The Armless Maiden: And Other Tales for Childhood's Survivors

by Terri Windling (editor), Kara Dalkey, Ellen Steiber

An exploration of the benefits of a fantasy life for victims of childhood abuse combines the works of such authors as Charles de Lint, Jane Yolen, and Steven Gould with essays on the transforming powers of fairy tales

Genres: Fantasy, Short Stories, Fairy Tales, Fiction, Anthologies, Essays, Retellings

384 pages, Paperback

First published April 1, 1995

About the author

Terri Windling is an American editor, artist, essayist, and the author of books for both children and adults. Windling has won nine World Fantasy Awards, the Mythopoeic Award, the Bram Stoker Award, and her anthology The Armless Maiden, a fiction collection for adult survivors of child abuse, appeared on the shortlist for the James Tiptree, Jr. Award. She was also honored with SFWA's Soltice Award in 2010, a lifetime achievement award for "significant contributions to the speculative fiction field as a writer, editor, artist, educator, and mentor". Windling's work has been translated into French, German, Spanish, Italian, Czech, Lithuanian, Turkish, Russian, Japanese, and Korean.

In the American publishing field, Windling is one of the primary creative forces behind the mythic fiction resurgence that began in the early 1980s—first through her work as an innovative editor for the Ace and Tor Books fantasy lines; secondly as the creator of the Fairy Tales series of novels (featuring reinterpretations of classic fairy tale themes by Jane Yolen, Steven Brust, Pamela Dean, Patricia C. Wrede, Charles de Lint, and others); and thirdly as the editor of over thirty anthologies of magical fiction. She is also recognized as one of the founders of the urban fantasy genre, having published and promoted the first novels of Charles de Lint, Emma Bull, and other pioneers of the form.

With Ellen Datlow, Windling edited 16 volumes of The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror (1986–2003), an anthology series that reached beyond the boundaries of genre fantasy to incorporate magic realism, surrealism, poetry, and other forms of magical literature. Datlow and Windling also edited the Snow White, Blood Red series of literary fairy tales for adult readers, as well as many anthologies of myth & fairy tale inspired fiction for younger readers (such as The Green Man, The Faery Reel, and The Wolf at the Door). Windling also created and edited the Borderland series for teenage readers.

As an author, Windling's fiction includes The Wood Wife (winner of the Mythopoeic Award for Novel of the Year) and several children's books: The Raven Queen, The Changeling, A Midsummer Night's Faery Tale, The Winter Child, and The Faeries of Spring Cottage. Her essays on myth, folklore, magical literature and art have been widely published in newsstand magazines, academic journals, art books, and anthologies. She was a contributor to The Oxford Companion to Fairy Tales, edited by Jack Zipes.

As an artist, Windling specializes in work inspired by myth, folklore, and fairy tales. Her art has been exhibited across the US, as well as in the UK and France.

Windling is the founder of the Endicott Studio, an organization dedicated to myth-inspired arts, and co-editor (with Midori Snyder) of The Journal of Mythic Arts. She also sits on the board of the Mythic Imagination Institute. A former New Yorker, Windling spend many years in Tucson, Arizona, and now lives in Devon, England. She is married to dramatist Howard Gayton, co-director of the Ophaboom Theatre Company.

Reviews

[Althea Ann · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm a big fan of Terri Windling, and make an effort to seek out her anthologies. Thus, I got this one. I'd heard rave reviews of it - people saying "This is the one that made a difference in my life!"
I was a bit quizzical about that, because for me, that was 'Bordertown.' And for me, it remains Bordertown, although I can see why other people might need this book more. I was lucky enough to always be wanting to run 'to' - not having to run 'from.'
This book is on the theme of child abuse. It's kind of a rough read - not that any one of the stories is so particularly awful, but when read all in one go - that's a lot of child abuse. It's emotionally difficult. Terri Windling's personal, autobiographical essay about why she chose to do this anthology is powerful, touching, and almost shockingly revealing.
As with any anthology, some of the stories are much better than others, but overall, it's a very good anthology.

