My Mother She Killed Me, My Father He Ate Me

Author: Kate Bernheimer
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 1101464380
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 499

Book Description
The fairy tale lives again in this book of forty new stories by some of the biggest names in contemporary fiction, science fiction, fantasy, and magical realism. Neil Gaiman, “Orange” Aimee Bender, “The Color Master” Joyce Carol Oates, “Blue-bearded Lover” Michael Cunningham, “The Wild Swans” These and more than thirty other stories by Francine Prose, Kelly Link, Jim Shepard, Lydia Millet, and many other extraordinary writers make up this thrilling celebration of fairy tales—the ultimate literary costume party. Spinning houses and talking birds. Whispered secrets and borrowed hope. Here are new stories sewn from old skins, gathered by visionary editor Kate Bernheimer and inspired by everything from Hans Christian Andersen’s “The Snow Queen” and “The Little Match Girl” to Charles Perrault’s “Bluebeard” and “Cinderella” to the Brothers Grimm’s “Hansel and Gretel” and “Rumpelstiltskin” to fairy tales by Goethe and Calvino and from China, Japan, Vietnam, Russia, Norway, and Mexico. Fairy tales are our oldest literary tradition, and yet they chart the imaginative frontiers of the twenty-first century as powerfully as they evoke our earliest encounters with literature. This exhilarating collection restores their place in the literary canon.

Horse, Flower, Bird

Author: Kate Bernheimer
Publisher: Coffee House Press
ISBN: 1566892821
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 184

Book Description
"Each of these spare and elegant tales rings like a bell in your head. memorable, original, and not much like anything you've read."—Karen Joy Fowler “A strange and enchanting book, written in crisp, winning sentences; each story begs to be read aloud and savored.”—Aimee Bender "Horse, Flower, Bird rests uneasily between the intersection of fantasy and reality, dreaming and wakefulness, and the sacred and profane. Like a series of beautiful but troubling dreams, this book will linger long in the memory. Kate Bernheimer is reinventing the fairy tale."—Peter Buck, R.E.M. In Kate Bernheimer's familiar and spare—yet wondrous—world, an exotic dancer builds her own cage, a wife tends a secret basement menagerie, a fishmonger's daughter befriends a tulip bulb, and sisters explore cycles of love and violence by reenacting scenes from Star Wars. Enthralling, subtle, and poetic, this collection takes readers back to the age-old pleasures of classic fairy tales and makes them new. Their haunting lessons are an evocative reminder that cracking open the door to the imagination is no mere child's play, that delight and tragedy lurk in every corner, and that we all "have the key to the library . . . only be careful what you read."

Brothers & Beasts

Author: Kate Bernheimer
Publisher: Wayne State University Press
ISBN: 9780814332672
Category : Juvenile Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 220

Book Description
Breaks new ground in fairy-tale studies by offering male writers a chance to reflect on their relationships to fairy tales.

The Juniper Tree

Author: Barbara Comyns
Publisher: New York Review of Books
ISBN: 1681371324
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 193

Book Description
A feminist reimagining of the Brothers Grimm fairy tale about a single mother and an enchanted friendship—from one of most bewitching British writers of the 20th century. “Comyns’s world is weird and wonderful . . . Tragic , comic and completely bonkers all in one, I’d go as far as to call her something of a neglected genius.” —The Observer Bella Winter has hit a low. Homeless and jobless, she is the mother of a toddler by a man whose name she didn’t quite catch, and her once pretty face is disfigured by the scar she acquired in a car accident. Friendless and without family, she’s recently disentangled herself from a selfish and indifferent boyfriend and a cruel and indifferent mother. But she shares a quality common to Barbara Comyns’s other heroines: a bracingly unsentimental ability to carry on. Before too long, Bella has found not only a job but a vocation; not only a place to live but a home and a makeshift family. As Comyns’s novel progresses, the story echoes and inverts the Brothers Grimm’s macabre tale The Juniper Tree. Will Bella’s hard-won restoration to life and love come at the cost of the happiness of others?

The Complete Tales of Lucy Gold

Author: Kate Bernheimer
Publisher: University of Alabama Press
ISBN: 1573661597
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 128

Book Description
As a child, Lucy dreams of talking fairies and lives contentedly in the wooded suburbs of Boston; she grows up to be a successful animator of fairy-tale films. Or does she? She claims at moments to be a witch in the woods. Like her sisters, who appeared in Bernheimer’s first two novels (The Complete Tales of Ketzia Gold and The Complete Tales of Merry Gold), Lucy has a secret, but she is unable to fasten onto anything but brightness. Novelist Donna Tartt writes, “Lucy’s particular brand of optimism, blind to its own shadow, is very American—she is innocence holding itself apart so fastidiously that it becomes its opposite.” This novel is a perfect end to the Gold family series, and the perfect introduction, for new readers, to Bernheimer’s enchanting body of work.

