Subject: review: Black Thorn, White Rose (REPOST)

From: [email-masked]
Date: Tue, 18 Apr 1995 21:11:44 GMT

Black Thorn, White Rose.
                 Edited by Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling.
                      New York:  William Morrow, 1994.
                           review by Mark Diller

        Collections of short stories are always a mixed bag, especially
ones such as the present work which is comprised of modern re-envisionments
of the classic fairytales.  The stories here included range from close
copies of the Brothers Grimm model to some which bear no apparent
relationship to fairy tales at all, apart from their appearance in this
volume.  Most of the stories, though, represent serious and/or whimsical
attempts to reformulate the old stories from a modern perspective, and the
disjunction or resonance between old and new makes for entertaining and
thought-provoking reading.
        The individual stories are an eclectic mix, with something for
everyone to like and dislike.  The book opens with Nancy Kress' "Words Like
Pale Stones," a dark retelling of the Rumpelstiltskin tale in which most of
the values of good and evil, protagonist and antagonist are inverted.  The
reader is consequently forced to look anew at familiar categories and
engage the familiar story in new and challenging ways.  Many of the stories
follow the same narrative strategy, including Tim Wynne-Jones' "The Goose
Girl," a familiar story told this time from the handsome prince's
viewpoint, and Storm Constantine's "Sweet Bruising Skin," a rather horrible
re-envisionment of The Princess and the Pea as told by a wicked, and wholly
unrepentant, mother-in-law.  These stories are among the most readable and
successful in the collection.
         Other authors have attempted to take fairytale themes and set them
within modern narratives.  Among these are Ann Downer's "Somnus's Fair
Maid," a telling of the Sleeping Beauty tale which somewhat recalls A.S.
Byatt's _Possession_, Isabel Cole's "The Brown Bear of Norway," which
touches on the role of mythic and fairytale themes in the formation of the
adolescent self, and Roger Zelazny's "Godson," an enjoyable study of a very
ambiguous benefactor.  As modernity progresses, the reader of ancient tales
is increasingly challenged to examine the text critically, noting what is
transcendent and what merely antique within the old stories.  The authors
who follow the above strategy have attempted to parallel this activity in
the narrative itself, and though they sometimes achieve an air of spooky
enchantment within their modernist settings, the overall lack of conviction
in the stories they tell reveals perhaps a certain alienation from their
material.  Perhaps the lesson to be learned here is that the fairytale's
success is in part dependent on its temporal distance;  its very
distinctness from the here and now opens the reader to unlimited
possibility in a way that contemporary fiction can only weakly emulate.
        Not all the stories here work;  Peter Straub's "Ashputtle" in
particular is, in my opinion, an excruciating read that bears no apparent
relation to any fairytale that I've ever seen.  Other stories are so
self-indulgent as to be virtually unreadable.  However, if like me you've
come with time and age to appreciate fairytales more than a child ever
could, this might be the book for you.

%A      Datlow, Ellen  and Windling, Terri, eds.
%T      Black Thorn, White Rose
%I      William Morrow
%C      New York
%D      1994
%G      ISBN 0-688-13713-X
%P      381pp, biblio pp. 382-86