Fairy Tale Fridays - Snow White, Rose Red

A few weeks ago I mentioned that one of my favorite Grimm Brothers fairy tales is Snow White and Rose Red.  I was excited to find that Lydia Millet had written a new take on that beloved tale for the compilation My Mother She Killed Me, My Father He Ate Me, titled Snow White, Rose Red.

Millet launches the story with much of the same detail as the original tale.  The two girls have essentially the same names, they are staying in a "cabin" in the woods and they are both very good people.  Except in Millet's hands, these are two very rich little girls whose mother is a former Russian ballerina with an eating disorder and mental challenges and whose father is a businessman with almost no time for them.  The "bear" turns out to be a man who is hiding from his soon to be ex-wife who comes across them in their yard one day.  Just as they do in the original tale, the girls befriend their bear.  But in this version there is no angry dwarf that must be slain, it is the girls' own father who has to be dealt with.

Just as it can be hard to adapt a beloved book into a movie, it's a risk to take the well-known fairy tales and give them a new spin. I found that Millet had managed to kept just the right elements from the fairy tale I love and created a truly original spin that I very much enjoyed!

Millet says that she was inspired to write the story after developing a fondness for landscapes and nature.  Finding herself interested in the forests of the Adirondacks made her think of all of the fairy tales set in forests and from there it was only a short leap to this tale.