Robin Romm’s Grimm-ly Realistic Inspiration

The current issue of the literary magazine Tin House is dedicated to “Fantastic Women,” writers who are blurring the lines between fantasy and literary fiction, and Robin Romm would fit right into that crowd. based on the short stories in her debut collection, The Mother Garden. Here, she reminds us that the early experts on fairy tales knew the power of realism, too.

When I was young, my grandparents sent me a book of fairy tales. My grandfather, a bit of a scholar, treated books at least as well as he treated members of his family and so the book arrived swaddled in cellophane, wrapped twice in butcher paper, in a padded envelope. The pages were thick and the illustrations, if my memory can be trusted, depicted realistic children in lederhosen amidst flowers and rocks. No ordinary book, this. It was the real Grimm’s. Cinderella’s stepsister hacked off her toes when her foot failed to fit the glass slipper Bluebeard’s closet nearly erupted with the ghosts of his decapitated wives. But the story I most vividly recall—the story that stayed with me through my entire childhood, informing my stories into adulthood—is a story entitled “Babes in the Woods.” The story runs parallel to the story of Hansel and Gretel. A stepmother urges a brother and sister to go searching for berries, or some such delight, in the autumn woods. They scatter crumbs behind them to mark their path, but when they reach the end of the day, the birds have feasted on the crumbs. No witch house appears on the horizon. Not much, if my memory serves me, actually happens in this tale. The children are lost. No one finds them. The night grows cold and they die.

I loved this story. My mother, crouching by the bookshelf obliged my longing to hear it a couple of times, but soon she refused.

“It’s morbid,” she said.

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20 October 2007 | selling shorts |

It’s a Big Weekend for Book Festivals!

This weekend, you could go to the National Book Festival in Washington, D.C., or the nearby Baltimore Book Festival, or, if you’re on the West Coast, the West Hollywood Book Fair. If you tally all the special guests up, provided the overlap between D.C. and Baltimore’s lineup isn’t too significant, the three events should bring readers in touch with more than 500 authors, which is pretty awesome.

Me, I’m going to see Sir Ian McKellen play Lear. Woo hoo!

27 September 2007 | events |