This is one of those books that makes some assumptions about me as an audience or reader (although what it is really happening is that I am making some assumptions about this book and writers). The assumption is basically — that I will know what to do with a fable. And I will be honest, for the most part I don’t. Readers and writers often love fables. So many books, and maybe it feels like “these days” play upon fables and myths and legends and fairy tales. There’s always been those kinds of books, but like dystopian literature they used to be relatively rare — Mary Renault and Angela Carter, but then a market hit and now it seems like several are coming out a year. And like the dystopian novels that I used to think were really interesting, I think that the market is flooded, but also the books are becoming more and more simulacra in their attempts to say something about something. So this book struggles. And it needn’t. The issue with a 100 page novella by a writer who normally writer 300 page novels is one of contrast. I am meant to take this as a full novel, as it’s not packaged with additional writings, and it’s certainly priced as such. And while the writing is often perfectly fine and curious…..is it a novel? And like with the novels about fairy tales that leaving me thinking about whether or not the writing justifies its own existence, here I am reviewing yet another book leading me down the same set of questions. I wish I had something more interesting to say about it.
(Photo: https://www.amazon.com/Little-Snake-L-Kennedy/dp/178689386X/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=the+little+snake&qid=1564404644&s=gateway&sr=8-1)