I, among many others, have a deep love for fairytales. They were the earliest stories I can recall my parents reading to me. Many know the classics through their Disney counterparts, but I had a treasured abridged version of all the classic Grimms’ tales. While waiting for my parents to finish work, I steadily worked my way through nearly every fairytale in my hometown’s library. A personal favorite of mine was “All-Kinds-of-Fur,” which is basically a more disturbing version of Cinderella but with more plot and less magic. But that is neither here nor there because what truly fascinates me are the attempts to create modern fairy tales. An example of this that I think is done incredibly well is Tales from the Hinterland by Melissa Albert.
What makes a modern fairy tale work or not work is entirely based on style and how original an author seeks to be. Although there are thousands of variations of every fairy tale formula known to man, often, we are only told a handful of them. There are at least 20 variations of Cinderella-like stories that are all roughly the same. The details about the shoe, or where the magic came from, may change, but the story doesn’t. Cinderella is mistreated by her family, is blessed with magical clothing to go to a party (or sometimes church) that she was forbidden to attend, loses her shoes, and then marries. It is lovely, it is romantic, the stuff little girls dream about, and it has been overdone to death. No one wants to hear a thing about Cinderella ever again. What separates a successful modern fairytale from an unsuccessful one is having an original story that still captures the motifs and language of a fairy tale. The ability to take familiar symbols and story-beats and transform them into something new that still feels old is a difficult skill to master.
What I found particularly compelling about Tales from the Hinterland is the fact that it is a collection of smaller fairy tales. It is a companion book to a Young Adult Fantasy series also by Albert called The Hazel Wood series but it is absolutely unnecessary to read the trilogy to enjoy the fairytales. Most attempts to create what I would call a modern fairytale come in the form of novels. Two great examples that have film adaptations are The Princess Bride and Stardust. As an aside, both are excellent feel-good movies. A fairytale is meant to be something that you can narrate to someone, either from memory or almost from memory. A fairytale is something where details can be added and taken away, easy to grow and change with the mood of the day or the weather. If you were to tell the story of Snow White and set it in the dead of winter, nothing would change except the mood. If you tried to do the same to The Princess Bride meanwhile, you would have a very different story. That is what makes Tales from the Hinterland so good: the style of the writing provides only the most minimal of description. It is written like a writer in a war zone that is sticking to the facts, and only adding in enough detail to color the image in your mind.
So, if I am saying that a modern fairytale collection, that is based on the setting of a generic Young Adult fantasy series is worth your time, I feel as though somehow I need to prove it beyond anecdotes. Because I truly believe that others should put the time and effort into reading this if classic fairy tales are a thing they enjoy. Anyone can read the first fairytale in the collection, “The Door That Wasn’t There,” for free online as a sample. It is dark, it is clever and it feels every ounce of what a fairytale should be that it is easy to forget where it came from. If you are at all intrigued, I implore you to at least read that first, as it is only 11 pages long.
