The Wild Girl

by Kate Forsyth, Kate Reading (Narrator)

The Wild Girl is based on a true story, one of the great untold love stories--how the Grimm brothers discovered their famous fairy tales. It's filled with drama and passion and takes place during the Napoleonic Wars. Dortchen Wild fell in love with Wilhelm Grimm the first time she saw him. Growing up in the small German kingdom of Hessen-Cassel in the early nineteenth century, Dortchen Wild is irresistibly drawn to the boy next door, the young and handsome fairy-tale scholar Wilhelm Grimm.

It is a time of war, tyranny, and terror. Napoleon Bonaparte wants to conquer all Europe, and Hessen-Cassel is one of the first kingdoms to fall. Forced to live under oppressive French rule, the Grimm brothers decide to save old tales that had once been told by the firesides of houses grand and small all over the land. Dortchen knows many beautiful old stories--Hansel and Gretel, The Frog King, Six Swans, and others. As she tells them to Wilhelm, their love blossoms. But the Grimm family is desperately poor, and Dortchen's father has other plans for his daughter. Marriage is an impossible dream. Dortchen can only hope that happy endings are not just the stuff of fairy tales.

Genres: Historical Fiction, Fiction, Fantasy, Historical, Romance, Fairy Tales, Retellings

Audiobook

First published March 18, 2013

About the author

Kate Forsyth wrote her first novel at the age of seven, and is now the internationally bestselling author of 40 books for both adults and children.

Her books for adults include 'Beauty in Thorns', the true love story behind a famous painting of 'Sleeping Beauty'; 'The Beast's Garden', a retelling of the Grimm version of 'Beauty & the Beast', set in the German underground resistance to Hitler in WWII; 'The Wild Girl', the love story of Wilhelm Grimm and Dortchen Wild, the young woman who told him many of the world's most famous fairy tales; 'Bitter Greens', a retelling of the Rapunzel fairytale; and the bestselling fantasy series 'Witches of Eileanan' Her books for children include 'The Impossible Quest', 'The Gypsy Crown', 'The Puzzle Ring', and 'The Starkin Crown'

Kate has a doctorate in fairytale studies, a Masters of Creative Writing, a Bachelor of Arts in Literature, and is an accredited master storyteller.

Reviews

[Karen Brooks · Rating 5 out of 5]

I’ve taken a bit of time between reading and reviewing this book, partly because I wanted to absorb the dark beauty of this stark, moving and occasionally horrifying tale, and partly because I’d no choice. I was rendered not just speechless by this marvellous novel but, for a time, wordless too as I sought ways to describe the richness of Forsyth’s work, the wonderful layers that make up the tale of Dortchen Wild, a gregarious young girl who grows up in the small kingdom of Hessen-Kassel during the Napoleonic Wars, living across a narrow lane from the then unknown Brothers’ Grimm. The beauty of the characters, the intimacy, joy and awfulness of the settings as well as the research and direct and subtle references to the forbidding stories the Grimm brothers themselves collected and retold, initially evaded me. It’s only now I can write about this amazing book. I was stunned by what Forsyth has done and urge anyone who loves the history of fairytales, history itself as well as a wonderful, page-turning novel about love, sacrifice, loss, family and the ties that cruelly and gently bind, to seek this one out at once!
Told from Dortchen’s point of view, the novel spans many years and many tribulations – poverty, war, and separation. The reader is given insight into the rise, and fall of the Wild and Grimm families’ fortunes as well as that of the rather stern ruler of Hessen-Kassell who is later replaced by a hedonistic relative of Napoleon.
Jakob and Williem Grimm are scholars who decide to collect what are fundamentally “old wives” and children’s tales for publication. Obsessed with preserving what’s a part of their country’s culture and past, they search for interesting variations and folk to relay the stories which they painstakingly record. Enter Dortchen, by now a teenager and a very able and imaginative crafter and re-teller of the old tales. It’s as a storyteller that Williem, a handsome if somewhat unhealthy figure, finally views his neighbour and little sister, Lotte’s playmate, Dortchen, through different eyes, seeing her for the beautiful young woman she’s become.
Dortchen’s growth into womanhood is a wondrous and painful awakening into beauty, sexuality, responsibility and reality, the latter from which her friendship and passionate feelings for Williem Grimm and the stories that surround her have occasionally allowed her to escape. But reality catches Dortchen all too quickly and bleakly. Forbidden by her stern father from being courted by the impoverished Williem, Dortchen tries to accept what fate offers; but as a girl who loves stories, she also desires a different outcome. Alas, as she and Williem shift into different social circles and circumstances and people become obstacles that grow insurmountable, control of her destiny seems like something that belongs in one of Williem’s fairytales.
I don’t want to ruin the story for those who’ve not yet had the chance, but be warned, as I said above, this novel does not steer away from dealing directly with the darkest aspects of human nature – something which fairy and folk tales have always confronted – often (though not always) through allegory and metaphor. Whereas the Grimm’s were forced to moderate their collected tales for the market, here Forsyth let’s the human capacity for evil loose. Nightmares come to life in this book and it’s testimony to Forsyth’s skill and sensitivity towards her threatening subject matter that she deals with it unflinchingly and with rawness; it takes your breath away. I found myself dwelling on this part of the book and my emotions were thrown into a tumult. It may be because of personal history, but I also feel it’s because readers are able to empathise with Dortchen and the cruelty and paternal tyranny that’s inflicted upon her. It’s utterly shocking. And that’s before I discuss the casualties of war – not only those who lose their lives because of a game of politics thrones and power - but those who survive and simply endure its abuse and horror.
Against this darkness, however, a light shines in the form of love – that between siblings, friends and soul mates. No-one expresses yearning quite like Forsyth. She did it so beautifully in her first book, the wonderful The Witches of Eileann, she does it again in the sumptuous Bitter Greens but it’s here, in The Wild Girl, that it culminates into a palpable ache that reaches beyond the pages and into the reader’s soul.
Forsyth has undergone a great deal of research to write this book and come to some original and compelling conclusions about the tales and their tellers as well. The novel is peppered with some of the better and less known of the Grimm collection, so we’re given stories within stories and can draw our own comparison between the rich imaginative world of the women who pass them to the Grimms and Dortchen’s life as well.
Original, compelling, exquisitely written, this is a novel of epic and passionate proportions that offers readers so much and then even more. A book ostensibly about story-telling it’s also by a story-teller par excellence. I really think Forsyth is one of the finest writers of this generation and her work deserves the widest of audiences. She clearly takes so much pleasure and pride in what she does – but better still, she offers it in abundance as well.
Cannot recommend highly enough.

[Kim Wilkins · Rating 5 out of 5]

History is no backdrop in this richly imagined tale of the girl who gave the Grimm brothers some of their best stories. Rather, history is very much part of the viscerally felt foreground, as the napoleonic wars rage around and through the small kingdom of Hessen-Kassel. This is no "lite" romance with a bit of historical detail thrown about; it grapples quite seriously with how the lives of ordinary people, especially the poor or the marginalised, experience history as a material impact on their bodies and minds.

The romance itself, between Wilhelm Grimm and Dortchen Wild, unfolds slowly and deeply over many years. In the early part of the book, Dortchen is wild by nature, headstrong and curious. At the hands of her cruel, domineering father, Dortchen moves from innocence to experience, and the novel takes a dark turn. Its darkness is relieved by the meetings between the lovers, as she tells him tales and they fall deeper into a forbidden love. There is real despair here: not cliches and careless sentiment. Our lovers are helpless in the face of circumstance.

But the romance is almost secondary to the sophisticated and thoughtful meditation on the power of stories. "Stories help make sense of things," Dortchen tells Wilhelm. And in this novel we see the importance of stories in preserving a culture, in remembering ourselves, in connecting people in time and across time: three things that The Wild Girl itself also does.

Kate Forsyth is an experienced and deft writer who does not put a word out of place in this novel. In fact, the prose is elegant and spare, Germanic in its precision and placement (a wonderful contrast to the almost baroque French tale Bitter Greens). Along this deftly written path are beautifully placed jewels of word choice. A lake's edges are "slurred" with ice, horses' hooves throw up "glittering shards of frost", shame comes in a "scalding rush". Little historical details flavour the text richly: the quail in a cage that functions like a watchdog, the "damp little cakes" of chestnut, the many many details about early 19th century apothecary. I am in awe of the amount of work and care that has gone into this book.

Ultimately, this novel inhabits the ground between Philippa Gregory and Hilary Mantel. It is both entertaining and serious-minded, but it has about it too that little touch of magic that makes Kate Forsyth's voice so distinctive, so uniquely Kate. An absolute pleasure to read.

[Marquise · Rating 1 out of 5]

I think that, by now, I can safely say that I just can't like Kate Forsyth in spite of the topics she chooses being catnip for me. Her handling of them is so poor because of the repetitive issues she runs into and that she seems to just not be able to help herself from falling into again and again.

This book's premise is to tell the story behind the storyteller who told the Brothers Grimm a good number of the fairy and folktales they included in their now famous collection. Or, more accurately, the one who told them to Wilhelm Grimm. If you ever were under the impression that the Grimms were travelling folklorists who tripped all over Germany picking up tales from the peasantry, you might be surprised to find out that they got the majority of them from women of their acquaintance in their own town in Hesse-Cassel. One of such women was their neighbour Dortchen Wild (I wonder why Forsyth doesn't mention her full name, Henrietta Dorothea, and instead seems to imply that the diminutive Dortchen is her name), who developed a girlish crush on Wilhelm Grimm, and formed a lifelong friendship and on & off courting that'd eventually end in marriage. So like in the fairy tales, isn't it?

Or it would be, if not for how the execution botched it. Like in her previous books, Forsyth goes her usual way of overwriting and overtelling everything, expanding everything with needless details, resulting in an extremely dull storyline for a girl that's interesting in her own right. And because she can't escape her penchant for overexplaining, the story is bogged down heavily by the excessive amount of Napoleon-centric details. Oh, I get that the story is set during the Napoleonic Wars, which touched the German principality the Grimms & Wilds lived in, but Napoleon is used here as a device so glaringly you wonder at times if the author isn't trying to insert a Napoleonic novel-within-a-novel. This is part of her struggle with historical context, she never knows how to convey the feel of a period and weave it into a story, so she tosses in all she has in her hands.

But my biggest problem with this novel is what she's done with Dortchen's story. In her notes, Forsyth mentions that she read Jack D. Zipes' research on the Grimms in which there's commentary on the changes and evolution of the tales they collected, noting the curious case of Allerleirauh ("All-Kinds-of-Fur," or more popularly known in its variant called "Donkeyskin") and the editing it went through, the reasons behind it, the notorious incesty undertones, the abusiveness. Zipes speculates that the reason Wilhelm Grimm was particular with this tale was painful memories of his own as he might have been abused as a child himself. That sounds like an interesting tidbit for scholarly musings, no more and no less. And yet, what does Kate Forsyth do? She takes it and runs with it off towards the cliff.

She begins by twisting it to fit her fictional plotline, theorising by herself that it can't be Wilhelm the abused one, because lookie here's the other tales Dortchen told! And she's a girl! Everyone knows girls are routinely abused! So why the Hell not? Let's make Dortchen an emotionally, physically, and sexually abused girl, and that'll be the literary trauma I'll need to "explain" why she didn't marry handsome Wilhelm Grimm for years and years and more years, because of course all traumatised abuse victims are left so unable to trust and love that they keep their sweethearts on tenterhooks for over a decade. And of course there can't be no other explanation, no, sir, none other. It must be abuse, and the abuser can't be any other than Herr Wild, her own father. Screw it if we have Wilhelm's diaries and Dortchen's memoirs, and let's favour instead the brainfart-like speculations of an academic born two centuries later...

You see my issue with this book now, I hope.

I'm not going to read this author ever again, I'm afraid. Three times is too many. There's no good writing to compensate for the weaknesses, either. Sometimes, you can enjoy reading takes you disagree with if the author can argue his/her point convincingly and weave a tale out of it, but that's not been my experience with this author.

[Keertana · Rating 5 out of 5]

More often than not, I finish a book and settle down to write a review in order to organize my thoughts, make sense of the work I've just read, and waste a few more precious seconds lingering in a fictional world before waking up to reality. From time to time, however, review-writing is a cathartic experience; an effort to push the novel - the words, the characters, the setting - out of my blood stream and into the void, where it can no longer haunt my dreams and every waking thought. The Wild Girl falls into this latter category of brilliant, beautiful, sweeping stories that have captured me, heart and soul, but not returned me to this Earth; not just yet.

The Brothers Grimm are known worldwide; in perhaps the earliest of childhood memories, their names and folk tales are set in stone. It is easy to think of them as hobbling old men, gray hair falling past their shoulders as they scribble late into the night, leaning on old wooden walking sticks as they crowd around a fire, or simply dreaming in the shade of faeries. In reality, however, the Brothers Grimm were young, ambitious men when they set out to collect old German stories and compile them into expansive volumes; originally for scholars, but later for children. Wilhelm Grimm, the younger of these two Brothers Grimm, was loved from afar by the second-youngest of his neighbors six daughters, Dortchen Wild. At the tender age of twelve, Dortchen looked upon nineteen-year-old Wilhelm's kind face and fell in love.

In was only 1805 when the two first met in Hessen-Cassel, an era dominated by Napoleon's sweeping victories across Europe as he swiftly rose to power and fame. All the history books tell us of Wilhelm's life is that he diligently wrote the tales told to him by the village women, Dortchen being one of them, falling in love with her. Dortchen's father, Herr Wild, refused to have one of his daughters marry a Grimm and, it seemed, their love story was doomed. When he passed away in 1814, though, Wilhelm and Dortchen were still unmarried. It was only in 1825, after years of poverty and hardship, that the two become husband and wife. The Wild Girl is Forsyth's vivid re-imagining of the years in-between; the years spent in longing and heartbreak, in despair and hope, but always - always - in love.

From the first page itself, The Wild Girl is a marvel of literature. Forsyth, having delved deep into the history of the Brothers Grimm and, in particular, Wilhelm's wife, narrates this tale from Dortchen's perspective, sticking devoutly to known historical dates and filling in details as accurately as possible, paying hommage to the mysterious companion of Wilhelm whose story-telling abilities were unrivaled. The Wild Girl sucked me in primarily due to the sheer scope of research evident throughout its pages. Not only did Forsyth perfectly mimic the German sentiment during these difficult times of war and poverty, but she never hesitated to delve into politics, medicine, and the law of the era. In every way possible, The Wild Girl is an accurate representation of 19th Century Germany, so much so that it became difficult for me to re-orient myself back into the 21st Century whenever I dared tear my eyes away from the page.

While the historical aspects of this novel drew me in, though, the characters compelled me to stay. Dortchen is a vivacious narrator, known to be "wild" among her sisters. When we first meet her, Dortchen's naivety and childhood innocence linger, despite the fact that she is on the brink of adolescence. As Dortchen matures, however, growing into womanhood and surviving the hardships of war, poverty, and death, her change is drastic. Gone is the laughing, child-like wonder, replaced instead by demure fear and stone emotion. It is a gradual process, though, and for every grief Dortchen suffers, there are just as many stolen moments of ecstasy and delight to counter them. The Wild Girl is a dark tale, to be sure. It had me bawling into my blankets, covering my eyes from reading further in a poor attempt to protect my heart. And yet, it is remains a tale of hope, long-lasting relationships, and deep love. Although Dortchen is altered by the events in her life, she is never too far gone that she doesn't retain her quiet wisdom, teasing cleverness, or her tell-tale sense of adventure. Dortchen's journey is a hard one, but it also worthwhile.

