Fables
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Authors
Goldstein, Sarah
Issue Date
2011
Type
Book, Whole
Language
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Abstract
Here is Amazon's blurb on this book: Departing from the Brothers Grimm to approach our own economically and socially fractured present, Sarah Goldstein's Fables constructs a world defined by small betrayals, transformations, and brutality amid its animal and human inhabitants. We hear the fragment-voices of ghosts and foxes, captors and captives, stable boys and schoolgirls in the woods and fields and cities of these tales. Anxious townsfolk abandon their orphan children to the nightingales in the forest, a bear deploys a tragic maneuver to avoid his hunters, and a disordered economy results in new kinds of retirements and relocations. Goldstein weaves together familiar and contemporary allegories creating a series of vibrant, and vital, tales for our time. I have read most of the entries in the second of five sections, titled, Fables. These are short evocations of mysterious and regularly violent scenes. Dogs tree a bear, and the bear throws down pieces of himself until the hunters finally come to finish him off (25). Two girls match each other's dress and habits and begin to inhabit each other's lives. Their families, inconsistent and self-centered, do not notice the switch. One disappears with her famiily that flees its debts. She writes to her abandoned doppelganger some time later I love them and have left myself.I left myself so long ago, please, don't be angry (16). Bracing stuff! Not fables at all, as far as I can tell.
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Citation
Publisher
Tarpaulin Sky Press