RaveNew York Times Book ReviewThere’s plenty of fresh invention in Fairy Tale, but much of what Charlie encounters reminds him of something else he’s seen or read ... King’s portals — like his novels — have always been leaky apertures, prone to cultural exchange and playful cross-contamination ... Fairy Tale is a multiverse-traversing, genre-hopping intertextual mash-up, with plenty of Easter eggs for regular King devotees. Thankfully, it’s also a solid episodic adventure, a page-turner driven by memorably strange encounters and well-rendered, often thrilling action ... Despite the plot’s twists and turns, the biggest surprise Fairy Tale has to offer King’s so-called Constant Readers might be the book’s promise of a happy ending ... I’ll bet many readers hungry for a genuinely feel-good adventure won’t care what tactics King uses to deliver the goods: These days, some of us will take all the happy endings we can get, however unlikely they seem.
Margaret Atwood
RaveThe New York TimesStone Mattress, Margaret Atwood’s first collection since Moral Disorder in 2006, begins with three linked stories about women who have been romantically involved with a middling poet named Gavin Putnam ... Many of this book’s stories — or 'tales,' as the subtitle and acknowledgments insist — offer characters a chance to put their own understandings of gallantry, courage and revenge to the test, in ways both mundane and extraordinary ... An obsession with aging and dying unites much of Stone Mattress, and Atwood, more than 40 books into her career, has arrived here preoccupied not just with the churn of generations but also with legacy and reputation, with getting straight the story of one’s life — the tale about the tale — and with surviving what happens once no one is paying any attention anymore.
Marisa Silver
RaveThe New York Times Book Review...beguiling...a powerful exploration of the relationship between our changeable bodies and our just as malleable identities ... Silver’s storytelling tactics are finely matched to her themes, with her book’s structure frequently mimicking the dreamlike movements of memories and fables ... It’s a credit to Silver’s skill that before the novel ends she finds one more way to reopen its narrative possibilities.
