If you think you're a fan of fairy tales but all you know are the watered-down, Disneyfied versions, steer clear of this book. These are real fairy tales, not shiny magical stories with happy endings to read to your kids at bedtime. They don't flinch away from cannibalism, bestiality, incest, abuse, insanity, death, and general deviance. These modern tales don't stick very closely to the specific stories that inspired them but they DO honor the spirit of them and of fairy tales in general. I LOV...

My Mother She Killed Me, My Father He Ate Me: Forty New Fairy Tales Edited by Kate Bernheimer is the book I bought myself for Christmas. This volume is a treasure chest of the fantastic and strange, vaguely familiar stories from childhood remade. Not to mention that title - which would have made me pick up this book no matter what it was about. Lucky for me what lay inside was individually as unique as the title and accompanied with a short explanation of how they came to be written by each auth...

Okay. It's difficult being an anthology. A few stinkers in the collection and people rate it a 3 or 4. But there is no anthology that doesn't have a handful of stories that are weaker or less appealing than the others. For me, the real test is How many excellent stories does it contain? And this book has about 14 really good stories and 4 absolutely superb ones. (My favorites: "The Erkling," "Halfway People," "The Mermaid in the Tree," and "The Color Master"; authors Sarah Shun-Lien Bynum, Karen...

This is a fairly decent collection of "updated" fairy tales from around the world. Familiar names like Joyce Carol Oates, Neil Gaiman, Michael Cunningham, and more create "new stories sewed from old skins" by adding twists and spins to classic stories. And like many of the grimmer fairy tales, these stories are definitely NOT for children.Each tale concludes with a few paragraphs by the authors explaining why a particular story was chosen. This was an unexpected and interesting glimpse into the

I love fairy tale retellings. But the anthology as a whole was underwhelming. Some of the stories were enjoyable. Many were boring. And a lot of the author notes were extremely pretentious. I just felt like the authors didn't really do anything new. It was pretty much like when artists take Disney princesses and use them in their work to highlight different social issues. I understand the importance of the issues and appreciate what the artist is doing, but I've seen it all before. Pretty much e...

I don't really know what this anthology could have done to make me like it more, but it just did not work for me at all. I recently decided that if I'm reading an anthology and I don't like a particular story I will just jump right to the next one, and because of this I literally don't think I finished close to half of the stories here. Obviously retelling fairy tales is nothing new, but most of these just seemed to take the most obvious route possible and there was a definite sense of 'been the...

Sarah Montambo and Marie saw me looking longingly at this morbid book, picking it up to read the back and putting it down several times, and since they're both generous, attentive, kind, and LOADED$$$...j/k on that last one, but the rest of it is true and they got me this book! Present!!It looks much cooler than it's turning out to be, for my uncultured and poorly educated taste. But I love it for being a gift from friends who noticed and acted. Who has people like that in their lives? Lucky one...

I read this for 2017 Popsugar Reading Challenge. The category is ‘a book with multiple authors’. https://www.popsugar.co.uk/love/Readi...I really enjoyed My Mother She Killed Me, My Father He Ate Me. It’s a great, diverse collection of stories. I love fairy tales, especially darker ones intended for adults. Some of my favourite stories are the adult fairy tales edited by Ellen Datlow. I loved the cover and this is one of the reasons I bought the book. That and the crazy title. My Mother She Kill...

This was a book I had to force myself to finish. I hate to let a book defeat me, and that's how I felt trying to get through the more than 500 pages in Bernheimer's collection. The premise of the book is 40 new fairy tales by well-known, contemporary authors. Unfortunately, I wasn't sold. I LOVE fairy tales, and always have, but these stories mostly just bored me. To give a couple of examples:"Bluebeard in Ireland" is the story of a couple on vacation in Ireland. He's older, and has been married...

Talk about an attention grabbing title! I’m enjoying telling people about this book just so that I can have the opportunity pronounce the titillating title, and watch the reactions of my friends. But no, My Mother She Killed Me, My Father He Ate Me is not about cannibalism. Or at least, not all of it. But since the theme of this short-story collection is fairy tales, you can expect to encounter some pretty gruesome stories in the style of the original Grimm tales, along with stories of adventure...

Some of the stories are okay. A couple are good. An unusual preponderance struck me derivative, boring, and/or pretentious. It bothered me that the publisher tried to present this volume as doing something new and important when it is not. At all. "Reinterpreting" fairy tales as coming-of-age stories or coded depictions of sexual abuse has been done for decades, frequently better than it is here. And to be honest, I think the modern view that this was ever new is kind of embarrassing in its naiv...

It's interesting using this book in a case. The Swan stories are the most popular, and the quiet ones about relationships confuse people for some reason.Old ReviewThere is a misnomer on the cover of this book. Some short stories in this volume have not been commissioned for the book. Several of them have appeared in various magazines and collections (some have appeared over a decade ago).This is okay, for this is the first time that they are all collected together and I hadn't read any of them b...

This collection is a prime example of why I’m always on the fence about short story collections. They typically turn out to be only a few gems thrown in amongst the stinkers. And that’s exactly how this collection turned out! With 40 stories featured, I only REALLY thoroughly enjoyed a dozen or so stories. The rest left me feeling either indifferent or bored out of my mind and wanting to skip through them. That’s a lot of stories to feel indifferent about and I was definitely disappointed. I alw...

You know, when you're sick, and lying on, what feels at the time, to be your deathbed, you want to read something that cheers you up, transports your consciousness someplace magical that makes you forget your unfortunate reality, especially if that something claims to be a book about fairytales. NOT something that seems to be helping you on your way.I couldn't believe my luck that this was what I had to read before succumbing to a nasty bout of vomiting and shitting, and after, when that was ove...

I must confess that I "finished" this book yesterday largely by reading about the first page of the stories in the remaining half of the book and deciding "not." While the literary excellence of nearly all of them was and is clear to me, I simply wasn't in the mood for the high level of creepiness of nearly all of them. Too dark for me right now. Sorry.

Well. That was disappointing.I don't know what most of these people were thinking when they wrote these stories. I technically do, going by the end notes, but obviously something went very wrong between them detailing what inspired them and writing while inspired.The first two stories weren't half bad. Actually, the second story 'The Snow Maiden' was the best of the bunch; it had a novel fantastical setting with an interesting plot and satisfying ending. The only other story I can say measured u...

First ever anthology in which I couldn't find a single story to love, and with this one collecting 41 tales, it must be a new record. Even in the worst ones, there was always at least one story that if not good was at least interesting and worth the read, which wasn't the case here. Pretentiousness galore and mediocrity would be the issues I'd hold against it.

With collections of short stories, it is always hard to give stars - some inevitably deserve 5 and some...So, those that deserve 5 stars (or more), in my humble (or not so humble) opinion:"Orange" by Neil Gaiman"The Color Master" by Aimee Bender"The Story of the Mosquito" by Lily Hoang"Ardour" by Jonathon Keats"Teague O'Kane and the Corpse" by Chris Adrian"The First Day" of Snow by Naoko Awa2 that were good but disturbing:"The Mermaid in the Tree" by Timothy Schaffert"The Brother and the Bird" b...

If you have any interest in fantastic fiction and fairy tales, this collection is a must-read. These stunning, contemporary retellings of folklore and fables from throughout the world and history are beautiful, carefully curated, and at times, breathtaking. In particular, check out "Baba Iaga and the Pelican Child" and "The Warm Mouth."