Tallgrass

Author: Sandra Dallas
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
ISBN: 1429917172
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 340

Book Description
An essential American novel from Sandra Dallas, an unparalleled writer of our history, and our deepest emotions... During World War II, a family finds life turned upside down when the government opens a Japanese internment camp in their small Colorado town. After a young girl is murdered, all eyes (and suspicions) turn to the newcomers, the interlopers, the strangers. This is Tallgrass as Rennie Stroud has never seen it before. She has just turned thirteen and, until this time, life has pretty much been what her father told her it should be: predictable and fair. But now the winds of change are coming and, with them, a shift in her perspective. And Rennie will discover secrets that can destroy even the most sacred things. Part thriller, part historical novel, Tallgrass is a riveting exploration of the darkest--and best--parts of the human heart.

The Lonely Book

Author: Kate Bernheimer
Publisher: Schwartz & Wade
ISBN: 0375862269
Category : Juvenile Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 41

Book Description
When a wonderful new book arrives at the library, at first it is loved by all, checked out constantly, and rarely spends a night on the library shelf. But over time it grows old and worn, and the children lose interest in its story. The book is sent to the library's basement where the other faded books live. How it eventually finds an honored place on a little girl's bookshelf—and in her heart—makes for an unforgettable story sure to enchant anyone who has ever cherished a book. Kate Bernheimer and Chris Sheban have teamed up to create a picture book that promises to be loved every bit as much as the lonely book itself.

Angela Carter's Book Of Fairy Tales

Author: Angela Carter
Publisher: Virago
ISBN: 0349008213
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 584

Book Description
Once upon a time fairy tales weren't meant just for children, and neither is Angela Carter's Book of Fairy Tales. This stunning collection contains lyrical tales, bloody tales and hilariously funny and ripely bawdy stories from countries all around the world- from the Arctic to Asia - and no dippy princesses or soppy fairies. Instead, we have pretty maids and old crones; crafty women and bad girls; enchantresses and midwives; rascal aunts and odd sisters. This fabulous celebration of strong minds, low cunning, black arts and dirty tricks could only have been collected by the unique and much-missed Angela Carter. Illustrated throughout with original woodcuts.

The Girl without Hands

Author: Brothers Grimm
Publisher: Lindhardt og Ringhof
ISBN: 8726591782
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 10

Book Description
Can you imagine having a father who would give you to the Devil in exchange for riches and wealth? The poor girl in our story had to endure not only this but getting her hands cut off as well. Her will was so strong that she decided to not fall victim of the Devil. So she headed out in the woods, wandering around, not having anything, not even food. Surprisingly enough she survived and she became a queen. Her misfortunes did not end with this however. Many more difficulties followed. Because, you know, the Devil does not forget so easily. Children and adults alike, immerse yourselves into Grimm’s world of folktales and legends! Come, discover the little-known tales and treasured classics in this collection of 210 fairy tales. Brothers Grimm are probably the best-known storytellers in the world. Some of their most popular fairy tales are "Cinderella", "Beauty and the Beast" and "Little Red Riding Hood" and there is hardly anybody who has not grown up with the adventures of Hansel and Gretel, Rapunzel and Snow White. Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm’s exceptional literature legacy consists of recorded German and European folktales and legends. Their collections have been translated into all European languages in their lifetime and into every living language today.

xo Orpheus

Author: Kate Bernheimer
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0143122428
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 577

Book Description
Fifty leading writers retell myths from around the world in this dazzling follow-up to the bestselling My Mother She Killed Me, My Father He Ate Me. Icarus flies once more. Aztec jaguar gods again stalk the earth. An American soldier designs a new kind of Trojan horse—his cremains in a bullet. Here, in beguiling guise, are your favorite mythological figures alongside characters from Indian, Punjabi, Inuit, and other traditions. Aimee Bender retells the myth of the Titans. Elizabeth McCracken retells the myth of Lamia, the child-eating mistress of Zeus. Madeline Miller retells the myth of Galatea. Kevin Wilson retells the myth of Phaeton, from Ovid’s Metamorphoses. Emma Straub and Peter Straub retell the myth of Persephone. Heidi Julavits retells the myth of Orpheus and Euridice. Ron Currie, Jr. retells the myth of Dedalus. Maile Meloy retells the myth of Demeter. Zachary Mason retells the myth of Narcissus. Joy Williams retells the myth of Argos, Odysseus’ dog. If “xo” signals a goodbye, then xo Orpheus is a goodbye to an old way of mythmaking. Featuring talkative goats, a cat lady, a bird woman, a beer-drinking ogre, a squid who falls in love with the sun, and a girl who gives birth to cubs, here are extravagantly imagined, bracingly contemporary stories, heralding a new beginning for one of the world’s oldest literary traditions.