Customer Reviews

Black Pearls: A Faerie Strand

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Lush, Buoyant, Terrifying, and Heartbreaking. What Hawes has accomplished with her new collection of stories, Black Pearls: A Faerie Strand, is nothing short of Brilliant! This is not just a retelling of the oldest and most cherished fairy tales you heard as a child, but a bold and breathtaking re-envisioning of such memorable stories as the Pied Piper, and Hansel and Gretel. Through Hawes' powerful imagination and stunning prose, these stories have "grown up," infused with a mature and wondrous new charm.

At first glance you won't recognize the names of the stories in the Table of Contents; Hawes has chosen to rename her tales. But for those of you intimately familiar with these unforgettable classics, you will not be far into Hawes' first story, "Dame Nigran's Tower," before you recognize the theme of Rapunzel. But what's different is that Hawes has chosen to tell the story from the witch's point of view, and not the horrible witch from the original tale who was so easy to hate and fear with her warts and pointy nose and bony hands, but a beautiful witch who risks her magical ability to fly for a chance to experience the power of human love. These are compassionate, sophisticated stories that will hold you spellbound for hours, long after you've put the book down.

But be warned: not everyone in these stories lives happily ever after. Through the vehicle of these re-imagined tales, Hawes' artfully exposes human nature in all its forms--at once raw and devastating, then beautiful and courageous--unwilling to take false paths for happier solutions. Hawes stays true to the story she's fashioned, committed to the characters she's shaped, faithfully following them through the dismal, dank forest if that's where they lead. But even at their darkest, these stories manage to lift you up with their boundless energy and daring, their genius and empathy, their unwavering heart and soul.

Hawes is known for her virtuosic writing and her ease of transitioning between genres, producing YA Novels, Middle Grade Novels and Picture Books, and several short fiction collections. Her work has garnered awards from the Children's Book Council, the Young Adult Library Services Association, the Center for Children's Books, the New York Public Library, and the International Reading Association. It is due to her amazing command of language and literary genius that Hawes is able to imbue these mature stories with fairy tale magic. Through the enchantment of Hawes' magnificent prose, I was transported back in time, not to my own childhood, but a realm where time has never existed, and yet, in terms of human spirit, not so different from today.

Once upon a time, there was a woman who was so caught up in a book that she did nothing all day but read it, from cover to cover.

_Black Pearls_ is a gem. Louise Hawes' dark, sensual fairy tale retellings and Rebecca Guay's evocative illustrations work perfectly together to form one of the best books of retold tales that I've ever read. I checked this out from the library, but I've resolved that I simply must have a copy of my own to treasure.

Hawes' prose is perfect for the genre. Her writing is beautiful without being heavy, and she has a talent for conveying visceral images in arch, elegant turns of phrase. She's also got a knack for metaphors. They're sometimes unexpected, sometimes familiar, and always perfectly fitting for the character who thinks them. (Rapunzel's witch compares hatred to poisonous mushrooms, Gretel notes that her angry stepmother is "set and stiff as beaten cream," and one of the seven dwarfs sees a bedraggled Snow White as a diamond that has not yet been cut.) My favorite metaphor in the book comes from the Snow White retelling as well: "watching the orange village at the bottom of the fire tumble into ruin".

My favorite among the tales is "Evelyn's Song," which tells the story of the golden singing harp from Jack and the Beanstalk. It's a haunting tale of servitude and freedom. The other stories, too, look at the old tales from new angles and explore the tangled emotions that lurk within the archetypes.

I would recommend this collection to anyone who enjoyed the Datlow/Windling fairy tale series, Tanith Lee's _Red as Blood_, and though Hawes sets her tales in "once upon a time" rather than our time, Francesca Lia Block's _The Rose and the Beast_.

...And she read happily ever after.

The intriguing title is perfect for this collection of "twisted" fairy tales. (The lustrous pearl, once considered the "Queen of Gemstones," was valued above the lives of enslaved divers - men whose lifespans were cut short by the dangers of the dive.) In this story collection, Hawes transforms seven fairy tales with her magical pen: Rapunzel; The Pied Piper; Hansel and Gretel; Cinderella; Jack and the Beanstalk; Snow White; Lady Godiva.

The reader enters the backdoor of the moldering palaces of our childhood, drawn by Hawes's evocative wording and dream-inspired characters. Behind overgrown hedges of blood-red blossoms and menacing thorns, we find complicated emotions - forbidden love, desperate longing, suicidal despair, wrenching guilt.

