REVIEW: “The Nymph of the Rhine” by Charlotte von Ahlefeld

Review of Charlotte von Ahlefeld, Eve Mason, trans., “The Nymph of the Rhine”, in A String of Pearls: A Collection of Five German Fairy Tales by Women (2020): 25-34 — Order here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman. (Read the review of the anthology.)

This is the story from which the anthology title’s string of pearls comes from; Ambrose the poor fisherman is visited one night by the nymph of the Rhine, who spins him a story of woe and makes a bargain with him: If he helps arrange a meeting so she can forgive her past lover, she will make him rich enough to marry his sweetheart.

I found this story fascinating: Right up until the very end, I did not know which of two ways it would end, and either one of them would have fit into the fairy tale trope. I also found interesting the juxtaposition of the clearly-supernatural nymph within a clearly Christian context: Even the nymph herself seems to feel she is a creature of God, and not of the devil. The final distinctive aspect of the story was how the message of equality between partners as the recipe for marital happiness was put into the mouth of a man, and not a woman. It was a strangely feminist message, and it had all the more impact because it wasn’t a woman arguing for it.

(Originally published in German in 1812.)

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REVIEW: “Princess Gräcula” by Friederike Helene Unger

Review of Friederike Helene Unger, Eve Mason, trans., “Princess Gräcula”, in A String of Pearls: A Collection of Five German Fairy Tales by Women (2020): 1-23 — Order here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman. (Read the review of the anthology.)

This story kicks off with everything you expect of a fairy tale — a childless royal couple who are finally blessed with a daughter, Gräcula; a fantastic christening visited by a loathsome witch; a child gifted with all the jewels, gold, beautiful dresses one could desire — and then morphs into a bizarre combination of traditional fairy tale trappings, Dante’s Inferno, and that bit in Pinocchio where he gets turned into an ass.

Unger’s story operates on many levels within the structure of a typical fairy tale; there is the story itself, populated with characters that do not fill the standard fairy-tale tropes (Gräcula’s mother, Sentimentale, is a prime example of this. Rather than being either absent or evil, she is a complex combination of characteristics, delighting in learning and education, reading Greek and enjoying philosophy, but also wanting nothing more than to be a mother.), and then there is the social criticism layered on top — of learning philosophy without first establishing a foundation of good sense and character; of penal institutions in which behavior generally “worsened rather than improved” (p. 20); of the aristocracy.

It’s a bit of a whirlwind. Also: I had no idea telegraphs were already in existence in 1804, so learning that was cool.

(Originally published in German in 1804.)

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REVIEW: A String of Pearls: A Collection of Five German Fairy Tales by Women translated by Eve Mason

Review of Eve Mason, trans., A String of Pearls: A Collection of Five German Fairy Tales by Women (2020) — Order here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.

A String of Pearls is a collection of 19th-century German fairy tales written by women, translated into English by Eve Mason, beautifully illustrated by Susan Sansome. Mason’s informative introduction provides the wider context they exist in, including an important emphasis on the fact that the first two centuries of the genre were, in fact, dominated by women, even if by now we typically associate fairy tales with men such as the Brothers Grimm, Charles Perrault, and Hans Christian Anderson. More of this historical context is also provided in Joanna Neilly’s foreword.

Why have women been dropped out of the history of the fairy tale? Mason outlines how the two dominant traditions in contemporary fairy tale studies leave no room for the alternative, subversive function of fairy tales as written by women, as vehicles which “allowed them to explore alternative realities and subtly criticise patriarchal values and conventions” (p. iv). The stories that Mason has chosen to translate for this collection all illustrate this, putting the women central, where other stories sharing the same archetype might put the emphasis on the male characters. Her introduction includes a synopsis of each tale along with biographical information about the authors.

The stories are not wholly unproblematic, as Mason points out herself: They include racists and misogynistic comments and tropes prevalent in that period. But I approve of her choice to leave these comments in rather than erase them, which would be problematic in itself; when we seek to restore women authors to their rightful place in the history of literature, we cannot turn them all into paragons of virtue. We must instead grapple with the fact that they — just as the men of their time — wrote flawed stories, and may have been flawed themselves. This does not make their work any less important.