As life throws hurdles in Dortchen's path, so does her heart. At first, her infatuation for Wilhelm can easily be dismissed as a mere childhood crush. As it persists, however, aching with jealousy or smarting from ignorance, the idea of Dortchen and Wilhelm's romance becomes ever-more actualized. Over stolen stories, cups of tea, and garden parties, Wilhelm gradually grows to return Dortchen's love. And still, this affection is that between adolescents; an innocent union untouched by pain, one that does not know the power of dangerous storms which wish to quell it. Over the years, Dortchen and Wilhelm fall apart and back together again, their friendship persisting in strength even where their understanding fails them. Still, it is a beautiful, rich relationship to watch unfold, one that delights in every way imaginable. Moreover, the tales Forsyth weaves into their relationship share a greater meaning to their love story, those themes persisting as Dortchen and Wilhelm struggle to find a way back to one another, despite the lost years between them.

In addition to the love story, though, The Wild Girl is an unflinchingly true story of family. Neither the Wild family nor the Grimm family are perfect, each harboring members whose cruelty or selfishness brings shame upon their name. And yet, that age-old sense of unity is palpable throughout these pages. Dortchen and her sisters may not always get along, but the pervading morale of sacrifice is evident in their relationships. Unfortunately, though, just as folk tales predict, the darkest betrayals and most harmful hurts come from those we trust and love: our own families. Forsyth walks a fine line in molding her characters into beings not quite heroic, but not utterly villainous either. While The Wild Girl is, admittedly, a love story, it is first and foremost the story of Dortchen. It is Dortchen's family, then, her friends and acquaintances whom she keeps in touch with over the years, who additionally grace the pages of this novel, coming to life through Forsyth's multifaceted portrayal of their morality. Looking back on The Wild Girl as a whole, I am able to see the craft Forsyth used to make even her secondary characters grow and change with time and circumstance. A truly noteworthy feat, indeed.

Where The Wild Girl falters, ever-so-slightly, is in the fact that the majority of this novel takes place during the first ten years of Dortchen and Wilhelm's initial meeting. Following the death of Herr Wilder, the novel picks up its pace, rushing through the years. Nevertheless, it remains impeccably paced for the story at hand. Until, that is, the last few chapters. Dortchen's revival from the confused, broken shell she becomes into the confident, content woman who is finally ready to marry her childhood sweetheart wasn't touched upon as much as I would have liked. While there remains plenty of growth, granted, it felt incongruous with the depth of the Dortchen's earlier growth prior to her father's death. Nevertheless, The Wild Girl remains a literary masterpiece of history, folk tale, and love. It may be only my first Forsyth novel, but you can be sure it won't be my last.

[Krista · Rating 3 out of 5]

“Wild by name and wild by nature,” Dortchen’s father used to say of her. He did not mean it as a compliment. He thought her headstrong, and so he set himself to tame her.

I picked up The Wild Girl because it was mentioned in a nonfiction book I recently read about the storytellers behind famous fairy tales (The Fairy Tellers), and focussed as it is on the story of Dortchen Wild — a childhood neighbour of the Brothers Grimm and the eventual wife of one of them — author Kate Forsyth does a wonderful job of bringing her research to life. Set during the Napoleonic Wars (it was the years-long French occupation that prompted the Grimms to collect and preserve German folklore), this is a rich and exciting time period for a romantic Historical Fiction, and while I was never bored by the details, I didn’t find this particularly literary. I am delighted that this book brings Dortchen’s contributions into the light (hers is the first known version of “Hansel and Gretel” to feature a gingerbread house; why wouldn’t we know her name?), this was certainly not a waste of my time, just not entirely to my tastes.

As she put her cloak on and gathered up her jug and bowls, Wilhelm said to her, “I’d like to hear one of your stories some time. I’m interested in old stories and songs and such things. Friends of mine are collecting folk songs at the moment, for a book they are writing. Do you and your sisters know any songs?”

Because Forsyth has a PhD in Fairy Tale Studies and based this novel on documents that she uncovered and translated, I understand why she would feel the need to include the entire period between the meeting of Dortchen Wild and Wilhelm Grimm and their eventual marriage (twenty-some years later), but the result felt both too long (at 500 pages) and too shallow (skipping months and years ahead at a time). It really is a fascinating time period that Forsyth got to work with here, but it often led to infodumping in a nonorganic manner: would young Dortchen really be thinking the following as she learns Napoleon is marching towards Hessen-Cassel?

Dortchen thought of the Holy Roman Empire. So many tiny countries stitched together into a patchwork eiderdown, each with its own archduke or archbishop, prince or landgrave, squabbling over borders and taxes and rights of privilege, each with their own weights and measures, their own laws and curfews. Some of the princedoms were so small that they could fire at each other from their castle walls. Yet for over a millennium they had held together. What would happen now a few of those stitches were torn loose? Would the whole patchwork unravel?

Forsyth namedrops Beethoven and Goethe and Admiral Nelson, features balls at the palace, the “Year Without a Summer”, and a typhoid epidemic, but the historical highlights are the frequent reports of Napoleon (the “Ogre”) and his uncanny military strategy. After Jérome Napoleon was installed as the King of Westphalia (and locals began to wonder if maybe they weren’t better off under the new Napoleonic Codes), the wars raged on for years and years until finally, it would seem, the Little Emperor had even taken Moscow. As the daughter of the town Apothecary, there is also much rich detail about harvesting and preparing natural remedies. And, of course, this is a bosom-heaving love story:

As Dortchen finished the tale, Wilhelm threw down his quill, caught her in his arms and kissed her. Despite herself, Dortchen fell back beneath him. Her mouth opened, her hands tangled in his hair and she welcomed his weight upon her. They kissed as if the world were about to end and this was all the chance of life left to them. They kissed as if they were starving and the other was all sustenance. Dortchen lost all sense of herself. There were only their mouths and their shy hands, and the brush of flesh against flesh.

It is recorded fact that Dortchen and Wilhelm didn’t get married until they were in their thirties (despite how unusual that would have been at the time), and interestingly, Forsyth looked for explanatory subtext in the fairy tales that Dortchen recited (particularly the disturbing “All Kinds of Fur”), writing in an afterword, “I built this novel by listening to the story within the stories that Dortchen told.” That decision led the plot in some unexpected directions (“unexpected”, but not unsupported by the premise; the subtext is in the stories), but stretching this courtship over a couple decades of will-they-won’t-they (when the reader knows they’ll eventually be married) became a little dull. Again, I am pleased that this exists: Dortchen’s name deserves to be known and Kate Forsyth has given her a whole life here.

[Jenny Q · Rating 4 out of 5]

Giveaway @ Let Them Read Books!

I'd been waiting for so long to read this book, and it hooked me from page one. In fact, the prologue had me itching to turn to the last page to see how it ended, but I resisted! The story has an enchanting fairy-tale quality from the very beginning as we meet young Dortchen Wild, a precocious, starry-eyed, imaginative girl who revels in the beauty of nature and the transcendent quality of folk tales. The fifth of six girls born to a frail mother and an overbearing father, hers is not a life of ease, but she sees the good in everything and determines to make the most of what life has to offer her.

She becomes fast friends with Lotte, the only girl out of six children in the Grimm family, who has just moved into the house across the alley, and begins to spend all of her free time with the poor yet loving family. Secretly worshiping the scholarly Wilhelm, the second oldest brother, she endeavors to help him and the oldest, Jakob, as they compile a collection of old tales in the hopes of finding fame and fortune with its publication. Dortchen shines under their attention, surrounded by a circle of friends sharing stories and laughter, even though her generous nature in wanting to help her poor neighbors often lands her in trouble with her father.

But their idyllic existence comes to an end with the looming threat of war. Quickly taken over and having Napoleon's frivolous younger brother Jerome forced on them as king, the tiny state of Hesse-Cassel finds itself in the middle of Napoleon's quest for European domination, suffering the deprivation of blockades, the strain of hosting an army, and the devastation of sending their men off to a disastrous invasion of Russia. As the family struggles to stay afloat, Dortchen's father becomes increasingly more abusive, and her prospects for a happy future dwindle. Forbidden from contact with the Grimms, considered too poor and bohemian by her father, she can only watch from afar as Wilhelm and his siblings move on without her.

