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Fitcher's Brides by Gregory Frost check out website: www.tor.com
Go back a bit further (pre-Perrault is usually enough to do it) and the bedtime stories you thought you knew so well are suddenly a lot darker - remember the rape, adultery and cannibalism in 'Sleeping Beauty', anyone?
Most people are, admittedly, hard-pressed to remember the exact story and it has instead become the basis for some deliciously spiky re-tellings from female authors like Margaret Atwood and Angela Carter. There's something about the nature of the tale that attracts re-imaginings and this latest version from Gregory Frost is certainly an intriguing take on things. Part of Terri Windling's 'Fairy Tale Series', a collection of retellings by fantasy and horror authors, 'Fitcher's Brides' borrows from all the myriad variations on the demon lover story, including Perrault's 'Bluebeard' and the traditional German 'Fitcher's Bird' of the Grimm collection. Frost's version of the scenario is original, to say the least: Elias Fitcher is a New England preacher, prophesying 'the last year of the world' in 1843. Drawn to his apocalyptic flock is a widower with three teenage daughters, Vernelia, Amy and Kate Charter. When their father and step-mother are invited to be Fitcher's gatekeepers at his 'utopian' community awaiting the end of the world, the sisters are drawn into Fitcher's orbit. When he announces he has no intention of spending eternity an unmarried man, the stage is then apparently set for the familiar story to play itself out... There's a certain pleasure to be had in knowing the bare bones of the original story reading 'Fitcher's Brides' and the key elements of bloody keys and a mysterious egg are all present and correct if the re-telling aspect is what attracts you to this book. Beyond that, though, is the form that Frost has chosen to tell it: an atmospheric New England fable edged with pre-apocalyptic tension and spirits in the walls. The characters all genuinely believe the world is due to end and the slow countdown to the end is mirrored symbolically in the plot as it works through the fates of the Charter sisters. Of the three, Kate is the youngest and ostensibly the protagonist, but more than enough sympathy is garnered for her sisters as their situation progresses. It's the gradual revelation of their secrets and desires that keep the momentum building. There is never any doubt that something horrible is lurking just around the corner, that's part of the mythology at work, but it's the slow, subtle reveal that works with the sense of narrative inevitability so well. Fitcher himself is a curious mix of predictable bad guy (there is never any doubt of his evil, after all) and a charismatic silken menace as he worms his way inside our heroines' heads. The dream-like quality his influence exerts is edged nicely with mention of the mesmerism craze that swept Boston society much as his preaching did, reinforcing the sense of unreality within his 'perfect' isolated community that the sisters enter into one by one. Within the signs and metaphors though, is a real sense of time and place. Frost has obviously thoroughly researched the setting and the New England culture, the fashions, the crazes, even the thoroughly unpleasant process of candle-making, are dropped in throughout to lend weight. The landscape itself might feel familiar to anyone acquainted with Washington Irving, for instance: the creepy wooded gorges of upstate New York already house Sleepy Hollow and Rip Van Winkle and Frost almost seems to want to play amongst this legacy. Whether you have a passing knowledge of 'Bluebeard' or just prefer a fantasy story that has a brain, this is certainly an unusual addition to the genre. Frost's prose is slow and measured, lingering with equal interest on Fitcher's twisted seductions and some particularly gruesome corpses as it does upon the unnervingly silent meal times within his community. There's more than enough sex and death to keep the attention even without some of the dense allusions to versions past and other mythologies. Blink-and-you'll-miss-them-moments of this - like Kate's middle name being Proserpine, a character in Greek myth who is tricked into marrying the god of the Underworld - are a nice addition. The one jarring note was where the story does diverge from its inspirations: the crowds present for the grand finale somehow detract from the key events towards the end that usually take place in isolation. Too much feels crammed into what should have been as neatly paced as the rest of the book, but it's a small quibble overall in such an impressive and unusual effort. A final extra selling point though is Terri Windling's introduction: 30 pages exploring the inspirations for her 'Fairy Tales Series' project and Frost's influences for this book. It's an accessible and comprehensive introduction to the Bluebeard mythology that lets you appreciate what Frost is drawing upon and what other modern Bluebeards are around in our culture ('Silence Of The Lambs', anyone?!). Jennifer Howell
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OTHER REVIEWS - March 2004
Chasing Science by Frederick Pohl Wolves Of The Calla by Stephen King and illustrated by Bernie Wrighton The Mammoth Book Of Native Americans edited by Jon E. Lewis Changing Planes by Ursula Le Guin Red Star Rising: More Chronicles Of Pern by Anne McCaffrey Three Hearts And Three Lions by Poul Anderson Downward To The Earth by Robert Silverberg Buffy: Seven Crows by John Vornholt The Dragon Of Despair by Jane Lindsjold Gunpowder Empire by Harry Turtledove Barry Trotter And The Unnecessary Sequel by Michael Gerber Fitcher’s Brides by Gregory Frost Mammoth Book Of Best New Horror 2003 The Moon’s Shadow by Catherine Asaro Which Way To The Future: Selected Essays From Analog by Stanley Schmidt
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'Bluebeard'
was never one of those fairy tales you find in the usual modern
collections: the whole scenario of 'young girl marries serial killing
misogynist' not really going down terribly well next to today's
sanitised versions of 'Cinderella' and 'Sleeping Beauty', after
all. 
Thought
not. Back when it was still 'Sun, Moon And Talia', before the Brothers
Grimm and Charles Perrault got their hands on it, its core values
were, shall we say, a little different. There's no sanitising 'Bluebeard'
though. 
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