The Witch: And Other Tales Retold

(Paperback)

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Description

Jean Thompson, author of the National Book Award finalist Who Do You Love, is a writer at the height of her powers. In The Witch and Other Tales Retold she revisits beloved fables that represent our deepest, most primeval fears and satisfy our longings for good to triumph over evil (preferably in the most gruesome way possible). From the wolf in Little Red Riding Hood to the beauty asleep in her castle, The Witch and Other Tales Retold triumphantly brings the fairy tale into the modern age.

Reviews

Praise for The Witch and Other Tales Re-told

In this spooky, enthralling, and morally complex collection, National Book Award finalist Thompsonshows evil, wonder, and majesty...Thompson skillfully infuses our banal world of technology, reality TV, and pop psychology with genuine horror....as eerie as anything youll find in the Brothers Grimm.Publishers Weekly

[S]hrewdly unnerving and bewitching improvisations on fairy tales... clever, caring, funny, and wrenching.... Thompsons wizardly command is spellbinding, and her keen and unexpected revelations are, by turn and twist, grim and ebullient.Booklist (starred)

[A] series of exuberantly imaginative riffs on traditional folk and fairy tales...they offer all the chills and suspense embedded in those ancient pinnacles, gorges and deep, dark woods....[a] spirited, provocative collection.Valerie Miner, San Francisco Chronicle

[An] arresting collection. Thompson transforms old tales, rendering them at once familiar and surprising.Rob Cline, The Iowa Gazette

The dangers [in Thompsons stories] are, in fact, so familiar that one might miss the foreboding peculiar to fairy tales where anything might happen....And that is something Thompson does especially well. She has a clear, strong sense of how all sorts of people work, sometimes a mystery even to themselves, and her smart, spare style, conveying these inner workings in an almost matter-of-fact way, is a sly modern counterpart of the age-old storytellers voice, simply reporting the way things are, however strange.Ellen Akins, Minneapolis Star-Tribune

In this collection of eight updated fairy tales, Jean Thompson demonstrates once again that she's a modern-day Katherine Mansfield, capturing the culture with trenchant wit. These stories are entertaining, but also creepy; just when you think you know where Thompson is goingyou look around and nothing is familiar anymore. Thompson is a wizard of the short story, and these tales are magicaland diabolical.Julia Keller, NPRs Best Books of 2014

Author Bio

Jean Thompson is the New York Times bestsellingauthor of numerous novels and story collections, among them A Cloud in the Shape of a Girl, The Year We Left Home, City Boy (a National Book Award finalist), and Wide Blue Yonder. She lives in Urbana, Illinois.