Contents:

The armless maiden; The hero's journey /Midori Snyder
Bedtime story /Lisel Mueller
Allerleirauh /Jane Yolen
Snow White to the prince /Delia Sherman
She sleeps in a tower /Tanith Lee
Briar rose (sleeping beauty) /Anne Sexton
In the house of my enemy /Charles de Lint
Fear of falling /Susan Palwick
Princess in Puce /Annita Harlan
The stepsister's story /Emma Bull
The session /Steven Gould
The mirror speaks /Jane Yolen
The juniper tree /Peter Straub
Dolls /Guy Summertree Veryzer
This is us, excellent /Mark Richards
Saturn /Sharon Olds
The twelve-windowed tower /Silvana Siddali
Now I lay me /Sharon Olds
Now I lay me down to sleep /Ellen Kushner
Reading the Brothers Grimm to Jenny /Lisel Mueller
Knives; Scars /Munro Sickafoos
The pangs of love /Jane Gardam
Brother and sister /Terri Windling
The face in the cloth /Jane Yolen
Their father /Gwen Strauss
The chrysanthemum robe /Kara Dalkey
Watching the bobolinks /Caroline Stevermer
The boy who needed heroes /Kristine Kathryn Rusch
Wolves /Sonia Keizs
Wolf's heart; The story I hadn't planned to write /Tappan King
Gretel in darkness /Louise Gluck
The lily and the weaver's heart /Nancy Etchemendy
Silvershod /Ellen Steiber
The lion and the lark /Patricia A. McKillip
The iron shoes /Johnny Clewell
The green children /Terri Windling
Guardian neighbor /Lynda Barry
The little dirty girl /Joanna Russ
Donkeyskin /Terri Windling
In the night country; A matter of seeing /Ellen Steiber
Surviving childhood /Terri Windling
Dream catcher /Will Shetterly.


Those who liked this book may also want to read this more-recent, but thematically similar story by Genevieve Valentine: http://www.apex-magazine.com/armless-...

[Charlotte Kersten]

So What’s It About?

This is an anthology edited by Terri Winding, the theme of which is child abuse. Most of the stories are fairy tale retellings.

CW for all kinds of child abuse.

What I Thought

There are too many stories to do them all justice with a review, so I thought I’d give my overall impressions of the collection and mention my favorites. The most interesting thing about this book besides its overall focus on abuse is how tonally varied it is, with stories that range from comical to incredibly brutal. There are a few fairy tale retellings that are extremely silly in particular, and I do kind of question what these stories are doing in this collection, particularly the story about the Little Mermaid’s younger sister and the modernized Cinderella retelling. They didn’t really have anything to say about child abuse in comparison to the rest of the collection, and they mostly just gave me emotional whiplash. There are a few other outlier stories, either being entirely non-fantastical and about abuse or being fantastical and not about abuse. The end result feels a bit disjointed and messy.

As with any collection, there were some strong stories and some weak ones; right now, I’ll just mention my favorites of the collection:

The Session by Steven Gould - Snow White has a therapy session with the Mirror. I like that this one gives a famous, classic princess the interiority/internal conflict that often seems absent in such princesses in fairy tales, and it shows that she is still struggling with her experiences after “happily ever after.” It’s an interesting addition that she made up the evil stepmother because she couldn’t deal with the fact that her abuser was her true mother. I’m generally just a sucker for the “fictional character goes to therapy to deal with the kinds of things we take for granted as totally normal in fiction” trope so this was a good fit for me.

The Lily and the Weaver’s Heart by Nancy Etchemendy - a girl struggles with self-hated because she only has one eye and goes on a journey where she realizes her innate worth. This one is told in lovely language and features a very sweet romance. The overarching message about self-acceptance and disability could have been written very patronizingly in a lesser story, but this one worked, at least for me.

