Ruby Slippers, Golden Tears [Mass Market Paperback]

Ellen Datlow (Editor), Terri Windling (Editor)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 1996

""Once upon a time ..." So begin the classic fairy tales that enthralled and terrified us as children. Now, in their third critically acclaimed collection of original fairy tales for adults, World Fantasy Award-winning editors Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling bring us twenty-one new stories by some of the top names in literature today.

Joyce Carol Oates, Gahan Wilson, Gene Wolfe, Tanith Lee, Neil Gaiman -- these are but a few of the accomplished literary sorcerers who have gathered here to remold our timeless myths into more sensuous and disturbing forms. Like the fabled ruby slippers, there is powerful magic here. Rich witches in trendy resorts cast evil spells ... beautiful princesses age and wither in sleeping worlds ... terrible beasts reside beneath flawless skin.

Dark, disturbing, delightful, each story was written expressly for this superb collection of distinctly grown-up fantasy -- a brilliant companion volume to Datlow and Windling's acclaimed anthologies, "Snow White, Blood Red and "Black Thorn, White Rose.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Datlow and Windling, winners of a World Fantasy Award for their annual Year's Best Fantasy & Horror, score again with this third entry in their provocative volumes of original, updated fairy tales for adults. The collection, which gathers many impressive names from the field of dark fantasy, also contains introductory essays and extensive suggested reading lists. Highlights include Tanith Lee's "The Beast," a disturbing but all too believable vision of psychopathy and art, and a rather different take on art's worth in an even more unsettling story by Garry Kilworth ("Masterpiece"). Joyce Carol Oates offers an exceptionally surrealistic version of the Sleeping Beauty myth, while Roberta Lannes contributes an exceedingly amusing variation on "The Shoemaker and the Elves." The late John Brunner is represented by a masterful fable that employs Chinese myth, an evil emperor and all-powerful dragons, and Nancy Collins creates a wonderfully folksy atmosphere with her Kentucky-set yarn about fear and common sense. Though the collection skews slightly toward tales of damsels in distress imperiled by evil males (it's notable that only six of the 22 stories are by men), it triumphantly concludes with Delia Sherman's uplifting fable about redemption, nobility and friendship. Like its predecessors, Snow White, Blood Red and Black Thorn, White Rose, this anthology is a must for those who believe that "once upon a time" means now.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

From Roberta Lanne's upscale retelling of "The Shoemaker and the Elves," in which an ambitious cockroach lends his entrepreneurial talents to a Manhattan tailor ("Roach in Loafers"), to Ellen Steiber's moody tribute to Japanese folklore ("The Fox Wife"), the 22 original stories and poems in this collection bring a modern twist to classic and sometimes obscure fairy tales. Like its predecessors Black Thorn, White Rose (AvoNova: Morrow, 1994) and Snow White, Blood Red (Morrow, 1992), this volume explores new interpretations of old themes. It offers a fresh look at tales no longer for children only. Suitable for most libraries' fantasy or short story collections.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Mass Market Paperback: 432 pages
• Publisher: Avon; Reprint edition (December 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0380778726
• ISBN-13: 978-0380778720
• Product Dimensions: 6.9 x 4.2 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7.7 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,314,220 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Writing as Rich as Rubies, as Dark as Death, March 27, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: Ruby Slippers, Golden Tears (Mass Market Paperback)

"Ruby Slippers, Golden Tears" is the third book in a series of short story volumes edited by Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling, all inspired by classic fairy tales. The genre of fairy tales tends to be seen as literature for children, but Datlow and Windling point out that this is a modern view - the early versions of the tales were often dark, adult and brutal, and they have invited authors to reinvent the tales with an eye on their origins.

The resulting stories cover a variety of styles and genres, from the humour of Roberta Lannes' "Roach in Loafers", to the disturbing horror of Anne Bishop's "Match Girl". This is very much an edition for adults, not to be mistaken for children's stories, and Match Girl (based on Hans Christian Andersen's "Little Match Girl") may be too much for some to stomach. Nevertheless, as the author points out, the instruments of torture described have all been invented and used by humankind.

Some of my favourite stories in this volume are Joyce Carol Oates' haunting and moving "The Crossing"; Neil Gaiman's poem "The White Road" - "Mr. Fox" with a twist; and Tanith Lee's "The Beast", an unusual and erotic version of "Beauty and the Beast" with more than a touch of "Bluebeard". But the book is full of gems, some fantastical, some darkly disturbing. Lovers of fantasy should lap it up, and anyone who has enjoyed the previous volumes of the series will find more delights in store for them here.

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars the best, so far, January 4, 2004

By 

EmBee (Oregon, United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Ruby Slippers, Golden Tears (Mass Market Paperback)

I love the whole Windling/Datlow edited series of fairy tale short stories. This particular book is by far the best one I have read (and I've read them all, to date, Jan 2004). Ellen Steiber's "The Fox Wife" is the best short story I've read in awhile - well worth repeated readings, and even led me to seek out more oriental "fox" tales. Joyce Carol Oates, Neil Gaiman, and Jane Yolen are here, and the editors, for this one collection, have abandoned their informal trademark touch of including that one truly odious story. ALL the stories are of high quality, and if you are a devotee of this genre, you MUST read this one. It's really the best of the bunch! Five stars!

11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Not my favorite, December 7, 2001

By 

Kelly (Fantasy Literature) (Columbia, MO United States) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: Ruby Slippers, Golden Tears (Mass Market Paperback)

I didn't like this as much as _Black Thorn, White Rose_ or _Black Heart, Ivory Bones_, but it wasn't bad. Add a couple of stars for the stunning novella "The Fox Wife", set in Japan, and for the lush and horrible "The Beast," the dark tale of a beautiful man who is not what he seems. Subtract a few for a pair of stories I heartily disliked--"The Match Girl" which seemed an endless litany of pain and torture, and "The Masterpiece", which is well-written but will forever haunt me. I can't believe the heroine could have made the choice she did at the end of this take on "Rumplestiltskin." Yes, that's probably the point, but that doesn't mean I have to like it.