This was my first experience of Niffenegger (though I am peripherally aware of Time Traveller's Wife), and it's a safe bet it'll be my last. I only picked this up at the library because it looked like a modern, adult fairy story, and I'm always interested to see attempts at that. Unfortunately, this is only that: an attempt.While it's a fun and strange story that had potential, Niffenegger utterly botched it with thin characterization, stilted and jerky prose, and plot turns (and characters) app...

Raven Girl is the eagerly anticipated new release from the bestselling author of The Time Traveler’s Wife. Here, in her longest illustrated book to date, Niffenegger has married together her love of art and literature. The illustrations throughout have been produced with an ‘aquatint’ technique, which uses ‘metal, acid, wax and rosin’ and dates from the seventeenth century. Aesthetically, the book is a work of art. It has been beautifully produced, and has silvered edges, glossy pages and beauti...

Raven Girl is the product of a collaboration between Audrey Niffenegger and Wayne McGregor, the Royal Opera House Ballet's Resident Choreographer. The brief was for Audrey to write and illustrate a dark, modern fairytale combining aspects of traditional fairy stories with contemporary ideas surrounding identity, the body and its modification via technology. Wayne would then take the story and imagery and adapt it into a ballet, to be performed at the Royal Opera House in London. During the summe...

I think I understand this book as "magical realism explaining gender identity," but most likely I am getting ahead of myself. This book follows the daughter of a raven and a postman, yes you read that right, it is magical realism, so just roll with it. She has never felt like she belongs in her fathers world, for she looks human, but can speak in the same caws as her mother. SO in order to become her true self, she goes through a surgery that will give her what she ultimately has always wanted,

I have a love/hate relationship with Audrey Niffenegger. I first discovered her work through the best selling novel, The Time Traveler's Wife and fell in love with her writing and the book itself. Desperate for more, I found some of her other works like Three Incestuous Sisters, a book absolutely NOTHING like The Time Traveler's wife. I brushed it off thinking that it was just a quirky book she had gotten off her chest. Then Her Fearful Symmetry came out and I rushed to the store to buy my copy....

I ran across this one in the folklore section of my library. It wasn't until I was part way finished that I realized it was by Audrey Niffengger. Frankly, I have not been impressed with her work so far, and this is no exception.It's supposed to be a modern fairy tale. In fact, Niffengger says in the acknowledgements, "Fairy tales have their own remorseless logic and their own rules." And that's very true... except, if you go as far as to explain how wings were grown in a vat with stem cells, the...

2.5 stars!So, this was a very strange book. Meant to be a fairytale-inspired tale about the daughter of a human postman and a once injured raven who he ends up rescuing. Their daughter grows up as a human but shares the mental qualities of a raven and would rather be one. I liked the illustrations, however, the story-line in question just didn't work well for me. The use of lots of modern settings threw me off a little and I struggled to connect with the characters. If you are looking for someth...

A lovely and simple fairy tale, with classical plot elements like transformation and true love transcending all boundaries. In a quaint English setting, a country postman is tasked with delivering a letter to an address he’s never seen before:Dripping RockRaven’s Nest2 Flat Drab ManorEast Underwhelm, OtherworldEE1 LH9 [postcode = East of East, Lower Heights]Here the postman meets a young raven fallen out of her nest, takes her home to mend her and they fall in love. Even when her wing heals and

In Raven Girl, Niffenegger combines the modern magic of medicine and technology with the more traditional elements of princes, transformation, and unlikely lovers to create an wonderfully unique Gothic fairytale. It's quick read is supplemented by Niffenegger's own illustrations which enhance the story and bewitch the reader.There were only a few things that I disliked about this story: the ending was quite abrupt, some details were glossed over, and the book was quite short (80 pages total, and...

Best known for her novel The Time Traveler’s Wife, a book I’ve never, nor ever will, read, I’m familiar with Audrey Niffenegger’s “illustrated novels”, all of which I’ve read. The latest, Raven Girl, is a modern fairy tale conceived for a dance production, and is also the least interesting of the four illustrated novels. A postman and a giant raven produce a human girl who wishes she was a raven. When she grows up and enters university, she meets a visiting biology professor who reluctantly agre...

This is a dark modern fairy tale that combines the elements of classic fairy tales such as metamorphoses, sentient animals and unlikely unions with modern elements such as medicine and stem cell research. Audrey Niffenegger was asked to write a 'dark fairy tale' to be used as the narrative for a new ballet for the Royal Ballet, which premiered at the Royal Opera House in May. The illustrations by Niffenegger are stunning and it was easy to see how this would would make a very powerful ballet - a...

I didn't have any expectations one way or another for this book. I have never read the "The Time Traveler's Wife" and had never heard of this book until I picked it up one day browsing the "Graphic Novels" section of the bookstore, bought it, and began to read it on my way home (and then while walking to my house).I start off by saying my inner-child isn't like most inner-children. I prefer Grimms to Disney any day. I'm also part Danish which means that a chunk of my family is from a country whi...