The Lion and the Lark by Patricia Mckillip - this is one of the outliers that doesn’t really have anything to do with child abuse, but it’s Patricia McKillip so I loved it anyways. It features her trademark beautiful language and charming magical details, and Lark is a brave and original heroine. There’s also a great touch of humor with the overeager princess who rescues Lark’s husband at the end of the story.

The Dream Catcher by Will Shetterly - a girl writes a letter to her school bully about her experience of abuse. This one is very short but I really liked how the writing mimicked a kid’s writing and the framing device really worked for me, especially when it was revealed at the end that she wrote the letter out of empathy for the bully’s own experiences of abuse and with the goal of the letter protecting him like her grandmother now protects her.

I’d say it’s definitely a collection worth checking out if you’re interested in the overall theme because the good stories are really good and the less-good ones aren’t terrible at all. I’m glad I’ve finally read a Terri Winding collection and I’m looking forward to reading more.

[Juushika · Rating 3 out of 5]

In 46 stories, poems, memoirs, and essays, this a collection of childhood suffering and survival as explored in and through fairy tales, from wicked stepmothers and licentious kings to magical girls and wolf-hearted boys. The Armless Maiden is desperately well-intended, and succeeds and fails on account. Its subject is already prevalent in fairy tales and their retellings, and it well deserves to be collected and fully explored—but this collection pushes thematic into the realm of didactic. Such a direct focus on this theme renders it ineffective: it strips away the magic of the fairy tale metaphor and denies the subtleties of interpretation that could make these stories meaningful and convincing; it hammers home its message with all the grace of a disease-of-the-week or Lifetime movie. Windling's brief, blatant introductions to the short stories only exaggerate this flaw—skip them if you can. The result is too often artless, shallow where it should be resonant, edging up on sensationalized and cheaply cathartic, and simply not all that it could or should be.

Yet somehow, the anthology as a whole maintains a certain effective atmosphere. Perhaps it's that theme does beg collection, because it is so prevalent and so powerful—and so even a subpar collection is, in its way, rewarding. Perhaps its that not all the selections were written for The Armless Maiden—and the reprints are often the best, the least transparent, the least didactic, of the lot. Certainly it's that Windling's arrangement is fantastic—she's a practiced and polished editor, and this anthology flows beautifully: a varied pace (with a particularly superb ratio of poetry to prose) keeps it fresh, while thematic and tonal growth give it forward momentum. I prefered the poems, with Delia Sherman's Snow White to the Prince and Terri Windling's Brother and Sister among my favorites; the prose is less successful, but Peter Straub's The Juniper Tree and Joanna Russ's The Dirty Little Girl are welcome exceptions, and many of the brief memoirs are quite strong. Some of the short stories are accompanied by essays by the author, and while this theme can stand up to analysis, these analyses have an unfortunate knack for wandering from insights to truisms. The exception is Windling's remarkable afterward, which captures the balance between the metaphorical and literal, the implied and actual, of fairy tales themselves and the readers and writers who interpret them. The problem is that so little else in the anthology finds this balance—but other fairy tales and retellings, even if they have a less obvious focus on child abuse, do. The Armless Maiden has atmosphere and intent, but its content is mixed, with a few standout selections but many more which are disappointing. It's compelling and effective at the time, but leaves only a shallow final impression. I recommend it with those caveats: I applaud what Windling tries to do, and would rather read this collection than none—but I would have preferred, and the theme deserves, something that goes beyond good intentions, something more impassioned than didactic, sometime of greater art and impact.

[Willa Guadalupe Grant · Rating 4 out of 5]

A good book for those who have survived childhood sexual abuse- I love this book for one of the stories. I actually found out about this book when I wrote to the author regarding a story she had in another collection & she suggested this book to me. This is not a book for everyone, one of the book sellers I contacted to get this out of print book refused to sell it to me because she had decided that it was too "uplifting". She did not like the idea presented that abuse of this sort was something you could heal from. If you are a survivor and feel that you can heal and want to heal then this is the book for you. The stories are just that, stories, not real life or any one persons experience. A book worth having.

