A hypnotizing fairy tale that explores what it's like to live life in an unruly female body that everyone around it insists on controlling, What Should Be Wild pulsates with originality, curiosity, terror, and pleasure. With gorgeously distinct chapters that alternate between Maisie's story in the present and her ancestor's stories in the past, Fine has created layered narrative about growing up girl and becoming woman in a world that sees your physical form as a wild threat.
...a modern fairy tale from the perspective of a damsel in distress who doesn’t always realize she’s in distress ... Fine’s story is a barely restrained, careful musing on female desire, loneliness and hereditary inheritances.
With convincing intensity and a charming mix of wit, gruesomeness, magic, and romance in the spellbinding mode of Alice Hoffman, Fine offers a provocative fairy tale about womanhood under siege and one young woman’s fierce resistance.
The Brothers Grimm gave us the fairy tales; many years later Tanith Lee gave us Tales From the Sisters Grimmer. In this astonishing debut, Ms. Fine bids fair to be the Sister Grimmest.
What Should Be Wild is a rich blend of myth and modernity, set early in the first decade of the current century, but drawing influence from the poetry of William Blake and Robert Graves’ The White Goddess ... An intricately contrived feminist fantasy, What Should Be Wild explores the urges of the body, the nature of desire and the power of the spirit. The novel offers ample portions of adventure, suspense and humor and marks the arrival of a formidable new talent.
Part fairy tale, part coming-of-age adventure, Fine’s debut was written under the tutelage of Audrey Niffenegger, whose influence shows. This book is imaginative and haunting, a stylistic blend of Matthew Haig’s How To Stop Time, Melissa Albert’s The Hazel Wood, and Téa Obreht’s The Tiger’s Wife. Fans of all three novels will find something to savor.
Fine’s stellar debut is a mystical combination of curiosity, curses, and compassion ... Fine creates an entirely new twist on the familiar setup of a young woman facing supernatural obstacles while trying to balance her own blossoming youth. This is an inventive and fascinating modern coming-of-age fairy tale.
The novel, with its mysterious forest and Maisie’s creative/destructive powers, works well as an allegory of a certain kind of traditional womanly experience of burgeoning sexuality, knowledge, and growing up; though not all female-identifying readers may see themselves here, the poise and skill with which the story unfolds is an undeniable pleasure. Fine has written an old-fashioned book with contemporary resonances.
