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
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