Published: June 10, 2011
Words: 17,957 (approximate)
Language: English
ISBN: 9781458105974

Short description

Creepy, comic and unsettling, this collection of nine stories features new, retold and mashed-up fairy tales as well as ghosts, puppets and a pet zombie.

Extended description

Fausterella and Other Stories is a collection of nine stories by Kate Harrad. Discover a girl who sells her soul to go to the ball, the perils of adopting a pet zombie, a village which commits a misguided ritual sacrifice, a puppet shop with a secret, a Yorkshire trip with horrifying consequences, and what happens when your dead relatives just won't go away.

Some stories have been previously published by magazines including Dark Tales and Shimmer.

The stories have been variously described as "superbly original ideas", "brisk, funny, and entertaining", "fantastic and unsettling".

Kate Harrad is a London-based writer whose first novel, All Lies and Jest, is being published by Ghostwoods Books. She likes kittens and rainbows, but for some reason prefers to write about dark fairy tales and mutated roadkill.

Tags

horror, fairy tales, ghost stories, cinderella, comedy fantasy, comedy horror, tales of dark fantasy, tales with a twist, comedy short story, comedy zombies

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Reviews

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Review by: yoyoangel on July 13, 2011 :
I really enjoyed these stories: kind of disturbing, but in a good way, if that makes any sense, and the twists are clever.
Highly recommended!
(reviewed within a month of purchase)

Review by: Greg Stolze on June 25, 2011 :
I enjoyed this collection quite a bit. Harrad's language has a pleasing efficiency that lends itself to characterization, especially in the titular story and my personal favorite, "They're Not Dead Until They Stop Talking." The clean, clear understated prose stands aside to let you immediately tangle with the surreal, bizarre and often grotesque elements. At her best, the author reminds me a fair bit of Kelly Link.

Fairytales provide recurring motifs, with Cinderella inspiring not just "Fausterella" but also "Stepmother," both of which invert the trope of the virtuous and suffering orphan (though the two stories take their inversions in very different directions). "The Wood" gives Little Red Riding Hood a similar treatment, not only changing some key details, but deepening the mystery and implying a whole forest full of symbolic victimizers, not just one hungry and anthropomorphized wolf.

That said, I think "The Soho Puppeteer" was the scariest story, operating without a folkloric resonance--just characters who matter going into inexplicable peril. I also got a big kick out of "Squirrel Killing," a piece that's 99% characterization, with just enough left out to leave haunting ambiguities at the end. (It reminded me a bit of Italo Calvino's "The Dinosaurs.")

It's not perfect: If I was talking to her face to face I'd encourage her to take more risks and give herself permission to get fully gone with the eerie or absurd premises she presents so gracefully. But is it worth two bucks? Hell, I'd have paid four.

-G.
(reviewed within a month of purchase)

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