Letter From An Unknown Woman – Stefan Zweig

Stefan Zweig is an author I have seen many people rave about and yet have always felt that, for some unknown reason, his work might be a little too high brow for me and I wouldn’t enjoy it. It was with trepidation that I started Letter From An Unknown Woman, a collection of four of his works, when it was chosen for Hear Read This. Well if all of Zweig’s writing is like this I have been a fool to have not read him for so long, I discovered his writing is wonderful and was somewhat spellbound by this collection.

Pushkin Press, paperback, 2013 (originally 1922, 1911, 1982 & 1900) , short stories, translated by Anthea Bell, 208 pages, bought by myself for myself

I have called Letter From An Unknown Woman a collection of Zweig’s works rather than a short story collection as the title story really verges on the length of a novella, and at the opposite end of the spectrum (and indeed the book) Forgotten Dreams is barely ten pages long, both A Story Told in Twilight and The Debt Paid Late are roughly the same length. Yet one thing can be said for Zweig, that no matter how long or short his works are the prose is simply gorgeous, the stories take you in directions you don’t expect and each one has an emotional intelligence and range that will have you feeling like you have read a novel rather than something much shorter. In this collection they all also tend to look at lost loves from a state of hindsight, which can make them all the more mysterious, powerful, romanticised or bittersweet.

My child died yesterday — for three days and three nights I wrestled with death for that tender little life, I sat for forty hours at his bedside while the influenza racked his poor, hot body with fever. I put cool compresses on his forehead, I held his restless little hands day and night. On the third evening I collapsed. My eyes would not stay open any longer; I was unaware of it when they closed. I slept, sitting on my hard chair, for three or four hours, and in that time death took him. Now the sweet boy lies there in his narrow child’s bed, just as he died; only his eyes have been closed, his clever, dark eyes, and his hands are folded over his white shirt, while four candles burn at the four corners of his bed. I dare not look, I dare not stir from my chair, for when the candles flicker shadows flit over his face and his closed mouth, and then it seems as if his features were moving, so that I might think he was not dead after all, and will wake up and say something loving and childish to me in his clear voice. But I know that he is dead, I will arm myself against hope and further disappointment, I will not look at him again. I know it is true, I know my child died yesterday — so now all I have in the world is you, you who know nothing about me, you who are now amusing yourself without a care in the world, dallying with things and with people. I have only you, who never knew me, and whom I have always loved.

The whole opening paragraph of Letter From an Unknown Woman, and indeed the first paragraph in the collection, could in itself be flash fiction. Zweig instantly pulls us into the mind, through the pen, of a woman who is writing to a famous author, only known as ‘R’, which happens to arrive on his birthday. As R reads on we are given the vivid account of a woman who not only knew him and loved him yet who he has no memories of at all. You might think you know where this is going, you would be wrong.

This is one of the things that I loved most about his writing throughout, you never get what you think you are even when you try and second guess it with that knowledge. For example in the case of the mysterious letter writer we start learning about her love of his words as a young woman and then how she became infatuated and indeed believed they were destined to be together. Naturally we think ‘okay, crazy obsessive fan’ yet as the letter carries on we start to have our opinion completely altered and a very different story emerges. It’s beautiful, melancholic and also incredibly poignant in the very last paragraph, I defy you not be moved by it.

As I mentioned earlier this happens in all the tales in this collection. In Forgotten Dreams a man meets a woman he was in love with once again, you think you know what is coming and you don’t. The Debt Paid Late tells of a woman who taking some mountain air, after looking after her grandchildren for quite some time who had scarlet fever, where in a cafe she spots an actor she was infatuated with as a young girl, a time when she allowed herself to be led astray. The actor is now a withered old man and a town joke, how this affects the woman may not be how you think. I am teasing you terribly, but I really want you to go and read this collection.

I have left A Story Told in Twilight last simply because it was my favourite. Here a man recalls a time in his not so distant past when he was holidaying at a castle in Scotland staying with a well to do family, friends of his family. One night, just at twilight, a woman comes out of nowhere taking him by surprise and kissing him, this happens yet again and again each time so fast and so suddenly he never realises which of the ladies in the house it might be. He naturally becomes besotted and so must find his true love, you can of course expect twists and turns. I loved this one because it is the most gothic and the most fairy tale of the whole collection and those are two of my very favourite things. There is of course the mystery and the comical errors that our narrator makes to find out who this mystery mistress is.

