The Wilful Eye: Tales from the Tower Vol 1

Isabelle Carmody & Nan McNab (editors)

Allen & Unwin, Australia: April 2011

ISBN: 9781742374406

Genres: fairytales, short stories

Issues: identity, relationships, values

Six well-regarded writers have each reinterpreted a familiar fairytale, reclaiming them from the moralistic simplicity of watered down children's versions.

Fairytales are not meant to be the sanitised things with bright illustrations and happily-ever-after endings that they've become, with a simplistic 'moral' to be taken like a pill. Fairy and folktales have deep roots in oral history, a place of dark moods, elemental forces, and terrifying consequences. Archetypes stride such narratives – witches and wise men, saviours and betrayers, guides and followers. Story elements are repeated, tasks are always multiplied, siblings come in threes.

These modern retellings by experienced short story writers capture the essence of fairytales as recorded by, say, the Brothers Grimm: tales with untidy, incomplete endings; stories where readers are left unsure what to think or feel; narratives that provoke a response that is intuitive, from the more primitive part of the human brain, the place where the dark woods still stand, wolves still howl and not everything can be explained.

As Isobelle Carmody says in the introduction: 'You will find in them the universal themes of envy and desire, control and power, abandonment and discovery, courage and sacrifice, violence and love. They are about relationships – between children and parents, between lovers, between humans and the natural world, between our higher and lower selves.' (p7)

Well worth reading, each story is followed by notes from the authors, explaining character and plot choices and the relationship between fairytales and modern writing. Disturbing, thought-provoking and challenging, readers will never look at the original versions of these tales quite the same way again.

Catastrophic Disruption of the Head (Margo Lanagan): Lanagan takes Hans Christian Anderson's rather simplistic 'The Soldier and the Tinderbox' and forges it into a terrifying tale of revenge. A returned soldier, traumatised by his experiences during the war, stumbles on a magical source of unlimited power and wealth and uses it to gain political influence. Only his growing conscience stands between him and dictatorship. Perhaps the most disturbing of the six retellings, Lanagan's story is full of violence – emotional, psychological, physical and sexual. Warning: explicit rape scene and sexual references, explicit violence including murder

Moth's Tale (Isobelle Carmody): A richly textured reinterpretation of 'Rumpelstiltskin' sees an intelligent young woman betrayed to a sadistic and morally bankrupt king by her prideful father. Moth's kindness and honesty are as essential to her escape as her ability to talk to animals. Carmody explores the complex nature of love – familial, romantic and the more universal love of living things that can be expressed as mercy and compassion.

Eternity (Rosie Borella): 'The Snow Queen' becomes a drug dealer, distorting people's perceptions with addiction and corrupting their values with substance abuse. Icy, merciless and untouchable, what chance does loving Gerda have when she tries to rescue her long-time friend Kai from the glamour the drug has cast upon him? Set in a post-climate change world, where Australia's major cities are chilly, snowbound ghost towns haunted by those trying desperately to survive, Eternity challenges readers to think about the future, to consider our choices and to value what we have.

Heart of the Beast (Richard Harland): 'Beauty and the Beast' is a much loved romantic fairytale but in Richard Harland's skilful hands, the story becomes somewhat darker. Harland questions the values of a father who so lightly gives up his youngest daughter and explores the idea of a man prepared to sacrifice anything and anyone for his own comfort. In Belle, Harland creates a once-compliant girl who learns to value and fight for herself as others never have. Harland's beast is a complex creature, distorted by a world that rejects those who are different.

Wolf Night (Margaret Mahy): 'Babes in the Wood' seemed such a period piece that Margaret Mahy's recreation is the more interesting as it blends the modern and the traditional. A violent suburb at night becomes the 'wild wood' that is the home of danger in almost any fairytale. The 'babes' are close friends betrayed by an adult. Duplicity, loyalty, friendship, trust, self-reliance and self-discovery – Mahy blows the 'Babes in the Wood' into the modern world. She enlarges its context and the characters' experiences so that they actually travel across the landscape of many ancient stories and are strengthened by the journey.

One Window (Martine Murray): 'The Steadfast Tin Soldier' is usually a sad tale and at first this is no different. Soldier is one of a roomful of prisoners; they have few memories of the real world and are sustained only by what they can see from two small windows. Blue sky, the occasional bird – and sometimes Soldier sees a beautiful girl. Escape seems impossible but Soldier grabs his chance when it comes. Determined to free his friends and rescue the 'princess', Soldier struggles to understand a world he's never known but always loved from a distance.