I've also posted a few times about my favorite fairy tales: Beauty and the Beast; East o' the Sun, West o' the Moon; Tam Lin. All three are extremely popular right now and there are many adaptations of each currently available.
I'd like to mention three fairy tale-like books that aren't quite as well known. All are beloved favorites with me, and my copies are beginning to show wear and tear from having been reread so many times.
by M. M. Kaye
I first read this as a child. It was out of print at the time and my copy was a battered library book that looked like it had been run over by a tank. Still, I was enthralled. The heroine was a princess, the seventh daughter born to a king (said to be very lucky--a nice change from the usual attitude towards daughters in fairy tales) and given the fantastic name of Amethyst Alexandra Augusta Araminta Adelaide Aurelia Anne. All the fairies in the kingdom come to give Princess Amy their blessings. The last, fed up with the other fairies' extravagant gifts, says "You shall be ordinary!" And so she is. Princess Amy grows up plain, untalented, snub-nosed and freckled. Eventually she runs away from home and tries to live the life of an ordinary girl.
I won't give the ending away, but as a child I found it very satisfying and enjoyable, and that hasn't changed in adulthood. The book's been reprinted since and my copy is a handsome hardcover version with the author's original illustrations. M. M. Kaye is more famous for her novels for adults: specifically The Far Pavillions and Shadows of the Moon (one of my personal favorites), but this charming, sweet, old-fashioned story for children shouldn't be overlooked. It has a wonderful message in that the hero falls in love with the princess not because she's a princess, and not because she's beautiful (because she isn't, and there's no miraculous bestowing of beauty later on), but because she's a good, decent person. This is definitely something that will be read to my children someday.
by Barbara Cohen and Bahija Lovejoy
I came across a small paperback of this title while working at the bookstore in high school. It's one of the rare Middle Eastern stories on the market right now and is based on an Iraqi folktale from the 11th century. The heroine is Buran, the middle of seven daughters. Her father is mocked for having no sons and no money to dower his daughters. His brother, on the other hand, has seven sons and a thriving business. When the brother refuses to help out, or to marry his sons off to their cousins, Buran makes a momentous decision. She will disguise herself as a boy and leave to seek her family's fortune.
Buran is a very appealing heroine. She is smart and courageous and doesn't let her status as an "inferior" girl keep her from helping her family. In the course of the story, she builds up a trading empire, amasses a fortune for her family, and even wins the heart of the prince of the land. She also manages to enact a satisfying and bloodless revenge on her heartless uncle and arrogant cousins. There's enough of a Middle-Eastern flavor to this story for it to feel like something out of The Thousand and One Nights, but it's still accessible and enjoyable for Western readers.
by L. M. Montgomery
This title is a newer favorite. Back when I was in college but still living at home, I used to make a weekly circuit of all the thrift stores (Goodwill, Salvation Army, St. Vincent de Paul) for used books, often-times picking up paperbacks for ten cents each. One such book was The Blue Castle. I adore L. M. Montgomery's famous Anne books and decided to give The Blue Castle, one of her few titles for adults, a try. Naturally, the paperback sat on my bookshelf (or more probably, in a stack of "to be read" books on the floor) for years. It wasn't until I was packing for one of our many moves that I thought about the book again. I was sitting on the floor and putting books into boxes when I came across it. I was trying to decide to keep it or get rid of it, so I decided to give the first few pages a try.
Several hours later, long after I'd lost feeling in my legs, I finished the book. And packed it most decisively in the keeper box. It's the story of Valancy Stirling, a 29-year-old spinster living with her oppressive family in Edwardian-era Canada. Valancy is deeply unhappy with her life and spends her time daydreaming of a blue castle and the handsome man who will love her. When she hears from her doctor that she has less than a year to live, Valancy makes the momentous decision to leave home and try to find what happiness she can. She ends up living in a cabin in the woods with the reclusive Barney Snaith (yes, an awful name), and elements of Bluebeard's Chamber are woven into the story before it reaches a satisfying, fairy-tale-ish conclusion.
There are certainly many more fairy tales for children, young adults, and adults out there, and just because the genre is typically associated with children doesn't mean it should be overlooked by adults. All three of the books above are as entertaining and ultimately comforting to me now as they were when first I read them.
No comments:
Post a Comment