I don’t remember just how I came to know this story. All I do know is that I was sitting here for a long time early this afternoon, reading a book, then putting it down again, drowsing in my dreams, perhaps sleeping lightly. And suddenly I saw figures stealing past the walls, and I could hear what they were saying and look into their lives.

The other things I loved about this collection were how much about writing they all are. We have people reaching back and telling stories to themselves and those they know. Two of the stories are told through letters, one of the main characters is an author, it seems the power of words resides behind each tale embedded in Zweig’s own prose, which I must say is stunningly translated by Anthea Bell. I also loved how it looks at hindsight and how we can romanticise things from the past or suddenly see how foolish we were.

If I was being super critical I would say that I would probably have put the short stories in reverse order as I think this would build the collections themes and power as you read a long. I also think it would mean you read the weaker of the tales first (which is still very good but seems slightly flimsy, though it was his first, at the end after the others) then enjoy The Debt Paid Late before being completely blown away by A Story Told in Twilight and then Letter From an Unknown Woman which I think are now two of my favourite short stories that I’ve read had the pleasure of reading so far. If I was ever in a position to have curate a collection of short stories published they would both be housed in it. If this is just a taste of the power and beauty of Zweig’s prose then I think we have a fabulous journey of stories ahead of us. If you have yet to read him then do.

If you would like to hear more opinions on Letters From an Unknown Woman then do listen to myself, Gav of Cwtch Books and Rob and Kate from Adventures With Words on Hear Read This here. Have you read this collection and if so what did you think? Have you seen the film of Letter From an Unknown Woman, it has Joan Fontaine who played the second Mrs De Winter in Hitchcock’s brilliant adaptation of Rebecca so I now really want to see it. Which other Stefan Zweig stories, collections or novels have you read as I think I am going to have to get my mitts on many more of them?

A Summer of Short Stories

I have fallen in love with short stories again this year. Not that I am sure I ever fell out of love with them. I think if anything I tended to read collections by authors I knew, and saw them rather like bonus scenes to the full novels, which I know is daft but it is true. It was rare that I would read a completely new to me authors collection, though when I did and they were like Lucy Wood’s Diving Belles (which if you haven’t read after the amount of times I have recommended it, you are bonkers and there may be no hope for you, ha) I was lost in them completely.

This year they have really come into their own though for me. During Fiction Uncovered I was introduced to several collections of which the standouts were longlisted The Way Out by Vicki Jarrett and one of the winners The Redemption of Galen Pike by Carys Davies, both of which I will be telling you about and raving about in due course.

Collections can be an interesting experience as some will blow you away and some will leave you cold, I hasten to add none leave you cold in the two I mention above, which can create an interesting reading experience of peaks and troughs. When a short story is amazing though it can blow your mind and as I said when I was talking about how intense reading taught me about my own read habits and that Sometimes a single short story in a collection can have as much power as a 500+ page novel, which is true.

I also think they could be the perfect way to get people back into reading more if they think they haven’t the time or that reading isn’t really for them. You can read a story or two on a commute, or when you are on the loo (sorry over sharing) or when you’re waiting in the car park for your partner to finish faffing around Homebase or any other DIY store, or clothes store if your partner is more into that than DIY or just on your lunch break and need a quick fiction fix.

They are a few pages of magic and so I am planning on reading lots more over (what is left of) the summer. Here are some, not all, of the collections I have been buying and others I have dusted off for just such a short story binge…

