Book Review: Gretel and The Dark

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gretel_and_the_dark_coverTitle : Gretel and The Dark
Author : Eliza Granville
Publication date : 6 February 2014
Publisher : Hamish Hamilton
Purchase eBook: Kindle
Purchase paper book: Amazon
Rating : 5 out of 5 LeeLee’s!

Vienna, 1899. Josef Breuer – celebrated psychoanalyst – is about to encounter his strangest case yet. Found by the lunatic asylum, thin, head shaved, she claims to have no name, no feelings – to be, in fact, not even human. Intrigued, Breuer determines to fathom the roots of her disturbance.

Years later, in Germany, we meet Krysta. Krysta’s Papa is busy working in the infirmary with the ‘animal people’, so little Krysta plays alone, lost in the stories of Hansel and Gretel, the Pied Piper, and more. And when everything changes and the real world around her becomes as frightening as any fairy tale, Krysta finds that her imagination holds powers beyond what she could have ever guessed . . .

Eliza Granville was born in Worcestershire and currently lives in France. She has had a life-long fascination with the enduring quality of fairytales and their symbolism, and the idea for Gretel and the Dark was sparked when she became interested in the emphasis placed on these stories during the Third Reich.

My Thoughts

Reviewing this book is harder than most, I want to tell you EVERYTHING about it because I enjoyed it so much whilst at the same time I feel that I don’t want to tell you anything at all because that can only lead to me spoiling it for you.

Gretel and The Dark is a very dark, complex and hard-hitting novel which is not what I was expecting. I was prepared for a mature take on Grimm’s fairy tales, a story of magic and wonderment. This book however is on another level!

Eliza Granville’s debut novel tells two stories which intertwine chapter by chapter and are told from two different perspectives. We follow two sets of characters starting with Dr Josef Breuer in nineteenth century Vienna, when a naked woman is found by his gardener and brought to his house, Dr Breuer feels compelled to find out everything he can about her whilst also developing a bit of a soft spot for her. The second tale follows a young girl named Krysta along with her father who is also a doctor and works at the infirmary of a ‘Zoo’ as Krysta calls it working on the animal people. This is where Krysta meets a young boy named Daniel, who apparently eats worms and their tales start to unravel into a heavy story of torture, neglect, abuse and distant memories of better times.

The book is complimented with fairy stories told from memory by Krysta that their cook used to share with her, I really enjoyed a lot of these although sometimes it could get a little heavy on repeatedly going back to this when I was so eager to find out what was going to happen to my favourite characters next.

This a brilliant book and is most certainly different to any other take on such historical events or even fairy tales, that I have experienced before. The complex way the tales intertwine between different worlds was enough to have me a little baffled in the start, as you plough on into the depths of this book it all starts to come together, when Granville starts name dropping and the real tale becomes very apparent had me immersed further into this epic tale of historical fiction and fantasy.

Verdict

I loved this book, it wasn’t what I expected and it still managed to hold my attention. A book that isn’t predictable in any way yet keeps you wanting more.
It can be a little gory and shocking at times but without this it wouldn’t be a true representation of the time, I think Eliza Granville has done a superb job of combining this piece of history with the idea of fairy tales and the imagination of a child at this particular time so well, I would certainly recommend it to others.

 

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