emholl's review
4.0
i am so glad i read this, but i have such a complicated relationship with it.
i really admired the tone of the writing, and the ideas it brought up. some of the intertwining of fairy tale elements and the author's personal life are fantastic (others fell short for me, but still were interesting to consider), and i really appreciate a concept like this. it was a memoir that could pass for a collection of short stories, all strung together by common themes (a structure that i really enjoy). some stuff in here I'm really not sure about. she writes many times how she shouldn't be writing down what she is, how she hurts people with her writing, how her stepdaughter asked why she writes about her. that whole side of it is messy to me, i don't know the true right or wrong, there probably isn't anything but a blurry grey area. some lines about blended families i understood immediately, some made me a little uncomfortable, but they're all valid in this author's experience.
but despite how much i agree or disagree with certain parts of this book, i did value and enjoy reading it.
i really admired the tone of the writing, and the ideas it brought up. some of the intertwining of fairy tale elements and the author's personal life are fantastic (others fell short for me, but still were interesting to consider), and i really appreciate a concept like this. it was a memoir that could pass for a collection of short stories, all strung together by common themes (a structure that i really enjoy). some stuff in here I'm really not sure about. she writes many times how she shouldn't be writing down what she is, how she hurts people with her writing, how her stepdaughter asked why she writes about her. that whole side of it is messy to me, i don't know the true right or wrong, there probably isn't anything but a blurry grey area. some lines about blended families i understood immediately, some made me a little uncomfortable, but they're all valid in this author's experience.
but despite how much i agree or disagree with certain parts of this book, i did value and enjoy reading it.
kajh23's review
4.0
A wonderfully intuitive collection of essays that grapple with the woes of modern life by delving into the lessons of fairytales.
schroerjaf's review against another edition
I was hoping for a thought-provoking book about the relevance of fairy tales to modern life, but ended up feeling depressed. In the first two essays, the fairy tales seemed tangential. The focus was on explaining death to children after the shooting at the Tree of Life synagogue and the sad life of an artist whose paintings were displayed at a Holocaust museum. When the author's grandmother died within the first few lines of the third essay, it was time for me to tap out.
emily_m_green's review
emotional
hopeful
reflective
sad
medium-paced
4.0
Thank you to Random House Book Club and Goodreads Giveaways for the review copy of Happily: A Personal History—with Fairy Tales by Sabrina Oren Mark, which I received in exchange for a fair and honest review.
In Happily, Mark uses fairytales to discuss personal experiences and public concerns. She considers characters and retellings, gender roles, and the lessons the stories are meant to teach.
While Mark uses fairytales to discuss many different topics, the subject she returns to the most often is family. Her mother enters as a voice on the telephone, her children have the wisdom of youth, her husband as the intonation of support and affection. However, Mark also discusses her struggles as a third wife and stepmother. Knowing that your beloved has had lives before you is always a haint in the background, but ex partners and children make for much noisier ghosts, especially when their history is more complicated than your own.
Happily, for all the difficult and weighty topics it discusses, is not overly heavy, in part because the book chapters are so short. Each chapter is an essay that’s scarcely a breath.
The essays make use of a lot of tactics that poetry uses: allusions, layering of stories, repetition, and bringing together of disparate pieces. Her essays are beautiful collages.
Would I teach Happily? Yes. The essays are excellent instruction of what essays can do and how they can disrupt a typical narrative structure.
In Happily, Mark uses fairytales to discuss personal experiences and public concerns. She considers characters and retellings, gender roles, and the lessons the stories are meant to teach.
While Mark uses fairytales to discuss many different topics, the subject she returns to the most often is family. Her mother enters as a voice on the telephone, her children have the wisdom of youth, her husband as the intonation of support and affection. However, Mark also discusses her struggles as a third wife and stepmother. Knowing that your beloved has had lives before you is always a haint in the background, but ex partners and children make for much noisier ghosts, especially when their history is more complicated than your own.
Happily, for all the difficult and weighty topics it discusses, is not overly heavy, in part because the book chapters are so short. Each chapter is an essay that’s scarcely a breath.
The essays make use of a lot of tactics that poetry uses: allusions, layering of stories, repetition, and bringing together of disparate pieces. Her essays are beautiful collages.
Would I teach Happily? Yes. The essays are excellent instruction of what essays can do and how they can disrupt a typical narrative structure.