• Don’t Try This At Home by Angela Readman – This is a collection that The Beard bought me after I had heard great things about it from various lovely sorts on Twitter and also declared I wanted the cover art as bedding.
• The Isle of Youth by Laura Van Den Berg – I saw this collection from Daunt Books (who have a publishing house as well as gorgeous bookshops) out the corner of my eye, because the cover shimmers, in Waterstones in Newcastle where they have wonderful displays of eclectic books, so purchased it.
• The Iraqi Christ by Hassan Blasim – This collection won the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize last year (why all prizes don’t include short story collections I do not know) and my lovely pal Natalie was one of the judges and raved about it, a lot.
• Young Skins by Colin Barrett – This won last year’s Guardian First Book Prize and whilst it pains me that the author was born in the same year as me, 1982, and is so talented it does mean I can tick off a box on my BOTNS Bingo Summer Reading card. This also links nicely with…
• Things to Make and Break by May-Lan Tan – This was longlisted for last year’s Guardian First Book Award and was the public’s addition to the longlist. I read and really liked May-Lan Tan’s chapbook of two short stories Girly earlier this year and then randomly sat next to her at an event and had a lovely long chat about all sorts.
• The Not-Dead and The Saved by Kate Clanchy – I do not know a single person who has seen Clanchy read her stories that has not been in hysterics and in tears in both happy and sad ways. This was enough of a recommendation for me.
• An Account of the Decline of the Great Auk, According to One Who Saw It by Jessie Greengrass – One of the first books to come from the John Murray Originals imprint (the cover is stunning) which I want to read for the title, and title story, alone.
• Merciless Gods by Christos Tsiolkas – I love Tsiolkas’ writing and this is one of the collections I have been most excited about this year, it is out in September.
• Jellyfish by Janice Galloway – Almost everyone I know loves Janice Galloway so by default I am sure I will and I think short stories can sometimes be a rather wonderful way of trialling an author, or maybe trying them out sounds nicer.
• Your Father Sends His Love by Stuart Evers – Again all the right people have been raving about this.
• Stone Mattress by Margaret Atwood – Why on earth has this gone unread for so long, I am frankly embarrassed. She is a genius, we all know this, and this is meant to be a brilliant collection of nine tales.

Phew. You may notice that there aren’t any classics on this list, which I have realised is rather remiss of me. That said I am reviewing a modern classic collection next, so you’ll be hearing all about that. I have also been contemplating Hemingway’s short stories in September as I will be at some of his old hangouts and watering holes by Lake Michigan when I go on my road trip around some of northern America, we will see.

Have you read any of the above collections or other collections by some of those authors? What did you make of them? Are you a fan of the short story? As always I would love your short story recommendations be they new, recent or classic (I have a feeling many of you will mention Elizabeth McCracken’s Thunderstruck, which I have read and adored but am struggling to write a review of) so let me know which other collections I should look out for and why…

Poor Souls’ Light; Seven Curious Tales

Almost a year ago I told you about a collection of short stories entitled The Longest Night; Five Curious Tales. These were just the right sort of ghostly tales you need around Christmas and saw some authors I love such as Jenn Ashworth, Alison Moore and Emma Jane Unsworth who collectively self published it and went on spooky nights here there and everywhere telling these tales and discussing ghost stories. Well guess what? It has only come back for a second year. Last year it was five tales in homage, of sorts, to M.R. James; this year it is seven tales in homage (again of sorts) to Robert Aickman. Now as you know I have some issue with Aickman’s tales, so when I realised that I did a small wince before getting going…

Curious Tales, 2014, paperback, fiction, ghost stories, 140 pages, kindly sent by Emma Jane Unsworth

Having read Aickman I can see how the stories by Jenn Ashworth, Alison Moore, Johnny Mains, Tom Fletcher, Richard Hirst, Emma Jane Unsworth and M. John Harrison are all inspired by his works as they all have elements of the supernatural and the ‘weird’ about them. If, like me (as you may have seen recently), you find Aickman and the ‘weird’ a little too, erm, weird then fret not.

Even when the element of the strange rather than supernatural or ghostly is there, even in the most Aickman like tale Blossom by Mains which really plays homage to The Hospice the story of Aickmans I most loved, it never goes to the point where the plot is spoiled by the weirdness or the reader feels somewhat played unfairly by the author. I admit there was a scene in Blossom which had me thinking ‘WTF?’ yet Mains handles it really well and the plot gets even darker after with a real sting in the tales tail.

The rest of the tales veer more to the traditional edges of the ghost story. For example with both Alison Moore’s The Spite House and M. John Harrison’s Animals deal with haunted houses though in very different ways. One is very much about a house haunted by its past and something it lived through, the other is very much about how a house feels about someone who returns to it and the imprints of how those who lived in it felt about the returned person. I enjoyed both of these especially the element of the house as a character within the narrative, or almost with its own narrative itself.

The cottage could be quiet, especially in the early evening, when the lane, with its fringe of trees against the setting sun, filled up with shadows. She heard what she thought were movements, half drowned by the sound of the radio she kept in the kitchen, even in the day. ‘It must be the central heating,’ she thought, but soon it became clear that these sounds were actually voices. Whatever room Susan was in, she heard them somewhere else.

