★★★★☆ Subversive retellings

Toad Words and Other Stories

T Kingfisher

Let me start by staking out a couple of positions. First, every story-teller retells old stories. Second, every story-teller preaches.

You don't grow up among other humans without hearing stories. For most of us, those stories will include the folklore of our culture, even if the versions you hear are those sanded down by Disney, rather than the older (but still not original), more gruesome Grimm's versions. When you tell a story, you can't do it without echoes of the stories you've heard showing up in your own. Even if you consciously try to avoid retelling old stories, through that avoidance negative images of old stories creep into yours.

Second, story-tellers have reasons (or at least motivations) for telling their stories. In trying to make your stories interesting, or instructive, or funny, or sexy, you tell your readers what things you think are interesting, or instructive, or funny, or sexy. You don't tell a story without preaching something of your worldview.

What about T. Kingfisher's (AKA Ursula Vernon's) Toad Words and Other Stories? It is a collection of 11 works: three poems, seven short stories, and one novella. The short stories are all retellings, or at least consciously based on old stories. The title story, "Toad Words", for instance, is based on the classic Diamonds and Toads. The novella, Boar and Apples, is a Snow White retelling.

All these stories feel similar to me. It is as if Vernon read the old fairy tale, with its original heavy-handed message about good and evil, and said to herself, "Well! Let's just see about that!" and turned the morality of the story upside-down, or at least somewhat askew. That is why I call them subversive retellings.

If you enjoy seeing familiar things in a new light, then you may enjoy Toad Words. Besides that, Vernon has a sense of humor, some of the stories and poems are quite funny.

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