[H. Anne Stoj · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have a lot of favorite books and they're favorites for different reasons. Like many people, I grew up with faerytales. Some of them, I have no doubt, scared me. Whether it was the story itself or the illustrations. Some struck notes that have carried on for reasons I could probably analyze and no doubt do in my own writing as faerytale themes, along with myth and religion, crop up constantly. I don't remember if I read The Armless Maiden as a child. I do know I read a lot of stories that went beyond the Disney "classics" and recall my dad reading stories from 1001 Arabian Nights out of a 14 book collection published in the '20's or so. Needless to say, I didn't understand a good deal of what was doing on in the Arabian Nights and I'm still hoping I'll get through them one day.

Windling's collection is one of my favorites. The other collections of faertale retellings, like Black Heart, Ivory Bones, probably started me on the love for retelling. For realizing that you didn't have to stop loving the story. And that, no doubt, led to the interest and affair with the history of the stories themselves.

The Armless Maiden does, as others have mentioned, contain stories about abuse. If you look at faerytales, most of them do in some shape or another. Some of have been cleaned up a bit for various reasons and by various people, but typically someone is hurting someone else. Is that the reason why I connect so deeply? Maybe, in part. Maybe I recognize the agony of being alone, or wanting rescue, or being unheard or disbelieved. It's all entirely possible. Or, perhaps, it's simply part of being human.

All of the stories are amazing in their own way. I think that each will touch the reader for different reasons. Some will have deeper connections than others. These are my personal favorites:

She Sleeps in a Tower - Tanith Lee
Dolls - Guy Summertree Veryzer (poem)
Reading The Brothers Grimm To Jenny - Lisa Mueller (poem)
The Little Dirty Girl - Joanna Russ
Donkeyskin - Terri Windling (prose poem)
In The Night Country - Ellen Steiber

But really, all the stories are worth reading. All the poems worth considering. It's an excellent collection and if it can be found, it should be.

[Astrid Yrigollen · Rating 2 out of 5]

Disappointing. This rating is only based on the subject matter was a little to dark for me. Very graphic sexual abuse depicted in a lot of the stories. Child molestation to me is a creepy subject so I found my self cringing through a lot of the "grittier" stories and skipping the parts that made my flesh crawl. There are a few stories that do not have sexual abuse in them but they do have extreme bloody violence. I thought that the whole book was going to be more like "Princess in Puce" which is why this book did not get a 1 star. Highly disappointing with Tanith Lee's contribution to this anthology which she turned Sleeping beauty in to a a child prostitute. I know , I know that was the challenge and project for the writers but still high on the ICK factor for me. Just not a book I enjoyed.

[Suzanne Moses]

Sometimes you have to read someone else's story in order to face your own. This book was that for me.

[Kim Kaso · Rating 5 out of 5]

I remember reading this in an Adirondack chair under a big shade tree over the Memorial Day weekend while on a retreat at the Bishop's Ranch in Healdsburg, CA. I read each story slowly, listening to the distinctive voices of each author, absorbing their take on such a dark topic, yet finding hope and redemption in many of the stories. Terry Windling and Ellen Datlow are among my all-time favorite editors, I appreciate the many wonderful thematic anthologies they have put together down through the years. I recommend their work highly.

[Jessica · Rating 4 out of 5]

The stories are all fairy tales or pieces based on fairy tales that explore the themes of child abuse and the lasting effects not just on the abusees but the witnesses and occasionally the abusers. It was a very powerful work, and I recommend it for anyone with a love of fairy tales and a love for all children.

[Julie · Rating 5 out of 5]

The stories were hit or miss for me, and two of them I skipped. I still give this book five stars. It is a collection of validation and hope. The afterword by Terri Windling fills a need with clarity and honesty. The Dirty Little Girl by Joanna Russ brought me to tears while I was reading in public. You might not want to read this book where you can't cry in peace.