The infectious, childlike wonder with which she viewed the world slowly begins to fade, and out of all the tragedies to befall poor Dortchen, this was perhaps the most heartbreaking. To watch a bright and sunny girl transition into a wary young woman and then a disillusioned and resigned adult was almost more than I could bear. Though there are several moments in Dortchen's life that are extremely hard to read, I mourned the loss of her innocence and hopefulness most of all. But the death of her father finally brings about a new chance at the life she's always dreamed of, though it takes time for her broken spirit to heal and reach for happiness.

Dortchen is a heroine every reader will root for, and the sharing of old stories is every bit as entrancing as one would expect. The depiction of Hesse-Cassel against the backdrop of Napoleon's war is intimate and immersive--a unique setting for historical fiction, and I drank in every detail--and the love story between Dortchen and Wilhelm is itself the stuff of fairy tales. For the longest time I was sure this would be a five-star read for me, but the rapid passage of many years with gaps in time in the last quarter of the book combined with Dortchen's long separation from Wilhelm felt a little off to me. I can't quite put my finger on why my sense of wonder and enchantment faded, but it was restored by the uplifting ending and the lovely quote from Wilhelm about Dortchen that Ms. Forsyth included in her author's note. Her extensive research of folk tales and the way she weaves them into the very fabric of the novel is amazing. Lovers of history, fairy tales, and romance should find much to admire in this beautiful and deserving novel about the little-known Wild girl and her influence on the Brothers Grimm.

[gio · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5

[Shelleyrae at Book'd Out · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Wild Girl is a stunning tale of passion, love and war where history and imagination intertwine to create a wonderfully rich portrait of a woman whose contribution to the legend of the Grimm Brothers is finally acknowledged.

Dortchen Wild lives in the small kingdom of Hessen-Cassel in Germany in the early 1800's, as Napoleon Bonaparte marches across Europe. One of five daughters of an apothecary, her only relief from her father's tyranny comes from the rare occasions she can escape his attention and her friendship with her next door neighbour, Lotte Grimm. As the war intensifies, Lotte's older brothers Jakob and Williem return home. With a single glance, twelve year old Dortchen falls in the love with the scholarly Williem but he barely notices her and she can only worship him from afar. As war rages and Cassel is plunged into economic ruin, the Grimm brothers hope to reverse their fortunes by publishing a book of collected fairytales. It's not until Dortchen shyly offers to contribute that Williem realises Dortchen has grown up, but her father forbids any courtship between the desperately poor neighbour boy and his daughter. While the lovers endure years of enforced separation due to abuse, war and poverty Dortchen never stops hoping for her own happily ever after.

Kate Forsyth uses historical record as the anchor for a story that she then develops with informed imagination. The Napoleonic War and it's social effects grounds the tale in time and place while her fictional narrative winds in and out of what is known about the Grimm brothers, the origins of their fairytale collection and Dortchen. I don't doubt that Forsyth's research, using primary sources such Williem's diaries amongst others, is impeccable but I most admire how she creates a plausible, seamless narrative melding fact with fiction. The author's intuitive grasp of behaviour and motive ensures her characters, their environment and their lives feel authentic.

In the tradition of the original Grimm's fairytales, Dortchen's childhood is beset by darkness. Her mother was a weak woman addicted to Laudanum and subservient to her husband. Dortchen's father, pious and strict during her childhood, devolved into a drunken, abusive tyrant in her adolescence, illustrated in several harrowing scenes. The war and resulting economic deprivations is hard on the family and though three of the sisters are eventually able to escape, Dortchen is forced to remain at home and care for her ailing parents. It is saddening to see Dortchen withdraw into herself in self defense, her spirit eroded by her fading hopes for escape from her father. The spark is only revived when she steals a moment or two with Williem. Her relationship with him is fraught with angst, drama and passion, their love is challenged repeatedly and a happy ending is never guaranteed.

The fairytale's appear in the narrative not just as stories passed between the characters but also with some relationships to the plot. Dortchen often hopes that Williem will recognise her pain in the tales that she tells, though his scholarly focus seems to make him somewhat oblivious to the subtleties. They also reflect the political and social instability of times with tales of greedy kings and an abandoned, unfed children, despite their origin being from other times and places. The fairytales themselves are both versions of familiar stories like Cinderella and Snow White as well as less well known tales like that of a singing bone that identifies a murderer.

Really I could go on, The Wild Child is remarkable. A tale of triumph over adversity, an epic historical romance, a fascinating glimpse into the history of storytelling - it is all those things and more. One of my favourite reads for the year, I recommend it wholeheartedly.

[Sophie · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a beautiful book, but also dark and left me with a very unpleasant feeling once I finished. This one will stick with me, I think. Not sure how to rate it because the writing was wonderful but at the same time I hated it.

WARNING: SEXUAL ABUSE BY A FAMILY MEMBER IS CONTAINED IN THIS BOOK. DO NOT READ IF YOU ARE BOTHERED BY THAT!

[Natty · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love Kate Forsyth, she is amazing writer. I gobble up her stories like they are cake!!!

The Wild Girl is no exception, I devoured this story within two nights, I just pored myself over it. I really connected with the main character Dortchen Wild in so many ways, but especially her taste for life, her wild nature for adventure and the fierce way she loved.

Forsyth has a beautiful talent of revealing the history within the story without making it a history lesson, yet you can learn a whole lot. I knew very little of the Grimm Brothers, and did not know anything of Dortchen Wild and her role she played in their lives.

Many times without the story or Dortchen and Wilhelm, I found myself holding my breath and waiting to see how it turns out, silently hoping they make it together (which we know they do) , yet while already knowing the destination, it didn't take away from the story here.
As many of us know its the journey of how you got to the destination the most important, this is that story..

I look forward to my next reads by Kate Forsyth and there are more in my TBR already... ;)

[Sally906 · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved THE WILD GIRL! Simply loved it. Though she didn’t realise it the pressure was on for author Kate Forsyth because after recently reading Bitter Greens I had high very expectations. Expectations that were not only met but exceeded! When I first laid eyes on the book I was a bit overwhelmed, after all it is over 500 pages, it was huge. Then I opened the book and read “…Dortchen Wild fell in love with Wilhelm Grimm the first time she saw him…” and I was hooked, size and time had no meaning as I was immersed in the unfolding story. I was brought up on the Grimm Brothers tales, loved them, but if I thought of the Grimm brothers at all it was as dour old men who looked like my grandfather and liked to scare children with stories. I also never thought about where the tales came from, I just presumed the creepy Grimms had made them up. However, Kate Forsyth has showed the Grimms to be passionate young men with a desire to record the oral traditional stories of their country before they disappeared into the mire of war, as borders changed and hundreds and thousands died across Europe.
THE WILD GIRL is a blend of historical fact and plausible fiction, and like all good fairy tales there is a truly horrible character, the baddie if you will, and Dortchen, our goodie, has some terrible things happen to her that she needs to overcome before her prince will come. Well Wilhelm anyway. Forsyth says in her afterword that there are a lot of blanks in the historical facts behind the prolonged courtship of Dortchen and Wilhelm and she filled the blanks in by reading between the lines of evidence given. Although there is no historical evidence for the events that happen in Dortchen’s personal life, the plot that Forsyth has come up with, although dire, is very feasible indeed.
THE WILD GIRL must not be missed; it is a powerful story about storytelling, about love in the harshest of conditions, overcoming adversity. It is also about the cruelty of war, the cruelty by those who should protect you, deprivation and obedience to parents no matter what. It is a strong story and the abuse is handled delicately and with compassion. The pages just flew by; I did not get bogged down once. I have to confess to once or twice logging onto the Internet to find some of the locations mentioned in the book. The historical facts of Napoleon’s advance, then retreat, through Europe are as fascinating as they are horrifying in the atrocities and stupidity of some of the military decisions. My favourite parts were the about social history of people, it was interesting to read how they changed the way they dressed and spoke to accommodate the current ruler of the day. I loved the herb lore and a look into the pharmacy available at the time. Also how the flowers and herbs were put to other uses, more superstitious in nature, to help people achieved their desires.

Rating: A – Excellent. I could not put it down.

