Rosie Little's Cautionary Tales for Girls by Danielle Wood.  I was supposed to be organizing boxes containing all my worldly possessions, in preparation for a move when I came across a stack of ARCs.  Being the book addict and absentminded creature that I am, I immediately went through them and picked this up, rather than continue my tedious clearing.



The title character, Rosie, tells a number of women's interest stories with a bit of a fairytale bent.  I was pleasantly surprised to find Wood's tales something other than the typical modern trend of rewriting old stories.  Rosie Little may be a Red Riding Hood analog, but the thematic morals are never as transparent.  While most of these entries would feel right at home in a women's magazine, they maintain a sense of the strange and the magical - especially in a tongue in cheek tale of Eve the painter, and the disturbing number of mannikins in "The Wardrobe."  I was more than once reminded of a whimsical Margaret Atwood crossed with Carol Ann Duffy's work in The World's Wife.  'Cautionary Tales' is perfect indulgence reading for the ironic third wave feminist - slightly twisted, and all too familiar.

Read December 2007