Fables

by Sarah Goldstein

Fiction. Departing from the Brothers Grimm to approach our own economically and socially fractured present, Sarah Goldstein's FABLES constructs a world defined by small betrayals, transformations, and brutality amid its animal and human inhabitants. We hear the fragment-voices of ghosts and foxes, captors and captives, stable boys and schoolgirls in the woods and fields and cities of these tales. Anxious townsfolk abandon their orphan children to the nightingales in the forest, a bear deploys a tragic maneuver to avoid his hunters, and a disordered economy results in new kinds of retirements and relocations. Goldstein weaves together familiar and contemporary allegories creating a series of vibrant, and vital, tales for our time.

Genres: Poetry, Short Stories

92 pages, Paperback

First published May 15, 2011

Reviews

[Jack Waters · Rating 5 out of 5]

Astounding concision and economy in telling stories and fables. A lot of lovely sentences.

[Sassafras Patterdale · Rating 3 out of 5]

Beautifully haunting imagery- this book reworked old fairytales wirh poetic imagery into a contemporary world. It didn’t go as far as I like retellings to go but I was intrigued by the structure and the way the author paid honor to the source stories

[Benjamin Niespodziany · Rating 5 out of 5]

Sheeeeeeeeeeeeesh. I feel like this book was written for me.

[Karen]

* 3 Books For An Out Of Body Experience

Fables begins with adults in a superstitious small town following an old wives' tale: "take an orphan child hunting, you will return with threefold the bounty." The orphans sneak away, and are soon not merely lost, but changed. Their cries are the "sounds of the whippoorwills. The nightingales became their mothers, and pheasants usher them to winter quarters." Fables only becomes more surreal. A finch flies into a kitchen and helps a woman and her daughter mend lace, underwear, and a handkerchief. Grackles sing the "cries of the damned" over "neighborhood maples and unnaturally green lawns." Mischievous ghosts inhabit the town. Residents "walk out of their homes in the morning and do not return." Goldstein's ability to smoothly move from the mundane to the mysterious makes me question my prosaic surroundings. I might not move an inch, but I feel taken elsewhere.

[James Grinwis · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you carry this book around awhile like I did, the old fashioned title and hares on the cover (albeit sufferable hares, but still hares), a shoulder looker-over might think you’re reading a kids book. Thankfully, and thank Sarah Goldstein, you aren’t: Tarpaulin Sky has provided the ultimate deception for the strangeness and darkness in these flashes (all beautifully unified) therein. Let these be read slowly (indeed, they require you to do so once you start). An excellent book of flash fiction at the highest level of ‘sentence to sentence’ movement and mood.

[Pat · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a delightful and amazing book. Goldstein's "Fables" remind me more of the rather twisted and disturbing tales written by Oscar Wilde or Hans Christian Anderson than Aesop's fables or the happy-ever-after fairy tales - but while magical in many ways, these are certainly not children's stories! Her language is masterful, and the fables are mesmerizing and thought-provoking.