New Novel TENDER MORSELS Is Not So Grimm
Fantasy novelist Margo Lanagan has resurrected an old story that was buried in the Grimm Brothers' retelling.
Since my first produced stage play was an adaptation of the Grimm Brothers' Snow-White and Rose-Red, entitled The Adventures of Rose Red & Snow White, I immediately was drawn to the piece by Sci Fi Wire's JOHN JOSEPH ADAMS on author Margo Lanagan's new fantasy novel Tender Morsels.
According to Lanagan, Jacob & Wilhelm Grimm actually rewrote an older story called The Ungrateful Dwarf by Caroline Stahl.
"They changed it from an odd little story about how, if children behave well, evil people will be overcome and those children will be rewarded, into a Christian-tinged tale for girls about putting up with men's behavior, no matter how beastly that behavior happens to be," said Lanagan. "How dare they urge girls to passively accept poor treatment?"
So Tender Morsels is Lanagan "having a long, complicated play in the Grimm Brothers' sandpit and leaving their original story...unrecognizable."
In the novel, a peasant girl, Liga, is saved from suicide and granted her own personal heaven in which to live and raise her two daughters. But an inept witch allows several intruders from the real world into this heaven.
"One of the daughters finds her way back to the real world and organizes for the return of her mother and sister also," Lanagan said. "Moving from the perfect to the imperfect world means something different for each of the three women, and Liga's history comes back to haunt them."