The richly-detailed, black-and-white illustrations are a fine complement to the luscious wording. This short story collection would be a fine addition to a classroom library for teens. It would make a splendid gift for an imaginative teen reader/writer. Leave an extra copy on the night-table of your guest bedroom.

Have you ever longed for a fairy tale that wasn't riddled with silliness and foolish princesses and princes? Or one that held greater meaning and depth than those tales your mother told you when you were a child? Black Pearls is what you have been looking for. These seven tales are far different than those that you remember hearing, but eerily similar at the same time. Why was Rapunzel kept in that tower? Did Hansel and Gretel really make it out of that gingerbread house alive? What was the real purpose behind Lady Godiva's shocking ride? You'll learn the secrets, and much more, in this book.

Black Pearls is spellbinding. Each and every wonderfully crafted story is stunning, and just as enrapturing, inviting, and exquisite as the next. This sophisticated collection reveals the complexity and deeper nature of each tale, and will especially appeal to those who ever wondered about the practicalities of each classic story. Anyone who has out-grown the childish fancies that fairy tales are notorious for, but not the tales themselves, will fall in love with this book, and the more mature content will add to its appeal. Hawes has a way of highlighting the intricacies of human emotions and relationships, making Black Pearls a bold, brilliant read.

http://thecompulsivereader.blogspot.com/

In this mesmerizing book, seven classic fairy tales have been retold; presented in a mature, yet still very magical, way.

Learn the truth behind Rapunzel's imprisonment, and what really happened to Hansel and Gretal in the candied house in the woods. You'll discover what happened to the children the Pied Piper stole away, and how Cinderella and her prince lived after "Happily Ever After." Find out why the harp wanted to stay with her monstrous giant of a master rather than go with Jack, and how the Seven Dwarves fared after Snow White left to be with her prince. And, most intriguing of all, you'll learn the true reason behind Lady Godiva's legendary ride.

So immerse yourself in this wonderfully written collection of some of the best known tales of all time and their wonderfully human characters, who are passionate, fallible, and not all as they seem. They are different, a bit more true to life, and better suited for the more mature and thoughtful reader, but won't fail to evoke the same feelings they did when you heard first heard them as a child.

Stirring, sad, triumphant, and poignant, you'll devour each and every artfully portrayed tale.

Reviewed by: The Compulsive Reader

If only the original fairy tales were this richly written...perhaps our children would be more drawn to fine literature. Hawes has a gift for bringing her characters to life. She provides a perspective within each tale that is unique and sometimes cynical but always thought provoking.

We are in a dark wood wandering in these fascinating retellings of well known fairy tales, as if we entered them from another direction; it is an amazing forest, full of things we think are familiar and characters we thought we knew well and paths that we know ended in a village or a cottage but no longer do. In one, a good witch, whose joy is to fly with her sisters at night, comes into possession of a small mortal girl and by the springing up of that amazing thing, human love, gradually makes the girl her life and postpones her desire to join her sisters. Flight becomes a memory until the good witch is not sure she remembers how -- but the girl is human and when she grows up so beautiful in her tower, lets down her hair to a waiting lover. In another, Cinderella goes to the ball and happily marries, but her greedy desires after the marriage estrange her from her prince who becomes not a shining gallant but something sadder and estranged by her desertion....and so on.

BLACK PEARLS: A FAERIE STRAND is for little girls grown into adolescence and even into their adult and older years...the same stories we loved told for us again now that we have grown up and have begun to understand the many paths of the human heart.

I am the author of several historical novels including MARRYING MOZART, the story of Mozart in love.

I just finished Black Pearls: what a beautiful, compelling collection of stories! I've always been a fan of fairy and folk tales, whether original or retold, and marvel at works like Anne Sexton's Transformations, The Goose Girl, Birdwing and The Book of Lost Things. The reader easily develops an intense intense intimacy with Ms. Hawes' chosen characters, each unique and surprising--the witch in Rapunzel, the harp in Jack and the Beanstalk, one of the dwarfs in Snow White, etc. The writing was lovely and poetic, and while it was satisfying to find elements of the original stories worked into these tales, each story moved far beyond the tales we've come to know. I enjoyed them all, and especially loved Dame Nigran's Tower, Ashes and Diamonda. I'll be reading these stories again and again.