The entire collection is a delight: From the historical and contextual information provided in the introduction (all of which was unfamiliar to me) to the stories themselves, told with verve and intrigue and feeling both strange and familiar. My only complaint is that there are but five stories; I hope that Mason continues her collecting and translating work in the future!

As is usual, we will review each story separately, and link the reviews back to this post as they are published.

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REVIEW: “Margins” by Elizabeth Hinckley

Review of Elizabeth Hinckley, “Margins”, Luna Station Quarterly 44 (2020): Read online. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.

Adrian’s life has always been lived at the margins, “where all of the excitement, beauty, and magic were.” At the start, I was excited to read more about that life, especially the summers he spends with his father the circus-worker, but we got so much history at the beginning, and not enough story, that I lost interest. I kept reading, though, and was rewarded by a sharp, sudden crossing of a margin about half-way through (a transition point that I wish had come much earlier). What came after was still somewhat plodding at times, but was overall intriguing.

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REVIEW: “Of Moonlight and Music” by Kayla Whittle

Review of Kayla Whittle, “Of Moonlight and Music”, Luna Station Quarterly 44 (2020): Read online. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.

Every full moon the circus comes to Elsie’s town, but none of the townspeople ever go; only strangers visit the circus. Until one month, when Elsie wakes up to a sign that marks her out as the first of her village to be called to the circus. “Everyone comes to the circus to find something they’ve been missing,” the Ringmaster tells her when she arrives, but Elsie visits all the stalls and sees all the performances and none of them are what she is looking for. Instead, her missing piece is something entirely different — something that made me really really happy when she finally found it. This was a quiet story overall, but rather deftly done.

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REVIEW: “Skyboss” by Rocky Breen

Review of Rocky Breen, “Skyboss”, Luna Station Quarterly 44 (2020): Read online. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.

Camille has dreamed of going to the stars ever since third grade, and while a chance to cover the Strato Circus’s show in honor of the comet Stephan-Oterma isn’t quite the same thing, it’s still closer than anything else she’s achieved — but the assignment isn’t without its dangers, or its costs.

For being set in the future, there was a delightfully steam-punk feel to this story. It was also exceptionally realistic; every step of Camille’s journey into the stratosphere felt believable and relatable. This was a seriously gripping story which I really enjoyed.

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REVIEW: “Crab Pots” by Amanda Baldeneaux

Review of Amanda Baldeneaux, “Crab Pots”, Luna Station Quarterly 44 (2020): Read online. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.

Skyla’s life is ordinary, mundane, and miserable — husband, two children, no more job once she had her children, doing all the parenting while her husband loafs amongst the crab pots. “Weekends always made her feel like a failure,” we are told, and it that sentence I, and I am sure many other readers will see themselves reflected. The most exciting thing in her life is the gift of a new bikini, and even that comes with demands. There’s no way she could wear it without at least getting waxed. “If her family would just leave her alone she could get everything done without falling behind” — another line that will hit close to home for many mothers.

It’s a cliche to say “everything changes when” but everything does change for Skyla when Gwyn, the optometrist’s office manager, invites Skyla and her sons to an anti-circus protest — after all, mermaids weren’t meant for captivity.

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REVIEW: “Leonardo’s Children” by Katerini Koraki

Review of Katerini Koraki, “Leonardo’s Children”, Luna Station Quarterly 44 (2020): Read online. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.

A circus of cyborgs coming to perform for an audience of lumberjacks on the planet Hathor — that description both perfectly summarises the central plot of this story, and completely fails to capture the way in which this story felt weighty and serious, not haphazard and humorous, as you might expect from such a description. This story had a real quality to it; well done.

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REVIEW: “The Harvest-Bringers” by Natasha Grodzinski

Review of Natasha Grodzinski, “The Harvest-Bringers”, Luna Station Quarterly 44 (2020): Read online. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.

My overwhelming impression of this one was uncertainty. After a string of circus stories, I was surprised by this one, which didn’t have any identifiable circuses in it for a very long time. Between the rather excessively-long build-up and the large quantity of prolix sentences in this story, I felt like I spent a lot of waiting simply wading through words waiting for the story to start. There was a close encounter with a circus, but then there were equally many, equally slow-moving words on the other side of that encounter, so I just struggled to enjoy it. It didn’t quite make the fairy-tale-esque mark I think the author was shooting for, sadly.

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