[Jennifer · Rating 4 out of 5]

Some of these short stories are a reinterpretation of traditional fairy tales and the others have a similar quality. Most deal with the issue of childhood abuse and deprivation. They are well written and many are thought provoking as well as enjoyable.

[Marisa · Rating 5 out of 5]

These are not the fairy tales we heard as children. These explore the darker side of life and deal with abuse in some way, shape or form.

[mar ♡ · Rating 4 out of 5]

Although i have a few stories that i've skipped, I will say that I finished reading this book.
In this collection authors take fairytales and folktales to retell them with a focus on one especific topic: child abuse. Including some short essays and poetry, some of the stories are lighter and others discuss more serious and darker topics. I think it is important to remember that the purpose of this collection is in this: not hiding the struggles and dangers of childhood. Just like in the old fairytales where mothers sent their daughters to get killed and fathers cut their hands, etc. As the editor of the collection Terri Windling writes in the afterword:

It’s hard to look truth in the face. To look beneath the polished surface of things. Instead we live the Walt Disney version of life in which the scary bits are toned down, the dark corners are not peered into, the unpalatable is explained away. The Talmud tells us, "To look away from evil: is this not the sin of all 'good' people?"

If you like fairytales and/or folktales I think this collection becomes essential. To highlight the struggles of childhood by recovering this old stories and giving them a new life. I've also come across some wonderfully written stories and poems from both authors I knew already whose works i didn't know, or authors unknown to me that i've add to my reading list.

Some of my favorite works form this collection:
(as the collection deals with the topic of child abuse i'll add a content warning for some of these stories)
- The Juniper Tree by Peter Straub (cw). Beautiful writing, that even though it deals with a very heavy topic, I still couldn't stop reading. It may have little resemblance to the title fairytale, but I loved it's discussion on memories and writing. My favorite from the collection.
- Allerleirauh by Jane Yolen (cw). A short yet strong retelling of "A thousand furs" or "Donkeyskin", and very sad as well.
- The Arnless Maiden by Midori Snyder.
- She Sleeps in a Tower by Tanith Lee (cw). Deeply upseting, yet interesting reworking of Sleeping Beauty.
- In the House of My Enemy by Charles de Lint (cw). Again, very upsetting and perhaps the most realistic of all the stories (real as in less supernatural or fantastical).
- The Stepsister's Story by Emma Bull. This time a lovely and heartbreaking poem.
- The Twelve-Windowed Tower by Silvana Siddali (cw).
- The Little Dirty Girl by Joanna Russ.
- Silvershod by Ellen Steiber. A lovely poem, that was like a fairytale written in verse.

[Susan]

17 • The Armless Maiden • short story by Midori Snyder
36 • Allerleirauh • short story by Jane Yolen
42 • She Sleeps in a Tower • short story by Tanith Lee
50 • In the House of My Enemy • [Newford] • (1993) • novelette by Charles de Lint ***
71 • Princess in Puce • short story by Annita Harlan
87 • The Session • short story by Steven Gould
96 • The Juniper Tree • [Blue Rose] • (1988) • novelette by Peter Straub
124 • This Is Us, Excellent • (1989) • short story by Mark Richards
133 • The Twelve-Windowed Tower • short story by Silvana Siddali
145 • Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep • short story by Ellen Kushner
155 • Knives • short story by Munro Sickafoose
173 • The Pangs of Love • (1990) • short story by Jane Gardam
183 • The Face in the Cloth • (1985) • short story by Jane Yolen
194 • The Chrysanthemum Robe • short story by Kara Dalkey
206 • The Boy Who Needed Heroes • short story by Kristine Kathryn Rusch
218 • Wolf's Heart • short story by Tappan King
228 • The Lily and the Weaver's Heart • short story by Nancy Etchemendy
252 • The Lion and the Lark • short story by Patricia A. McKillip
269 • The Green Children • short story by Terri Windling
279 • The Little Dirty Girl • (1982) • novelette by Joanna Russ
300 • In the Night Country • novella by Ellen Steiber
374 • Dream Catcher • short story by Will Shetterly

[Ken Wood · Rating 5 out of 5]

So, so many beautiful and devastating pieces to be found in this book. My favorite being 'In the House of My Enemy' by Charles de Lint. Emphasizes how fairytales have always been about real people and the real things they go through and how they find ways of surviving.