Emma Jane Unsworth’s Smoke takes on the tale of someone becoming haunted by something, indeed something that follows them afterwards wherever they go. I am not being funny but the idea of seeing something ghostly and then it following you to the ends of the earth/your bed, or in this case around Europe, is something I find truly creepy and Unsworth nicely plays with that primal fear. Tom Fletcher also plays with the primal fear of being followed yet in The Exotic Dancer it is the case of a stranger following you with their eyes and their intent. Fletcher’s tale too is incredibly creepy and the setting of an old canal tow path and the industrial edge of a town/city is spot on. It has reminded me how much I want to read his novels.

In a collection where there isn’t a dud note you shouldn’t really have a favourite, yet I had two. As you might have guessed I really enjoyed them all, Richard Hirst’s and Jenn Ashworth’s tales just edged it; I think Ashworth’s in particular should be put forward for every short story award going. Now both of them have a couple of twists so I don’t want to spoil them so I will tread carefully. Hirst’s And The Children Followed is set around evacuees in one of the World Wars, it is vague about which not that it matters, as a recently bereaved (and going off the rails) young woman grieves for a sibling. I will say no more than that on the plot but as the tale goes on and the dread and horror mount I was instantly reminded of Shirley Jackson’s short story The Lottery, you will gasp at the end. Ashworth’s story I actually want to say almost nothing about, other than it will turn a ghostly tale on its head for you and have you asking all sorts of questions. That is all, oh and it’s bloody marvellous with the games it plays and how she cleverly lets it unfold and toys with the reader in the best o f ways, marvellous.

I embrace her but she only shivers and pulls away to turn all the radiators on the house onto their highest setting. I wait for her in our bedroom, worrying about my cough and my breath, which is starting to smell like mushrooms, even to myself. She will not come up, but begins again to scrub the kitchen floor.

All in all a great collection again from the Curious Tales crew/collective, one that I would heartily recommend you get your mitts on and get reading over these dark winter nights. I have often said that I think modern ghost stories are very difficult to get right, this collection proves me completely wrong and I am thrilled.

If you are looking to get a copy you best hurry as there is a limited run of just 500 of them in print. I am not sure what the plan is on eBooks. For more info and to buy it head to the website here where you can also find out about some live events ahead this month and next – erm, massive hint guys bring it to Liverpool at some point or else, I know just the place! Now I am in the mood for more ghostly tales, so which ghost stories and collections would you recommend I go and hunt down?

Marry Me – Dan Rhodes

Fret not, this is not some random post where I declare my love for Dan Rhodes and ask for his hand, though I have been a big fan of his for years and years I wouldn’t go that far. However ‘Marry Me’ is the title of Dan Rhodes latest collection of short stories, which seemed the perfect antidote for having had a real book slump after the torture experience of ‘Tess of the D’Urbervilles’. I needed something that would make reading a joy and get me thinking and that is just what ‘Marry Me’ did.

**** Canongate Books, hardback, 2013, fiction, 158 pages, kindly sent by the publisher

The theme in all the short tales in ‘Marry Me’ are, rather unsurprisingly from the title, all based around marriage. Be these tales of people who are thinking of getting married, getting married, having just been married or ending their marriage the whole gambit is covered here. You have couples getting married through true love, guilt, accident and people getting out of it for the same reason.

Describing them like that makes them sound like they are all going to be rather dark and cynical, and whilst there are a good few dark little twisted tales (part of the reason I am a fan of Rhodes writing so much) here there are also some that are incredibly raw and also rather sentimental and tender too even if it is not initially obvious.

You would think in a collection of 79 oh-so-short stories there might be some kind of repetitive nature. I will admit that on occasion there were a few that opened with ‘when my fiancé died…’ and there were lots of cheating spouses and husbands who thought everything was fine when it really wasn’t yet the book is brimming with variety. ‘Perfect’ shows the lengths that people will go to for the most special, better than anyone else’s, of days. ’Androids’ takes the theme of, erm, themed weddings to a very dark (but I laughed so, so hard) conclusion. ‘Her Old Self’ shows you should never marry someone because you think you are doing them a favour or out of guilt. There was even a hint of a different genre, science fiction, in ‘Cold’ where a woman gets sick of her husband interfering with the plans she asks him to be cryogenically frozen for a few weeks to let her get on with.

