Tender Morsels Book

Though I thought Tender Morsels was a fantastically-written and unbelievably well-imagined story, my first instinct is to throw my hands up in warning at any teenager (or - in fact - any adult) who might come strolling along in search of just another typical fairytale retelling. Because that's what this is in it's barest form, it is a retelling of the Brothers Grimm's tale of Rose Red & Snow White: A Grimms Fairy Tale. And don't we all just love the call of the "dark" retellings? We imagine blood and gore and perhaps sex... what I don't think the majority of people imagine is incest, gory miscarriages, gang rapes and bestiality.

I kid you not... in just the first couple of chapters we are introduced to Liga - a girl who has been repeatedly raped by her father and then forced to drink some gut-churning concoctions in order to force the abortion of any pregnancies - and we see the absolute horrors of sexual abuse she has lived through that have made her the person she later becomes. A person who is so afraid that her fear manifests into a powerful magic which allows Liga to create for herself and her daughters - Branza and Urdda - a world separate from that of reality. A world where the three of them can hide in harmony.

But Liga's attempts to shield her daughters from the cruelty of the real world ultimately fail. Branza becomes a slave to the same fears that plagued her mother, and Urdda's wild curiosity gets the better of her. After time, the border starts to blur between the real world and this magical realm of Liga's imagination.

I was utterly enthralled by the story and by the strength of Ms Lanagan's characters. Above all else, she is undoubtedly a brilliant writer. But... THIS IS NOT A YOUNG ADULT BOOK. It just isn't. Never before have I read a book so wrongly categorised. Even if teens were ready to stomach this kind of brutality and blatant sexuality, I don't think the average teenager would appreciate this kind of story anyway.

There's a lot of dark, unhealthy sexual stuff going on in Tender Morsels. I don't mind sex in books, I don't mind lots of sex in books, but even I found it hard to stomach the repeated rapes, incest and bestiality. I honestly didn't know what to think when a girl gets a sexual thrill from having a bear lick her breast... this just takes perversity to a whole new level. And was that whole thing really necessary? Hmm?

Unlike most books that I rate highly, I refuse to recommend this to anyone in particular. It is too strange and gross and disturbing for me to be confident that anyone will like it. You will have to be quite the adventurous reader and you will have to be able to cringe and move on at some of the weirdest bits. But I doubt you'll be unaffected, that's for sure. Now I'm going to go ponder what it says about me that I was unmoved by Wonder and thought this dark, rapey novel was actually really good.