"Life's an act of magic,too...'If there's no magic, there's no meaning.' Without magic--or call it wonder, mystery, natural wisdom--nothing has any depth. It's all just surface."

[Ciel · Rating 3 out of 5]

Certainly the first story in this anthology must be one of the most difficult ones. I'm not sure I would've started out so hard and fast myself, for fear of turning people off completely. I read a few of the next stories, but found myself unwilling to expose myself to stories that, instead of feeling healing, felt more triggering than anything else. Done and done.

[Lara · Rating 3 out of 5]

Fairy-tale retellings and revamps built around surviving and confronting abuse were never going to be easy reads. This is a very good collection, but can go to very dark places, so be advised. Especially the Tanith Lee take on Sleeping Beauty, which very nearly made me physically sick.

[Nicole Corazon · Rating 4 out of 5]

Some of these stories are going to haunt my brain for awhile, in ways both good and bad. There were some stories that were a little hard to read, and those were probably the ones that fit in best with the theme.

[Molly · Rating 2 out of 5]

Love it in concept. In practice, as with many anthologies, it's kind of a mixed bag. A few standout stories, but most aren't particularly memorable.

[Amy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Through the process of transcribing oral fairy tales to the page, author interpretation, the 17th century appropriation of tales for the teaching and socialization of children, and finally Disney's animation and sentimentalization, fairy tales have been cleaned, lightened, beautified, and made "safe". Much of what I've read on fairy tales this semester has focused on peeling back the layers of this process to find the true nature of these stories: which in their original forms could be gory, bawdy, and unapologetically dark, and were often metaphors for, and commentary on, the common struggles of their audiences.

The Armless Maiden hones in specifically on the darkness within fairy tales that involves adults' cruelty to, and abuse of, children— and on the fact that these adults are all too often those a child should be safest from: parents or guardians. Cinderella's stepmother reduces her from daughter to slave, while her father does nothing; Hansel and Gretel's parents abandon them in a forest to save food for themselves; Donkeyskin's father becomes obsessed with her and rapes her; Snow White's stepmother repeatedly tries to kill her in a fit of jealousy. The stories, essays, and poems in this collection highlight the ugliness of abuse that is a central component in so many of the fairy tales we know. They chart the slow transformation of these children from victim to victor… though victory is not always a triumph of justice or revenge: for a childhood survivor of abuse, victory can be safety, and self-reliance, and self-acceptance.

While I loved this collection, I do feel like the order of the tales may have lessened the impact of the overall message. The focus of the stories in the beginning was primarily on sexual abuse, and then, halfway through, it shifted to being primarily about physical abuse, and toward the end, it shifted once again back to sexual abuse. For me this had the effect of a digression, rather than a deliberate change. It also seemed to me that there were two basic "kinds" of stories in this collection: those that relied more heavily on metaphor and the stylized prose form of the fairy tale (i.e., McKillip's The Lion and The Lark and Stephen Gould's The Session), which had less emotional impact; and those more literal and direct, which often had considerably more emotional intensity (i.e., Joanna Russ's The Little Dirty Girl and Charles de Lint's In the House of My Enemy).

Both of these types of story served their purposes within the anthology well: I'm not particularly partial to either, but they were scattered throughout in what seemed a haphazard way, and to me this made for a somewhat uneven reading experience. Many of these stories complemented one another stylistically, and built on similar themes, and I feel that if they'd been arranged more carefully to take advantage of this, the overall impression of the book could have been even more powerful.

