This series focuses on stories that are both well-written and do something that I find interesting from a technical perspective. This week, let’s dye our beards!
This series focuses on stories that are both enjoyable and do something that I find interesting from a technical perspective. This week, let’s dye our beards!
One of the reasons the past is a another country is that they speak a different language there, even when it looks like our own. Fairy tales, while they survive for centuries, often seem to lose something in translation, making them hard for modern readers to fully comprehend or appreciate. I think that’s why fairy tales retold in contemporary contexts fall flat. You can swap out the settings and the props, but that doesn’t matter if the plot has been lost in translation.
I’ve read the tale of Bluebeard three or four times, but it turns out I was just reading transliterations. Story Boyle translated it to create The Herb Wife’s Apprentice (published in Persistent Visions), and that made all the difference. This retelling isn’t just a repackaged fairy tale; it is a thrilling resurrection that lets us feel the horror and shock that our ancestors must have experienced when the story was new.
Oh, and I would be remiss here if I didn’t also draw attention to Boyle’s excellent use of tension. The story moves smoothly from scene to scene, consistently maintaining the tension and gradually building it to a terrible crescendo. That level of suspense is hard, and I envy how naturally Boyle does it here.
One word of caution: as in the original fairy tale, domestic violence is at the core of this story. The abuse is cruel and brutal, and no easy answers (or brothers in the dragoons) appear. That doesn’t mean the questions the story asks of us aren’t worth asking, though. I think that’s the whole point of a fairy tale.