What I always admire with Dan Rhodes work is how he likes to contradict himself and throw the reader completely. Here he does this by being super critical of marriage, despite the fact the book is dedicated to ‘wife features’, on the one hand and then suddenly giving you a quirky cute tale that you weren’t expecting. This is always the case in both his novels and his short stories. With his short stories like these, and many of the tales in his previous collection ‘Anthropology’, which at the longest can be a page and a half and at their shortest a few sentences (flash fiction really) it is like his brilliance is concentrated. He can create a situation and atmosphere in a paragraph a whole character in a sentence, it is quite mind-bogglingly clever. They are also overall darkly funny, you’ll laugh when you normally wouldn’t.

I would heartily recommend anyone and everyone give ‘Marry Me’ ago. You might not want to buy it for someone you love, they might not get the way it’s meant, but if you love literature, language and the way that words can work at their most concentrated (and because you like to be entertained and made to laugh) then you should definitely give this a whirl. I would highly recommend it, like I would all the books of Rhodes that I have read.

I have just realised that Dan Rhodes should really be in my Hall of Fame, as I have read and liked so much of his work, but I am going to save that for when I have read ‘This is Life’ which has been on my TBR for far too long and I have been saving to read for a rainy day. Who else has read Dan Rhodes and what do you think of his work?

The Boy Who Taught The Beekeeper To Read – Susan Hill

As anyone who has followed my blog for any length of time will know, I am a big fan of Susan Hill’s works. Therefore when I spotted ‘The Boy Who Taught The Beekeeper to Read’ at the library, a title I hadn’t been aware of before (and isn’t it a brilliant title), I snapped it up. It wasn’t until I got home that I realised it was a collection of short stories.

Before I talk about the collection I should explain the slightly eccentric way I read short stories. Firstly I don’t read them like I would a novel, not just because of the order (which I will come to in a moment) I read it but because I might read one and not another for a few days or read three separately in one day by whim and one every evening after – there’s no rules. I also don’t read them in the order they have been put (apologies to the authors and editors who probably put a lot of time and thought into this) in the collection. I read the longest first followed by the shortest, then I read them in order except I always leave the title tale until the very end. The theory behind this last part is that the title tale is probably the best and leaves the book on a high note for me, it maybe this tale also reflects the overall feeling of a collection, though by no means always the case. Now that’s out the way I can get on with telling you how I felt about this collection and possibly the reasons why…

Chatto and Windus, hardback, 2003, fiction, 224 pages, short stories, borrowed from the library

If I were to go with an overall theme of ‘The Boy Who Taught The Beekeeper to Read’ it would be death and loss. This therefore gives the whole book a rather melancholic tone. It’s not a gloomy collection but it’s not all singing and dancing (yes, that’s a nod to her 1974 collection of short stories I have in Mount TBR). What we have is therefore a collection of tales at often pivotal, and emotional points in characters lives, their current situation or circumstances having been caused, in the main, being through deaths to varying degrees.

Because I started with ‘Father, Father’ and ‘Sand’ I think I was a little wrong footed from the off if I am honest. Both these stories of of mothers deaths and the effect on the daughter and unfortunately felt like the same story only one had been elongated. Therefore when I read ‘Elizabeth’ which once more brought up mothers and daughters I put the book down for a while. I am glad I returned though as after this hiccup, mainly my fault for reading in the wrong order I am sure, the stories became more varied and I started to get sucked into the atmosphere and tone of the book further.

You see the tales ‘The Punishment’, ‘The Brooch‘ and ‘Moving Messages’ reminded me that Susan Hills writing has a certain quiet brooding about it, this is also the case in both her Simon Serrailer crime series and famous ghost stories yet because they are longer there is a meatier side too, and sometimes with these short stories this is done so delicately that initially you think ‘and?’ but should you take some time out and have some space from them and the characters, atmospheres and settings they grow on you somewhat. ‘Need’ with its circus setting did this particularly well.

The last two stories I read had the most punch, maybe they felt the most modern and almost instantly had an overflowing number of things to say? The last story in the collection ‘Antonyin’s’ (the only story set outside England) confused me initially, as a man and woman unknown to each other sit in a restaurant day after day staring until she asks him to marry her, but the twist that came moved me. The title tale of ‘The Boy Who Taught The Beekeeper to Read’ was the one that blew me away. It’s not the longest, in some ways it’s the most simple of ideas – a young boy living in a mansion befriends ‘the staff’ and teaches him to read yet how long can this friendship last, actually choked me up and it  has resonated with me the most since, and not just because I read it last.