[Lisa - (Aussie Girl) · Rating 4 out of 5]

My first Kate Forsyth novel and it won't be my last. She has taken the idea of the woman behind the legend of the Brothers Grimm and expanded it through meticulous research into a tale as rich and nuanced as the fairy tales it's based on. And like all good fairy tales our heroine Dortchen Wild has to triumph over adversity and true evil to marry and have her Happily Ever After with the man of her dreams Wilhelm Grimm. What I also found interesting between the lines of story was the unpoken social commentary of the lot of the average woman trying to get by in this turbulent time in the German state of Cassell during the Napoleonic Wars virtually only as a chattel of her father and then her husband. Times were certainly tough and not much beauty was found in the difficulty of their every day lives. No wonder they found escape in the telling of such magical tales.

Parts of this book were dark and even a little depressing but the steady hand of the author guiding our hero and heroine to their final happiness together makes it a thoroughly thoughtful and enjoyable read.

[Rosemary Lauryn · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was not prepared for this book. The cover flap leads you to believe you're getting a love story with a little edge and some fairy tales thrown in. What you actually get is an incredibly slow love story that is very minor compared to the rest of the book which is also very slow and a traumatic tale of an abusive father (mental, physical, and sexual). An unpleasant surprise.

[Deanna Loves to Read!!:) · Rating 5 out of 5]

Oh this book! This author! I needed something that I could just sink into, a book that was so well written I felt like I was walking with the characters. This was that book!

I really took time to savor Kate Forsyth’s writing. Her ability to extensively research people, historical events and then write such an engaging story is unmeasured. She writes about the love story between Wilhelm Grimm and Dortchen Wild. This is not a quick romance, but a story of facing hardships, overcoming trauma, family responsibility, and evolving into the relationship.

There are many difficult issues at play, and the author deftly incorporates the historical events at the time. Many others have written wonderful in-depth reviews that include the plot- so check those out!

I highly recommend to anyone who loves historical fiction that is well researched. Also to anyone who loves “the story behind the stories”.

[Cassandra Page · Rating 4 out of 5]

I finished The Wild Girl more than a week ago, but haven’t been able to review since it due to a massive book hangover. I’m also finding this review difficult to draft, so please excuse any incoherence on my part!

Like the last of Kate Forsyth’s books that I read (Dancing on Knives), The Wild Girl was a hard read. Not the prose — the prose was lovely — but the subject matter. This isn’t a fluffy romance between a scholar and the apothecary’s daughter. This is a gritty tale about the realities of life in nineteenth century Germany, the horrors of war, and the awful things one human being can do to another.

Importantly, and I want to say this up front: this book needs to come with a trigger warning for rape. I had to put The Wild Girl down for two days after one particularly traumatic scene. What enticed me back to it was to see the perpetrator get his just desserts. The subject is delicately handled by Forsyth, not gratuitously or in a fashion designed to titillate, but in a way that fills you with a creeping sense of horror and dread.

It’s something to be aware of.

The parallels between Dortchen’s life and the various fairytales she tells Wilhelm at different times are masterful. The telling of “All Kinds of Fur” in particular was so moving it gave me chills. The control that society and religion gave men over the females of their households was both illuminating and scary, and made me so thankful that I live now! All the fancy dresses in the world aren’t worth subjugation. I loved Dortchen’s sister Hanne for her scandalous rebellion against the patriarchy.

One of the other parallels with Dancing on Knives (other than the awful father figure) is that The Wild Girl too has a hint of magical realism. The herb lore that Dortchen has is fascinating, making her something of a nurse to her loved ones … and some of her housekeeper’s superstitions lead in the direction of pagan magic. There aren’t any flashy spells or anything; nothing happens that can’t be explained. But I adored that touch nonetheless, and it gave Dortchen a chance to rebel in her own, tiny way — to try and effect a world that is so utterly out of her control.

A special mention goes to Old Marie, said housekeeper. She was one of my favourite characters, warming every scene she was in.

Part of me wishes that Dortchen and Wilhelm hadn’t had to wait so long for their happily ever after, but Forsyth was bound by the facts given this is historical fiction. (The amount of research that has gone into The Wild Girl is staggering.) She has come up with a convincing, albeit poignant, explanation for why the relationship evolved the way it did.

It’s a hard read, but The Wild Girl is an example of a story by an author who is the master of her craft.

[Fiona · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a Goodreads First Read that I got about a year ago - which just goes to show I should never be given nice things, because they'll sit there for far too long and when I finally get round to them I'll regret having waited so long. Is there anything more exciting than getting a hardback book in the post? I don't think so. Why didn't I pick this up? I have no idea.

It's a bit of a bipolar book - sometimes it's the adorable end of romance, sometimes shockingly dark all of a sudden. Sometimes it reads very much like a novel, other times you can tell it's based vaguely on real people, partly because there are way too many characters and Kate Forsyth wants to tell you about all of them and their children. Also Napoleon. She really wants to tell you about Napoleon.

Mind you, once she gets into the swing of things, Kate Forsyth can tell me all about her many, many side characters and siblings of side characters and what have you, for as long as she pleases. She can drop as many fairy tales into conversation as she likes. I had a lot of fun, and for all that I thought this was a bit choppy in places, I enjoyed it.

[مروة الجزائري · Rating 4 out of 5]

Once there were six sisters. The pretty one, the musical one, the clever one, the helpful one, the young one...And then there was the wild one. Dortchen Wild has loved Wilhelm Grimm since she was a young girl. Under the forbidding shadow of her father, the pair meet secretly to piece together a magical fairy tale collection. The story behind the stories of the Brothers Grimm.

It is a time of war, tyranny, and terror. Napoleon Bonaparte wants to conquer all of Europe, and Hessen-Cassel is one of the first kingdoms to fall. Forced to live under oppressive French rule, the Grimm brothers decide to save old tales that had once been told by the firesides of houses grand and small all over the land.

Dortchen knows many beautiful old stories, such as Hansel and Gretel, The Frog King and Six Swans. As she tells them to Wilhelm, their love blossoms. Yet the Grimm family is desperately poor, and Dortchen's father has other plans for his daughter. Marriage is an impossible dream.
Dortchen can only hope that happy endings are not just the stuff of fairy tales.

This is a very powerful historical fiction book that after I finished it I regret not reading it instead of listening to it as an audiobook. But given my current situation with a newborn baby boy, all I can manage at the moment is audiobooks and very limited time reading ebooks on my iPad.

The writing style is very nice and the author apparently made a good job regarding the historical events.
Although I don’t know what’s real and what’s fiction still I felt connected more to one of my top favorite fairy tale collections ( Grimms fairy tales ).
I started reading it thinking that I will have Grimm’s boys story ( my fault I know ) thus my high expectation does not meet. But It doesn’t mean that this book is not good enough for 3.75 stars.
One thing that didn’t quite go well with me is the personality of our main character ( Dortchen –the wild girl ). Even when she was a very young girl ( say 11 to 13 years old ) she acted and spoke as a young lady and the passionate love she had for Wilhelm Grimm in her tender age doesn’t make sense in my opinion. But I am not sure if at that time the girls can do and love like that at that age.
Finally, I highly recommend it for historical fiction readers.

Quotes I liked the most

“Poetry heals the wounds of reason”

“No story was just a story, though. It was a suitcase stuffed with secrets.”

“Stories are important too. Stories help make sense of things. They make you believe you can do things. They help you imagine that things may be different, that if you just have enough courage... or faith... or goodness... you can change things for the better.

[Jalilah · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a wonderful book! I would highly recommend it to everyone who is interested in fairy tales. It's well written, well researched historical fiction. I learned so much about the Grimms brothers, the time period they lived in and where they got their stories from! The only reason I gave it 4 stars instead of 5 is because the love story between Wilhelm Grimm and Dortchen Wild dragged on a bit and got both tedious and painful to read. However had the author changed this in anyway it would have been unrealistic. The poverty and suffering caused by Napoleonic wars, as well as Dortchen's abusive and authoritarian father caused a lot of hardship for Wilhelm and Dortchen. Although they knew and loved each other since their youths, they did not get to finally marry until they were in their 30s, which at the time was considered very old.
Trigger warning: there is violence and sexual abuse!

