A Few Fairytale Retellings I’ve Enjoyed
My novel, Thornspell, is a retelling of Sleeping Beauty from the perspective of the prince — one of the fairy tale’s less commonly explored aspects. Nonetheless, it probably comes as no surprise to you that I love fairytale retellings.
A few of my favourites include Robin McKinley’s Beauty (Beauty and The Beast), which has the distinction of being one of the first fairytale retellings I encountered and remains a firm favourite – although her Deerskin (adapting the traditional Donkeyskin) is also a powerful and compelling read.
Another longstanding favourite is Elizabeth Ann Scarborough’s The Godmother draws on an array of fairytales, including Snow White, Sleeping Beauty, and Hansel and Gretel, to name just a few — a wonderful read.
Other more recently enjoyed reads include Juliet Marillier’s Wildwood Dancing, (The Twelve Dancing Princesses), Malinda Lo’s Ash (Cinderella) and Grace Lin’s Where The Mountains Meets The Moon, which draws on Chinese folklore in a Junior fiction retelling.
Alan Garner’s The Owl Service is an eerie retelling of the Celtic fairytale / myth of Blodeuwedd from the Mabinogion – but I suspect Maggie Stiefvater may be drawing on the same tale for part of her new The Raven Boys series, which I’m also very much enjoying. (Although it’s yet to be completed so I may be proven completely wrong regarding Blodeuwedd!)
I have also always loved Diana Wynne Jones’s retelling of the story of Brunnhilde and Siegfried in Eight Days of Luke. Perhaps I am interpreting “fairytale” too broadly here since both the Mabinogion and the tale of Brunnhilde and Siegfired may be counted as myth – but if so it is the same blending that infuses Thornspell, where I have worked the Arthurian cycle into the fairytale retelling.
Stepping away from novels briefly, I very much enjoyed Juliet Marillier’s short story By Bonelight (published in the collection Prickle Moon), a retelling of the Russian Baba Yaga fairytale that won both the Aurealis and Sir Julius Vogel Awards. And when it comes to film, I can’t go past Ever After – my “best ever” retelling of Cinderella.
These are excellent fairytale retellings. 🙂
I think it’s great that fairytale retellings have become increasingly popular during the recent years, because many authors have a lot to contribute to them. It’s actually amazing how well authors have written fairytale retellings and how fluently many of them have managed to modernise many classic fairytales.
And how some tales continue to be told and retold, yet every time are “made new”, which is wonderful. For example, just as Thornspell is a fairytale retelling from the perspective of the prince, only this year Neil Gaiman has released a retelling of the same fairytale from the perspective of a young Queen breaking the spell (The Sleeper And The Spindle), while Kate Forsyth is just about to embark on a retelling based on the Burne-Jones’ painting (WT: Briar Thorns.)
I liked the 2015 version of Cinderella but I did like “Ever After” better.
All the stories in The Prickle Moon collection are good imo. It was a collection I enjoyed reading.
New Zealand author Shelley Chappell also did a decent take on Rumpelstiltskin with her version of it set in Asia called “Ranpasatusan”
‘Ranpasatusan’ sounds like a “must read” — and have been meaning to catch up on Elizabeth Bunce’s “A Curse Dark As Gold” that is also, I believe, a Rumplestiltskin retelling: one day!
I recently read ‘Bitter Greens’ – Australian author Kate Forsyth’s retelling of Rapunzel, interwoven with the story of Charlotte-Rose de la Force, a French author living at the time of Louis XIV who was arguably the first female Historical Novelist and the writer of the version of Rapunzel most commonly told today. It is a fabulous novel! One of the best books I have read in a long time.
You’ll be very pleased to know that Kate’s just signed up for the new “Briar Thorns” historical-fairytale retelling, then. 🙂
I love fairytale retellings! My fav. fairytale rewriters are Gail Carson Levine, Kate Stradling, Shannon Hale and Robin McKinley. I absolutely LOVED Diana Wynne Jones’ ‘Eight Days Of Luke’ and ‘Ever After’ is a long time favourite.
I love them so much that when I ran out of retellings to read, that’s what I began to write. Now I’ve written three novel-length retellings with (hopefully) heaps more to come 🙂
They say “Write what you know”, but I think it’s more important to write what you want to read.
I’ve always thought “write what you love” is key, but that’s probably synonymous with what you want to read.