I cannot say ‘The Boy Who Taught The Beekeeper to Read’ is the best short story collection I’ve ever read because some of it was a little too short, a little too quiet and peeter out too quickly but overall it’s beautifully written and in parts packs an emotional punch amongst its brooding nature. Some people may find its quiet style a little old fashioned, I liked this, but regardless I would urge everyone to read this collection for the title story alone. I think it could become one of my favourite short stories and shows just why I am such a fan of Susan Hill’s writing overall.

A Short Story Collection Question…

So far we are four days in to 2012 and I have yet to do a book review. This is in part because I have read two utterly corking books (and one not so but very thought provoking indeed) that really need my thoughts ever the more honed on them before I put them out in the ether, in part because tomorrows post is about blog changes and I think reviews should follow that and also because my reading had been delightfully higgledy piggledy as I have been multi-reading from three short story collections…

  

Now I won’t talk about these collections further for now, but reading them has shown me something. I don’t read them in the right order, though what the right order in a short story collection is can be debateable, as set by whomever edited them. I all three cases I have taken the longest of Susan Hill/Ludmilla Putreshevskaya/Dan Rhodes stories (I have just noticed how brilliant these three collections titles are), followed by the shortest before leaving the title story (or the most appealing titled story) till the end. I am worried this is the wrong thing to do.

Is there and right and wrong way to read a short story collection? Over to you…

Good Bones – Margaret Atwood

Good Bones is a book by Margaret Atwood that I had never heard of before and indeed found by accident. I always think it’s a delight when you are wandering aimlessly along shelves of books (though as book lovers I am also sure you will understand the awful crick in your neck you get from browsing book spines at an angle) looking for something delightful to take your fancy and this was such an occasion. It wasn’t in a book shops as November is my trial ‘no book buying month’ it was in the library. As soon as I spotted this, I always have a look at what Atwood’s they have, adored the cover and so grabbed it. I also thought it was a novella and have been trying to read more, but this book is something quite, quite different.

Good Bones is a selection of twenty seven short works by Margaret Atwood. I say short works as some of them read as fiction, some seem to be essays, some are fable like and others just seem to be the wanderings of the author. It’s like a note book filled with Atwood-like idea’s is possibly the best way to describe it, like a scrap book of possible idea’s for books and longer tales as the longest of this collection is fourteen pages.

The themes of the tales seem to be fables, fairy tales and dare I mention it ‘speculative’ pieces. You have a tale of the Little Red Hen who can’t quite work out what all the fuss is about that she grew a loaf of bread and the furore it caused. You have Hamlet’s mother Gertrude who actually wanted to call him George and who was not ‘wringing her hands’ but ‘drying her nails’. Wicked Stepmothers and Ugly Sisters fight their corner and for feminism (in fact feminist themes glimmer between these tales) as they stand up for themselves and make the point that tough love always seems to get the bimbo princess her man in the end doesn’t it? Despite moments of utter laughter such as when the Little Red Hen says ‘Then I’ll do it myself, I said, as the nun quipped to the vibrator’. It’s not all fairy tales and giggles though.

There is the very short but intense, sexy and passionate ‘In Love With Raymond Chandler’. The feminist ‘The Female Body’ when Atwood is actually discussing Barbie’s and other dolls and the image they project to young girls. There is the look at men with ‘Making a Man’ which includes the Gingerbread Method and the Clothes Maketh the Man Method which looks at the difference between the sexes. It’s all so cleverly done and you feel that though these two or ten page stories are fully formed there could be several books in here that just haven’t be written yet.  

With twenty seven tales in 153 pages it is a marvellous selection of, as the wonderful cover says ‘pure distilled Atwood’. It’s funny in parts, sexy in parts and dark in parts, but then aren’t most Atwood novels all of these things? I think fans of Atwood will love the darkness and the wry slightly knowing humour and for anyone new to Atwood it’s a way of getting to know what wonderful fiction you are getting into in digestible pieces.

Has anyone else read this collection? What are your thoughts on authors re-writing fairy tales? Have you been in a book shop (so jealous if you have) or library of late and found there is a gem of a novel/book that you had never heard of by one of your favourite authors and if so what was it?