[S.B. Wright · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Wild Girl is Kate Forsyth’s latest foray into the milieu of fairy tales. I have been eagerly awaiting its publication since finding out it was in the works in my interview with her last year It features the same attention to detail that fans of Bitter Greens enjoyed, that feeling of immersion in the past, created by a confident rendering of the tumultuous years surrounding Napoleon’s rise and fall.

Where the two books differ, however, is that The Wild Girlis a historical fiction, where Bitter Greens was a mix of historical fiction and the fantastique, skillfully weaving historical fiction with fairy tale.

Where they do share similarities (apart from Forsyth’s beautiful and subtle writing) is in the revealing of a woman obscured by history. Forsyth brought to life the wonderful Charlotte-Rose de la Force in Bitter Greens and in The Wild Girl she gives us the life of Dortchen Wild.

Dortchen who?
--------------

If you are not into history or perhaps even fairy tale scholarship then you probably didn’t know about Dortchen Wild, when even a mention of the Grimms these days will get you a blank look or a reference to the TV show, it’s perhaps not surprising. Dortchen Wild was the girl next door to the Grimms, the source from which they gleaned about a quarter of their stories and later the wife of the brother Wilhelm.

The Wild Girl is Dortchen’s story, a story which parallels a number of fairy tales in both the misfortunes that beset her and her eventual triumph. At 538 pages it is not a slight tome, but Forsyth’s skill as a storyteller makes the narrative a pleasure to read through, a joy of immersive reading.

I must give fair warning that what starts off as a nice dramatic historical, does take a darker turn, for some of the tale. Some elements of the narrative will be confronting, despite the deftness and sensitivity Forsyth brings to bear on them. Without spoiling it too much, let us say the tale All Kinds of Fur is one of those tales that parallels Dortchen’s life.

I emerged from this story feeling as though I had some sense of the woman and her times, that this could have been her life.

I hesitate to call The Wild Girl a romance, though of course we know from the beginning that Dortchen and Wilhelm get married and that outcome end stops the story. I’d call it a drama, if that would encourage male readers to pick it up.

Please do, pick it up that is. I think your reading life if not your wider existence will be enriched by the process.

This book was provided by the author at no cost to myself.

[Jennifer (JC-S) · Rating 4 out of 5]

‘Happy endings are only for fairy tales, Dortchen thought, stepping through to her father’s walled garden.’

Once upon a time, during the Napoleonic Wars, the Wild family lived in the medieval quarter of Cassel, next to members of the Grimm family. Dortchen Wild and Lotte Grimm were the same age, and became best friends.

The novel begins in December 1814: Napoleon is in exile, and Dortchen Wild’s father has died. Dortchen has good reason to dance for joy. Shortly after, Wilhelm Grimm, whom she first met in 1805 when she was aged twelve, re-enters her life. Dare they hope for a life together? Her parents have disapproved of the impoverished Wilhelm.

This is both a love story and an account of how the brothers Grimm discovered their famous fairy tales. In 1806, Hesse-Cassel was invaded by the French and Dortchen met with Wilhelm in secret to tell him the stories she knows. The brothers Grimm collected these old stories, wanting to save them from the domination of French culture.

‘No story was just a story, though. It was a suitcase stuffed with secrets.’

Dortchen is trapped at home with her parents as one by one her sisters marry and move away. Her father is cruel and abusive, and Dortchen longs to escape. Even after her father dies, she and Wilhelm are unable to marry: he is too poor to support himself, let alone a wife. But, despite setbacks, and not being acknowledged as a source of some of the stories, Dortchen eventually finds her own happy ending. After Napoleon is finally overthrown, and once the fairy tale collection becomes successful, Dortchen and Wilhelm are finally able to marry. They then live, happily ever after, with Wilhelm’s elder brother Jakob.

‘To see the ordinary as extraordinary, the familiar as strange, the mundane as sacred, the finite as infinite.’ (Novalis)

I enjoyed this novel and the way the story is presented. Much of the story is told through conversation, which brings the people and the times to life. The collection of the fairy tales specifically referred to in the novel serves to underline some aspects of the lives of the Wild sisters. Truth and myth reinforce each other. Until I read this novel, I’d not given a lot of thought to either the lives of the brothers Grimm, or how they collected their stories. And I’d never heard of Dortchen Wild.

‘Stories are important too,’ Dortchen said. ‘Stories help make sense of things. They make you believe you can do things.’

Jennifer Cameron-Smith

[Elise McCune · Rating 5 out of 5]

THE WILD GIRL by Kate Forsyth is storytelling at its best. I enjoyed the richness of the words, the characters who were brought to life and the story which is about love and overcoming adversity. It is a blending of historical fact and fiction. Kate Forsyth has researched the events in the novel and in the afterword the author writes that she listened to the story within the stories that Gretchen told. This helped to plausibly fill in the blanks in Gretchen’s life.

From the back cover:
Dortchen Wild is drawn to the boy next door, young and handsome fairy tale scholar Wilhelm Grimm. They live in the German kingdom of Hessen-Cassel in the early nineteenth century in a time of war. Napoleon Bonaparte wants to conquer all of Europe, and Hessen-Cassel is one of the first kingdoms to fall. Living under French rule, the Grimm brothers decide to save the old tales that had once been told by the firesides of houses grand and small all over the land.
Dortchen knows many beautiful old stories and as she tells them to Wilhelm, their love blossoms. Yet the Grimm family is desperately poor, and Dortchen’s father has other plans for his daughter. Marriage is an impossible dream.
Dortchen can only hope that happy endings are not just the stuff of fairy tales.

As a lover of history ‘The Wild Girl’ had me turning the pages. I enjoyed the historical facts of Napoleon’s advance, then retreat, through Europe. I have an interest in plants and flowers and found the glimpse into how flowers and herbs were used at the time, as both medicines and to help people achieve their desires, added to the richness of the story.

The abuse that Dortchen suffers at the hands of her father, one of the people in her life who should protect her, was handled well, although one particularly harrowing scene was not to my liking. This is a personal preference as I don’t enjoy reading graphic scenes of this type in novels. I can, however, see the need for this scene as it explains future happenings in the plot.

Excerpt from the first page:
'Snow lay thick on the ground. The lake’s edges were slurred with ice. The only colour was the red rosehips in the briar hedge, and the golden windows of the palace. Violin music lilted into the air, and shadows twirled past the glass panes.’

In ‘The Wild Girl’ Kate Forysth enchants with her descriptive power, engages the reader with the story, and most of all the characters of Gretchen and Wilhem’s characters are vividly brought to life.

A Five Star Novel

[Kathryn · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was the story of Dörtchen Wild and Wilhelm Grimm (of the Grimm Brothers Fairytales). Set in the time of Napoleon Bonaparte’s seemingly unceasing conquests of Europe, and for all anyone else knew at that time, the whole of the world, it is a story of struggle for survival by the Wilds and the Grimms - neighbours in a little Prussian county.

Dörtchen (the 5th of 6 sisters) told Wilhelm a lot of the fairytales that he (and his brother Jakob) included in their book. The times they lived in were so difficult, with few jobs available (for the men - women didn’t work outside the home anyway) and little food available. Dörtchen loved Wilhelm from the time she first met him (when she was 12) and in time he felt the same, however marrying each other was not to be thought of as they were both penniless and needed to make wealthier matches for security. In addition, Dörtchen’s father was difficult - the girls didn’t dare to deliberately raise his ire, but often accidentally angered him. I can't imagine how you coped when life was such a drudge with so few bright spots in it.

This wasn’t quite what I was expecting - I was anticipating something with a fantasy element (because that is what a lot of people have shelved it as on Goodreads), but the only fantasy in it came from the fairy stories that were recounted. So I would say it is most definitely a historical fiction - but that suited me down to the ground - my favourite genre!!

[NoraReads · Rating 4 out of 5]

March 13/2016:

This book was..beautiful. I need more time to gather my thoughts because they're all over the place.

