:):):):):)Amanda Craig said in her glowing review in The Times that she has only come across three other writers who can REALLY write original fairytales: J.R.R. Tolkien, Joan Aiken and E. Nesbitt.
And I heartily concur! Of course Tolkien is
And as a child I was enchanted by the dark fairytales of Joan Aiken and the wonderful fantasy books of E. Nesbitt.Craig is right. Rowling can really write fairytales. She could write a whole collection of this stuff and I would read them as eagerly as I read the late, great Angela Carter (who wrote very adult fairytales indeed!).
These five short fairytales by Jo are as good as anything by Grimm or Hans Christian Anderson. They're richly detailed, edgy, funny, dark in places, mysterious and utterly enchanting. They remind me of Tolkien's beautiful little fable Smith of Wootton Major.
They are also not just for children. But then neither were Grimm's ...
I think my favourite is 'The Fountain of Fair Fortune' -- very gentle, very humane, very hopeful.
'The Warlock's Hairy Heart' has a whiff of Bluebeard about it. Yeah!
Of course the stories are richly grounded in the Potterverse -- and Dumbledore's commentary is wonderful, making me appreciate what a great character Rowling created in him -- but I think they are good enough to have an appeal outside the Potterworld.
I could do no better than conclude with a comment from the Master himself:
"Faërie contains many things besides elves and fays, and besides dwarfs, witches, trolls, giants, or dragons: it holds the seas, the sun, the moon, the sky; and the earth, and all things that are in it: tree and bird, water and stone, wine and bread, and ourselves, mortal men, when we are enchanted."
J.R.R. Tolkien, 'On Fairy Stories'
And his friend and critic, C.S. Lewis (no mean writer of fantasy stories himself!!)
'Man pitted against the universe, have we seen him at all till we see that he is like a hero in a fairytale?'
C.S. Lewis, in his review of Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings
