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By Catherynne M. Valente.
Begun 17 May 2008; finished c. 29 May.
I do not remember much of The Orphan’s Tales: In the Night Garden, save that it was a collection of myths told by a young, ostracized orphan girl to a boy prince (and to us readers), and it was wonderful. Unlike The Book of Lost Things, which repackaged existing fairy tales into an average story, Catherynne M. Valente succeeded overwhelmingly in spinning her own mythos and telling true fairy tales.
Tags: fairy tale, mythopoeia
By John Connolly.
Begun 03 Mar 2008; finished 05 Mar.
Read for the Author A-Z Challenge.
Last year a good friend urged me to read The Book of Lost Things by John Connolly, so I did in March. I’m writing this review half a year after I read the book, so my memory of it is sketchy.
Briefly, the story is about a boy called David who is recently bereaved of his mother. In his grief, he enters a fantastical world in hopes of bringing his mother back to life. His quest towards this goal leads him to many adventures, and he becomes involved in the fables, legends and fairy tales that are familiar to us. However, those fairy tales have taken on a dark, twisted nature, and familiar characters such as Little Red Riding Hood, Hansel and Gretel, and Sleeping Beauty, deviate from the stereotypes of their fairy tales. The Book of Lost Things is essentially a coming-of-age story, a “fairy tale for adults” that reinvents the traditional fairy tales in the same manner as the movie Pan’s Labyrinth or the Fables graphic novel series.
Tags: fairy tale