I just finished reading a retelling of Bluebeard
called Fitcher's Brides (from a version of the tale called Fitcher's Bird
). I bought the book because I'm a sucker for fairy tales, and because I loved another of Gregory Frost's stories, The Root of the Matter,
a retelling of Rapunzel.
That story contains what has become one of my favorite quotations:
Turning men into pigs is no particular feat. The real exercise is getting pigs to write checks.
Like The Root of the Matter,
Fitcher's Brides contains physical, sexual, and emotional abuse. These are not fairy tales for children.
I enjoyed Frost's book, but compared to other fairy tale retellings I have read (Deerskin, East, even The Bloody Chamber), it's not particularly thrilling or insightful. The ending was predictable and a little anticlimactic. I know that's a strange thing to say about a story whose end I already know, but I suppose I mean that Frost preserved too much of the original plot and re-interpreted too little. It is merely the same tale in a new setting, and the re-interpretation fades out towards the end so that the last fifty pages seem a regurgitation of the original story with just a few details changed.
The bit of Fitcher's Brides that struck me as particularly unique came at the very end, in a sort of epilogue. The two older sisters have been brought back from the dead, but they're changed; it's perfectly logical for them to have been affected by the experience of death. This sort of insight and detail is part of what makes fairy tales so rewarding for me.
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