Tangleweed and Brine - Deirdre Sullivan
I’m going to be completely honest with you: I only bought Tangleweed and Brine by Deirdre Sullivan because of the cover (I know, I know, I’m sorry) and the illustrations, by Karen Vaughan and I thoroughly recommend that if you don’t want to read Tangleweed and Brine you still google Karen Vaughan and have a look at some of her gorgeous illustrations. I don’t usually buy books without reading the blurb and having a quick flick through to make sure I wont detest it. Sometimes that works, sometimes it doesn’t, but it this case the cover was so beautiful that I just had to have it, ignoring the risk that I might not like the book.
Did I like the book? Yes. Sullivan is such a poetic writer, with a brilliant imagination. She has transformed thirteen fairy tales into dark little stories of her own, each only one chapter long. Sullivan doesn’t give herself enough time to build a world in each of the stories, but she does have enough time to draw you in and make you want her to build a world, which is definitely a sign of a good writer, but it’s really frustrating to be drawn into a world of a few pages and then never see it again, or, if all of the fairy stories are set in the same world, to never see the characters again.
I have already said Sullivan is a poetic writer, and I really like the very abstract feeling it gives to some of the stories. She writes a lot in sentence fragments and uses a lot of imagery; I get the feeling she could easily have written them as long poems rather than short stories, but I’m glad she didn’t, because the result is fantastic. The book is split in two parts, Tangleweed and Brine, with seven chapters in Tangleweed and six in Brine. In each story, Sullivan changes tens, which is quite a refreshing change. (Ironically the first story was in second person and the second story was in first person.)
The thirteen stories are Slippershod based on Cinderella, The Woodcutter’s Bride based on Little Red Riding Hood, Come Live Here And Be Loved based on Rapunzel, You Shall Not Suffer based on Hansel and Gretel, Meet The Nameless Thing and Call It Friend based on Rumpelstiltskin, Sister Fair based on Fair, Brown and Trembling, Ash Pale based on Snow White, Consume or Be Consumed based on The Little Mermaid, Doing Well based on The Frog Prince, The Tender Weight based on Bluebeard, Riverbed based on (I didn’t know this one before) Donkeyskin, The Little Gift based on The Goose Girl and, last, Beauty and the Board, based on Beauty and the Beast.
