have a husband because she didn't want to have any children that could possibly grow to be more beautiful than her. Than, one day, she picks her finger, spills her blood on the snow, and makes a foolish wish. The wish causes her to magically give birth. She doesn't kill the child because she doesn't to be perceived as a murderer, which is why she tells a servant to do it instead when Snow White is seven. She tells the servant to tell nobody about the deed, but of course, he doesn't follow through with the murder. It's a very complex novel.
ReplyDeleteFor my novelization of Hansel and Grethel, I actually used an idea that my brother and I came up with when we were little kids. We always wondered whether or not the witch and the evil mother were the same character. I seriously doubt it now, but I thought that it would be really cool to put into my novelization. So in it went.
I also did a novelization of The Goose Girl, but it's too complex to explain here.
I have also attempted several fairy tale retellings...I've sadly come to realize that I'm not a very talented author.
DeleteIt's not that much of a stretch to supposed that the mother and witch are the same person in Hansel and Gretel! They leave one mother who wishes to harm them rather than nurture, and go to a more exaggerated version. There are lots of interesting theories about the mother figures in fairy tales being "split" personalities-the good version and evil version help a concrete thinker to separate, in their minds, how their own mother could be so loving in some instances and yet punish them in others.