Hag: Forgotten Folktales Retold

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Overall an enjoyable collection that offers a much needed blend of modernity and feminist critique to some classic folktales. So, the copy I have did not have any of those issues, the grammar was spot on so maybe that's why I enjoyed it more. Gowar leaves it up to the reader to decide what is or isn't supernatural, but her adaptation of 'Old Farmer Mole' is chilling, violent and oddly hopeful. My fascination with folktales originally sprung from the hidden mystery in the fog, the twisting path in a dark forest, the never-ending echo of a deep well, the sudden end to footsteps in the snow.

Some of the stories are more ambiguous than fairytales generally are, hinting at explanations that are less overtly paranormal influence and more mental illness, grief, or human violence. They are not a part of popular culture the way fairy stories from other countries have become, via the Brothers Grimm and, eventually, Disney. I was on an edge throughout because of the way it was told but the twist wasn't as great as it was built out to be. When the baby's father comes to get the baby exactly six months after the baby, Muir was born, Skye can't stop him.This collection includes an introduction by Carolyne Larrington who is an author and professor of medieval literature at Oxford University.

What she comes up with in The Holloway is, instead, a clever contemporary take on a Somerset folktale about a drunken, abusive farmer who gets what he deserves at the hand of the pixies. She keeps all the bare bones of the original story, in which the Tudor courtier Sir John Giffard kills the panther from his menagerie of curious animals before it can attack a woman and child. To discover more content exclusive to our print and digital editions, subscribe here to receive a copy of The London Magazine to your door every two months, while also enjoying full access to our extensive digital archive of essays, literary journalism, fiction and poetry. The authors focus on the various themes, ideas and evolutions in a woman's life, whether it is the bond between sisters, the loss of one's self, motherhood, inherited pain, burning desire, friendship and freedom. I think it was a brilliant idea to include the original source material stories at the end of the book, as it really gives the reader basis for comparison, and highlights how cleverly the new stories have been re-spun.As I grew up, this love for the wyrd and eerie remained, but I began to appreciate how this edge could be reinvented time upon time. The original stories are mentioned at the back which was great because I was not familiar with a few of these stories. They have all taken the essence of the original and moulded and shaped it to a contemporary context. Though I don't think this story is particularly original, it does deal with the themes of domestic abuse and how abusers make their victims feel complicit in their own abuse very well. This project has a meta-fictional element to it, and two of the stories take this to a heightened level.

She co-presented the BBC's Turn Up for The Books podcast, alongside Simon Savidge and Bastille frontman Dan Smith. Overall, Hag is a successful endeavour, in that it brushes the dust off some excellent British and Irish folklore.I would rate it five stars if not for the inclusion of Eimear McBride’s The Tale Of Kathleen which is one of the smarmiest, look-how-cleverly-I’m-deconstructing-these-tropes stories I’ve ever had the displeasure of reading. We can’t know what Kathleen looked like, says the author, and so ‘we are, generally, at liberty to envisage her as we fancy’. Growing up in Poland, I’m used to both well-known Western fairytales and legends as well as those firmly ingrained in Polish tradition. Carolyn Larrington, the tales in this collection bring attention not just to great female authors but also to perhaps forgotten gems of British and Irish folklore.

Trigger Warnings: mention of cancer, possession, exorcism, murder, adultery, homophobia, infertility, miscarriage, mention of child abuse, drug use throughout pregnancy, alcoholism, domestic abuse.Reading the stories brought the sense of being trapped in a room, slowly, but very surely, filling up with water. In Hag a range of brilliant female authors from Britain and Ireland were assigned a folktale and given free rein on how to adapt it. The grammar was a little all over the place, sentences that should have had commas but just didn't, so the flow was off.