Please keep in mind that this is an adult book. It had some pretty disturbing scenes to be honest. Not many but they were there.

Update: March 17/2016

Ok...
I couldn't stop thinking about this book at all. I loved every minute of it, it felt like I was living with the characters. I could FEEL their pains and sorrows and desires and joy. I loved every single one of the Grimm brothers, especially Wilhelm. His relationship with Dortchen was agonizing to read, yet I couldn't stop reading it. all in all I loved Kate Forsyth's style of writing and I can't wait to read more of her books.

[Joanne Farley · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a wonderfully written book however it was way to long and repeats itself. I still really enjoyed it and it is worth the read

[Skye · Rating 3 out of 5]

I wanted to give this four stars, because I really admire how well researched this book is and I understand that the author was working within the confines of historical fact. Unfortunately I just grew so frustrated with the heroine, when all her sisters were taking charge of their lives and she just went on being obedient and self sacrificing and even at the end she took forever to make up her mind. I understand the motivations and reasons behind it, but it seemed to go on forever. The heroine is selfless to a fault, and I think a few flaws might have actually made her more relatable.

I did not enjoy this one as much as Bitter Greens which had elements of fantasy/magic in it. The Wild Girl, despite the fairy tales, sadly lacks any sense of enchantment and is a straight up historical romance.

[Alex · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm so excited for this I just paid over $30 in shipping charges to get this from Australia. My fingers are still crossed for a US publisher to take notice of the brilliance that is Kate Forsyth.

[Theresa Smith · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Wild Girl is the story of Dortchen Wild, the girl who lived next door to the Grimm family; the girl who told her stories to the Grimm brothers who in turn published them as what we now know to be, 'Grimm's Fairytales'. She was beautiful and full of life, brimming with joy, in love with Wilhelm Grimm and ever hopeful that she would one day get her happy ever after with the young man of her dreams. 

"Wild by name and wild by nature."

Until she wasn't. Until she was broken and destroyed, a shell of her former self with no clear path of escape from the terrible realm her life had evolved into. I have rarely been so touched and deeply affected by a novel, but The Wild Girl has a way of penetrating your senses and taking you over. So beautiful and tragic in alternating waves, unfolding against a backdrop of political tyranny within the Napoleanic era and played out in a domestic setting besieged by terror and depravity, this is not a novel for the feint hearted.

The opening scene is so beautiful, Dortchen, dancing in the forest in her black mourning clothes in the twilight on the eve of her father's death; that vivid contrast of black against the stark white snow, black ravens flying overhead, her unbridled joy at her impending freedom. At this point in time, the reader has no knowledge of what has brought Dortchen to this point, we can only imagine and think that she is on the brink of beginning something new. But the death of Dortchen's father does not set her free as she might have imagined it would while dancing in the snow that evening. She is haunted, quite literally, by all that has come before and all that she has endured, and peace is in the end a long time coming for Dortchen.

The long and rather complicated love story of Dortchen and Wilhelm is perhaps one of the greatest literary ones I have ever encountered. Fraught with obstacles, they circle around each other, desperate to be together while being fully aware of its near impossibility. The limitations of their positions within society, Dortchen as a woman and Wilhelm as an impoverished scholar, there is nothing either can do to change the course of their lives.

There are many deeply moving moments between the two, but one that stands out as a favourite of mine was this exchange:

'Your book is wonderful. One day you'll be famous. Everyone will say to me, "Is it true you knew the famous Grimm brothers?" And I will fan myself and put on airs, saying, "Indeed, they lived right next door to me. I used to make them bread soup.'"
Then Wilhelm said in a gruff voice, 'One day people will say to me, "Is it true your wife told you all those marvellous old stories?" And I'll say, "Yes, indeed, that's how we fell in love."'
There was a long silence. Dortchen was so choked with tears that she could not speak. They spilt down her cheeks, and Wilhelm put up his bare hand and wiped them away.

I love this moment. It's simplicity is so profoundly moving and so telling, of so many things, that exist between Dortchen and Wilhelm.

Kate Forsyth states in the acknowledgements section that writing The Wild Girl was intense, challenging and, at times, very difficult. I can only imagine how harrowing this might have been because it wrought all of those emotions within me as I read it. As Dortchen's situation with her father unfolds and deteriorates, we are taken to some very dark places, yet Kate is in no way vulgar with her depictions. Rather, her way of writing transports you right into Dortchen, deep inside her consciousness, so that we feel her experiences, and we know exactly what is happening to her and the effect this is having on her state of being. I thought Kate did a brilliant job of portraying this aspect of Dortchen's life and it lent a lot of credibility to the overall story, perhaps giving us the most accurate reason possible for why Dortchen waited ten years past her father’s death before she could at last embrace her own future.

When Dortchen told Wilhelm the tale, All Kinds of Fur, I was quite overcome by the enormity of this act, yet Wilhelm misunderstood and it was some years on before he fully comprehended what Dortchen had been attempting to tell him. He modified the already published tales, extracting the parts that reflected the truth of what Dortchen had suffered and released the new versions in a new edition that garnered more success than the previous darker published book. An act of love and faith on Wilhelm's part that did not go unnoticed by Dortchen. Her story is the true fairytale behind all of the others, as equally dark and disturbing, but thankfully, also with its eventual happy ever after.

This truly is an amazing novel, a fine example of what can be achieved with an idea, research, passion, and an immense talent. My favourite by Kate Forsyth so far, but this in no way diminishes her other novels. Her storytelling is brave and bold, and always rendered with exquisit beauty. We are so lucky she decided to share this part of herself with the world.

The Wild Girl is book 30 of my #aww2017 reading challenge.

[Francesca · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5/5

The Wild Girl, straordinario romanzo di Kate Forsyth, è la storia dei fratelli Grimm e di come sia andato formandosi il loro celeberrimo libro di fiabe.

La storia è ambientata nella Germania centrale, nel XIX secolo.
Dortchen Wild vive con le sue cinque sorelle e i genitori a Cassel. La migliore amica di Dortchen, Lotte Grimm, abita proprio nella casa accanto, e quando i fratelli di Lotte, Wilhelm e Jakob, tornano a casa dai loro studi, la dodicenne Dortchen si innamora segretamente di Wilhelm.
Nel novembre 1806, gli eserciti di Napoleone occupano Cassel, esercitando una pressione terribile per l’economia della città.
Incapace di trovare lavoro sotto il nuovo regime, Wilhelm comincia a raccogliere storie popolari per preservarle e pubblicarle, mentre suo fratello Jakob supporta tutta la sua famiglia grazie al suo misero salario da bibliotecario.

Di solito si crede che le fiabe dei Grimm siano state raccontate loro da varie persone mentre i fratelli viaggiavano in diverse parti della Germania, oppure altre scritte da loro stessi.
In realtà, diverse storie furono raccontate a Wilhelm Grimm proprio dalla giovane Dortchen Wild – ed è obbligo ricordare che molte fiabe come noi le abbiamo conosciute da bambini non sono le originali, molto più dure e cupe, ma versioni edulcorate per l’infanzia.

Questo romanzo è stata una sorpresa, e assolutamente positiva.
Ciò che sembra una storia semplice, è invece un esame straziante della violenza e dei suoi effetti, di un periodo storico difficile, dell’importanza delle storie.

Le guerre napoleoniche forniscono un ricco sfondo alla storia, ma il vero fascino è come la Forsyth sia riuscita a ricostruire in modo dettagliato e affatto realistico la vita del tempo, la quotidianità domestica, gli incontri sociali, i rapporti cordiali e affettuosi tra le sorelle, i paesaggi, così come i soprusi e l’annichilimento subito dalle donne dell’epoca.

Oltre a questo scenario, alla descrizione delle sofferenze di un popolo, alla narrazione delle fiabe, c’è la bella storia d’amore tra Dortchen e Wilhelm, straziante a volte, ma molto dolce in altri (mai melensa o noiosa) e soprattutto la storia personale di Dortchen stessa, segnata da eventi oscuri e drammatici alternati a momenti più leggeri e delicati.

