Their neglectful mother remarries, giving them an evil stepfather. Straight away, their father is so happy he dies the night they are born. Joringel and Jorinda grow up, but where we would expect the twins would have the best childhood ever with a family made whole at last, they become afflicted in every way.
The pair are conceived magically by infertile parents from the blood of their mother after cutting her finger and making a wish. We then shift perspective and hear the tale of twins Joringel and Jorinda. And let’s face it, that’s where the richness, the weight, and the true meaning of the stories lie. I could not believe a modern author would have the audacity to retell these stories. There was a scene where the ugly sisters were so desperate to fit their feet into the glass slipper they cut off their toes and stuffed their feet into the shoe, blood dripping everywhere. I remember vividly reading an early version of Cinderella. Are these children’s stories?īut, I was entertained from the first minute of reading because I have read a number of the original fairytales. So horrifying are these tales that the Middle-Grade reading age is sometimes questioned. Gidwitz did the brilliant thing of retelling the famous Grimm fairytales with a stroke of genius, adhering more closely to their original gruesome forms. The Grimm Conclusion is the final book in Gidwitz’s acclaimed series, A Tale Dark & Grimm, preceded by A Tale Dark and Grimm and In a Glass Grimmly. I thought anything to do with the Brothers Grimm would be interesting.
I bought this book while cruising around the secondhand bookstores at Christmas.
0 kommentar(er)