Overall, though, I found The Armless Maiden to be a beautiful, wrenching, and atmospheric collection, the retellings complemented nicely by essays and poems, the whole effect one that simultaneously highlighted the horror and darkness that hides under the magic of the fairy tale (and the magic trick of the family unit) and offered the hope of a path out of that darkness.

[Chris Presta-Valachovic · Rating 5 out of 5]

This anthology needs to get an epub release! All of the Ellen Datlow/Terri Windling faery tale anthologies have made it to epub -- this solo-editor outing from Windling, long out of print, is the remaining exception. The stories were tragic & haunting (my copy was "misplaced" during a move; whoever ended up with it, I hope they enjoyed it as much as I did) -- I remember one Newford story from Charles deLint, with Jilly taking in a pregnant runaway. Other tales included retakes on classic fairy tales such as The Little Mermaid & "Brother, Sister".

If you have a copy of this book, hold onto it! It's a wonderful anthology that should've never have gone out of print, & needs to be converted to epub yesterday!

[Nicole · Rating 3 out of 5]

All in all, I found this collection really captivating. I love fairytales - particularly in their darker, original forms. And this anthology presents several versions of original tales from around the world, all focused on heroines that have had to overcome brutality, loss, subjugation, etc. Even some of the modern spins of classic tales were really good (women recovering from child abuse, etc). As happens with an anthology, there were several stories that easily lost my interest (so I skimmed), and I also skimmed through a lot of the prose entries. But definitely a collection that I had to stick with through to the last story...

[Scott · Rating 5 out of 5]

Diverse collection of stories (plus a few poems and personal recollections) by authors who understand that hell is for children and that you can never escape your childhood, only survive it. Many retellings of fairy tales. I read this over a long period of time, so I don't remember details on all the entries, but there was only one piece that I disliked. Most of the stories were of girls but there were enough of boys that I didn't feel like they were being ignored, as they tend to be when dealing with matters of this nature. Highly recommended for all "survivors."

[Kimberly · Rating 1 out of 5]

Borrowed this book from a friend and was reminded that the fairy tales we recited and remembered as children weren't always happy...they were dark. A mature collection of fairy tales that was grim but gripping at every turn of the page.

Some of the stories were so dark that it would be a couple of days before I picked the book up again. Don't read the book if you are looking for something uplifting, sweet and light.

[Jami · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not doing my usual breakout, because unless I do it as I go for short story collections, it's a blurry whole.
There are some great stories in here, some brutal but amazing ones, and some...why was this even included? ones. About par for the course for collections. Still, there's a lot to be said for a collection that tries to bring awareness and a relieving whimsy to such a serious topic as child abuse.

[~~*Julie Kawalec-pearson · Rating 3 out of 5]

I really liked this book- It made me think of all the stories I read when I was little and how I really htought everything had a happy ending. Well, thats just not life is it. I liked how these ancient fairy tales really spun a new life into some of the new concerns I have about society. Its a good read.

[Xio · Rating 2 out of 5]

I keep this around to someday give away. I also like the idea of it. There are decent tales here--from what I've read--but nothing grabbing like Angela Carter's Bloody Chamber or Poe, even better, and so on.

[Ladan · Rating 2 out of 5]

I grew up on fairy tales and loved them. Picked this short story collection up for some quick reading on a holiday. Some very dark tales with similar themes throughout the first half of the book. A couple more creative pieces near the end.

[Snail in Danger (Sid) Nicolaides · Rating 3 out of 5]

Maybe more like 3.5. An interesting concept. Some of the stories seemed a little too much like eachother, though. And many of the stories are hard to read. (In terms of themes and subject matter, not actual difficulty.)

[Avena · Rating 4 out of 5]

A mix of tragic stories of hope and of redemption. Sometimes hard to stomach this is a collection of dark, raw tales that will have you look at more accepted fairy tales and wonder what is happening under the surface.