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_Some Kind of Fairytale_ (2012) by Graham Joyce
I don't read a lot of fantasy anymore because most of the fantasy books I pick up turn out to feel like the same old story. Of course, most of my favorite books turn out to be the same old stories, so obviously it is not the fact that the story is familiar which is the turn off, so I guess it is still something of a riddle for me why the same old story works some times and not others.
_Some Kind of Fairytale_ is the first fantasy novel I have read in a long time which made me think, "Oh, yes, this story *had* to be told as a fantasy story because it does something only fantasy can do."
The plot: It's Christmas day, and a middle-aged couple hear a knock at their door; when they open the door, a young woman is standing there. She claims to be their daughter who disappeared twenty years before. There is a lot of evidence to indicate that she really is who she claims to be, but she refuses to explain where she has been or what caused her disappearance.
The story has a definite "Turn of the Screw" atmosphere which creates a lot of ambiguity regarding whether or not anything fantastic is actually going on
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I don't read a lot of fantasy anymore because most of the fantasy books I pick up turn out to feel like the same old story. Of course, most of my favorite books turn out to be the same old stories, so obviously it is not the fact that the story is familiar which is the turn off, so I guess it is still something of a riddle for me why the same old story works some times and not others.
_Some Kind of Fairytale_ is the first fantasy novel I have read in a long time which made me think, "Oh, yes, this story *had* to be told as a fantasy story because it does something only fantasy can do."
The plot: It's Christmas day, and a middle-aged couple hear a knock at their door; when they open the door, a young woman is standing there. She claims to be their daughter who disappeared twenty years before. There is a lot of evidence to indicate that she really is who she claims to be, but she refuses to explain where she has been or what caused her disappearance.
The story has a definite "Turn of the Screw" atmosphere which creates a lot of ambiguity regarding whether or not anything fantastic is actually going on
( continued below cut )
