The Merry Spinster

By Daniel M. Lavery,

Book cover of The Merry Spinster: Tales of Everyday Horror

Book description

"A collection of darkly mischievous stories based on classic fairy tales"--Front flap.

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Why read it?

1 author picked The Merry Spinster as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

The Merry Spinster falls into my big bucket of fairytale retelling faves, but it hardly sticks to tradition: rather than simply following old plots, Lavery draws on the tone and style of classic fairy tales to create a gender-warped world where daughters use he/him pronouns and mermaids are sort of, but distinctly not, girls. Even better, the playful attitude towards gender now seems to foreshadow Lavery’s own coming out and transition, both occurring after he published this book—something that fills me with a special kind of trans-author love. Reading this for the first time, I had the sensation of slipping…

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