Tender Morsels

by

electronic resource

English language

Published Nov. 9, 2008 by Random House Children's Books.

ISBN:
978-0-375-89149-6
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OCLC Number:
295058756

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4 stars (1 review)

Tender Morsels is a dark and vivid story, set in two worlds and worrying at the border between them. Liga lives modestly in her own personal heaven, a world given to her in exchange for her earthly life. Her two daughters grow up in this soft place, protected from the violence that once harmed their mother. But the real world cannot be denied forever--magicked men and wild bears break down the borders of Liga's refuge. Now, having known Heaven, how will these three women survive in a world where beauty and brutality lie side by side?From the Hardcover edition.

4 editions

reviewed Tender morsels by Margo Lanagan

Review of 'Tender morsels' on 'Goodreads'

4 stars

A really spiky, rich reimagining of the Snow White and Rose Red fairytale. No, not the sleeping princess Snow White: the one with the two sisters, the dwarf, and the bear. The beginning seems unpromisingly harsh with a really gruesome incest plot, and I feared the book was going in the direction of Robin McKinley's awful book Deerskin (which you should avoid if you haven't) but from there it gets extremely interesting and quite funny and beautiful in a consistently quirky way, and the awful incest business isn't there to serve a victim's revenge plot--it's more of a Yeatsian worldview where awfulness is inevitable but productive.

If all fairytale retellings were this sophisticated, I would read more of them. The writing's very good too. And the bears could be their own book.