Why You'll Love This
Kelly Link takes fairy tales you half-remember and rebuilds them into something stranger and more unsettling than the originals ever were.
- Great if you want: literary fairy tale retellings with genuinely weird, modern edges
- The experience: dreamlike and unhurried — each story leaves a residue that lingers
- The writing: Link buries the uncanny inside ordinary moments — the strangeness sneaks up on you
- Skip if: you want clear resolutions — ambiguity is the whole point here
About This Book
Seven fairy tales walk into the modern world—and nothing comes out quite the way you'd expect. Kelly Link takes the bones of Brothers Grimm, Scottish ballads, and French folk tradition and rebuilds them into something stranger and more emotionally precise, populated by billionaires, stranded professors, and ordinary people navigating extraordinary circumstances. The stakes here aren't dragons or kingdoms but the things that actually keep us up at night: family obligation, longing, the quiet terror of running out of time. Each story carries that particular fairy-tale unease—the sense that the rules are different here, and breaking them has consequences.
What makes this collection distinctive is Link's prose, which manages to be both deadpan and deeply strange, often in the same sentence. She doesn't explain her stranger choices; she trusts readers to lean in. The stories reward slow, attentive reading—images and details resurface in unexpected ways, and the emotional weight tends to land a beat or two after you've turned the page. Shaun Tan's illustrations deepen rather than decorate, adding a visual layer that feels genuinely collaborative. This is a book that changes slightly depending on your mood when you open it.