Fairy Tales: Love, Hate And Hubris by Manoj Kewalramani

Goodreads Summary: If you caught up with the wolf that hounded little Red Riding Hood, can you image what he would tell you? What did the wicked and vain queen really want from Snow White? Is Beauty and the Beast a tale of love or a story on the shackles of idealisation?

‘Fairy Tales: Love, Hate and Hubris’ is a poetic recap of 16 such timeless fairy tales. Delving into the lives of the antagonists and other characters that have been forever ignored, each poem is an adaptation that sheds new light on their predicaments and motivations.

The collection dwells on wide-ranging unexplored themes – from age and youth, the trappings of power, God and faith, narcissism, self-loathing, and unbridled desire, arrogance and lust, idealisation and love.

My views: Perhaps I wouldn’t have picked up this book had I not won it in Goodreads first-reads. Perhaps I wouldn’t have gone past the first page had I not had the book in my hands. But since I had won it and had it in my hands, I decided to read it. And that turned out to be a good thing.

The book is a retelling of fairy tales and starts so aptly with the quote “Some day you will be old enough to start reading fairy tales again.” – C.S. Lewis

Good things

I enjoyed the retelling of tales that I had already read.

I especially enjoyed reading “Just a kiss”. I laughed out loud at the end.

I appreciate the effort of the author in this rendition of fairy tales, making us see it from a completely different perspective.

I enjoyed the poetry conversion of these fairy tales.

There are lessons to be learned from each poem.

Not so good

In order to enjoy each poem, you should have read the original fairy tale. I hadn’t read so many of them, so couldn’t appreciate the book in its totality.

I wish the author had named the original fairy tales, either in the start or end of the book, so that I could find and read them before reading his take on the story.

The words ‘honey’ and ‘darling’ were repeated too often for my taste.

In all, the book is a short, sweet tale that leaves you with lessons of life. It is not a children’s book (as my Mom perceived when she saw the book). These are fairytales for adults and also for those children who think beyond their ages.

3/5 stars – I liked it.