Il vero punto forte del tutto, infatti, sono proprio i personaggi.
Kate Forsyth riesce abilmente a dare vita a personaggi e a coinvolgere il lettore nella loro gioia, paura, dolore o rabbia.
Dortchen all’inizio è una ragazza spensierata e felice, ma i disagi lungo la sua adolescenza, le angherie e violenze del padre, uomo terribile e raccapricciante, la fanno diventare una giovane donna schiva e remissiva, ma questo non le impedisce di essere anche altruista e gentile.
Lo sviluppo del personaggio è straordinario, toccante e dolorosissimo – le pagine più oscure del romanzo sconvolgono il lettore, lasciandogli spazi emozionali sorprendentemente bui e violenti –, tanto che è sorprendente come la ragazza riesca a resistere, a farsi coraggio e forza.

Forse la chiave sta nell’affermazione della stessa Dortchen:

‘Stories are important too,’ Dortchen said. ‘Stories help make sense of things. They make you believe you can do things.’ Once again she felt a sense of frustration at not knowing the right words to express what she meant. ‘They help you imagine that things may be different, that if you just have enough courage… or enough faith… or goodness… you can change things for the better.’

Trovo questo passaggio stupendo, è una dichiarazione di poetica straordinaria: nonostante tutto il male, storico o personale, quello che sopravvive e può dare l’esempio e la forza alla fine sono le storie, ed è per questo che la loro memoria non può essere cancellata, offuscata, ma devono sopravvivere, perdurare oltre il tempo e oltre chi le ha raccontate, perché non perdano il loro valore salvifico.

Parecchie volte, leggendo questo libro, mi sono ritrovata a pensare a Tender Morsels di Margo Lanagan, per i simili oltraggi subiti dalle protagoniste.
Similmente, entrambe le autrici sembrano suggerire che l’unico atto per sopravvivere è il rifugio in un mondo altro (una sorta di locus amoenus naturale e magico per la Lanagan, l’amore e le fiabe per la Forsyth), ma è altrettanto necessario trovare il coraggio anche di tornare, o restare, nella realtà del mondo, pur con tutto il suo male, per tramandare la magia, i racconti, i sogni e la speranza, altrimenti tutto sarebbe davvero perduto, inutile, fine a se stesso.

Un meraviglioso romanzo, scritto impeccabilmente, che non lascia indifferenti, dolcissimo e straziante.

[Lauren Keegan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Once upon a time…

The Wild Girl is a fanciful tale of love, overcoming adversity and following one’s dreams by Australian author, Kate Forsyth. A historical saga that spans almost two decades during the early nineteenth century, a time when Jane Austen’s stories were set. Prior to reading this story I’d never heard of Dortchen Wild nor did I know much about the Grimm brothers.

In The Wild Girl, Kate Forsyth provides a well-researched and believable portrayal of young Dortchen Wild, the girl next door to the famous Grimm brothers. This is the story of the origins of Grimm’s fairytales, the books that have been enjoyed by children and adults alike for more than a century. Set in Hessen-Cassel, a small kingdom in Germany, Dortchen is the third youngest of a family of about 8 children, all but one are female. The Wild children live next door to the Grimm family, a houseful of boys apart from young Lotte who is Dortchen’s best friend. Even at just 12 years old, Dortchen develops a big crush on one of the older brothers, Wilhelm, a sensitive guy who is passionate about storytelling and collecting old folk tales in conjunction with his older brother Jakob. Of course, given the age difference Wilhelm sees Dortchen as a sisterly figure for many years and it’s not until Dortchen reaches her late teens that sparks begin to fly.

Their relationship is set against the backdrop of War, the invasion of the French and the Germans yearning to retain their language, customs and religion. The Wild family are struggling financially, but with their pharmacology shop they are much better of f than the Grimm family whose eldest boys struggle to find work and hope to avoid enlistment in the war.

Dortchen has quite a difficult upbringing. She takes a liking to creating medicines and collecting herbs in the footsteps of her father’s profession but he is a controlling, abusive man. Dortchen has a strong desire to help those in need, particularly the Grimm family and her rebellious nature often makes her the target of her father’s temper. She is the scapegoat of the family. But as her mother’s health deteriorates and her older sisters get married and leave home her responsibilities increase and her father’s abuse is amplified. Dortchen is the victim of emotional, physical and sexual abuse. It was difficult to read this portion of the book, but I think Forsyth provided a very accurate portrayal of the control dynamics of Dortchen’s father and the changes in her behaviour. It was very clever how Forsyth weaves the fairytales throughout the broader story as Dortchen’s cry for help, her attempts to communicate the extent of her suffering. Dortchen changes from a bright, vivacious storyteller to a anguished, withdrawn and subservient daughter. It was depressing to read of these changes and the isolation she experienced during this time, including the distancing between herself and Wilhelm. Forsyth has quite sensitively addressed the very serious issue of sexual abuse and its effects on Dortchen’s emotional health and her personality and ability to form trusting relationships with others.

The Wild Girl is a long story, there are times when the pacing is a little slow which isn’t unusual for a historical novel, especially one that spans such a long period of time. I did feel the ending was dragged out a little, but I can understand that the story is to reflect the facts that are known about Dortchen and Wilhelm during that time. It was well worth the wait though and I finished the book with a smile on my face and many, many fairytales drifting in and out of my mind- makes me want to collect all these stories myself! Luckily the Grimm brothers did all the hard work and so all I have to do is order a few collections online!

An engaging historical novel about fairytales, love, despair and hope that at times reminded me of Little Women- only a little darker. My first Forsyth novel, but it won’t be my last. I highly recommend this tale.

The end.

[Sophie Masson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Against an intricately-crafted tapestry of early nineteenth-century German daily life and tumultuous, tragic historical events, the story of star-crossed lovers Dortchen Wild and Wilhelm Grimm unfolds with a kind of dreamy, haunting precision. Dortchen, one of the younger daughters of a harsh, autocratic apothecary and his laudanum-addled wife, is a next door neighbour of the Grimms, a poor yet proud orphaned family and is good friends with the only Grimm girl, Lotte. (Interestingly, in a rather fairy-tale symmetry, on the Wild side, it's a family of girls with only one boy, Rudolf; on the Grimm side, a family of boys with only one girl, Lotte.)
Meeting Lotte's handsome and gentle older brother Wilhelm when she's still only very young, Dortchen immediately develops a major crush on him which over the course of the years ripens into what seems to be hopeless love, for even when Wilhelm starts noticing her, Dortchen knows her tyrant of a father will never agree to her marrying a Grimm, on acount of their poverty but also because of his instinctive dislike of them. And the Napoleonic wars thundering through the small duchy of Hessen-Cassel do not leave much time or space for love, with the families, like most in Europe, pawns in the games of the powerful, and the grandiose, deadly ambitions of 'the Corsican Ogre.'

But there is a way to be close--through the stories Wilhelm and his brother Jakob are gathering in their region--stories of magic, love, sadness, terror and hope--the traditional stories which will eventually become famous under the Grimm name. Dortchen is a gifted storyteller, with a storehouse of extraordinary tales, and she rapidly becomes one of Wilhelm's primary sources. Passionate and independent, she is also strongly devoted to her family, and though she's afraid of her menacing father, who sardonically calls her 'the wild girl' and tries to beat that wildness out of her, she is still determined that he will not thwart her. She and Wilhelm will find a way, somehow. Hope is strong in her--until one terrible day, when something happens that changes the course of her life, and make it very hard for that happy ever after ending she's so longed for..Is all lost for ever?

Emotionally acute and moving, with its finely-rendered portrait of family and neighbourhood life, this involving historical novel, which is based on extensive research, also gives readers a completely unexpected picture of the background to the famous Grimm tales, and restores the unjustly forgotten Dortchen Wild to her rightful place in the history of these stories: more than Wilhelm's muse, more than his inspiration, she was a true source, whose telling was more than a mere framework. For her actual words are used in many of the stories; and in this novel, Kate Forsyth has given back a voice to the Wild Girl, a voice that rings clearly across the centuries.
Highly recommended.