Customer Reviews

Grimm's Grimmest

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

It was exactly what I was looking for. Arrived just before Christmas and in great shape. Thanks you so much!

Maria Tatar introduces the stories and some of the variations in different editions. She also delves into the politics that have helped some stories become well known and helped keep others obscure. There is a table of contents, but the stories are in no discernable order.

This collection takes readers closer to the original tales and include incest, sex, and graphic violence. The stories are rough and sometimes hard to understand. For example, I could not understand why the daughter who had fled the castle and the incestuous advances of her father, the king, later purposefully let her identity be known to him.

These stories are excellent reading that should help tellers understand these folk tales better. They may be tellable as written to an adult audience. However, I feel that an audience that is not well-versed in the oral tradition my need some help in understanding them or putting them into context.

The illustrations have a lurid quality that intensifies the feeling of uneasiness.

Source Notes: Selected stories from the 3rd ed. (1822) of Kinder- und Hausmärchen by Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm.

Reviewed by Karen Woodworth-Roman, MS Library Science

This book contains the collection of the Grimm's brothers original fairy tales, and mostly gruesome in nature, involving cannibal and gruesome acts. Fairy tales for adults and not for children's bedtime stories. It fills out the missing parts of the stories you read when you were a kid and fairytales genre lovers would denitely love to have their hands on this book.

I received this book as a Christmas present last year, and it has quickly become one of my all-time favorites. Okay, yes, the stories are pretty darn gory, with decapitations and/or mutilations playing a prominent role in quite a few of them, not to mention the incest and cannibalism and so forth, so you need to keep this book away from the kiddies. That aside, it's a wonderful and fascinating collection of tales. The illustrations are very nice, and there's a lot of them. Plus there's a great introduction at the beginning that gives the reader more of a background story on the Grimms and their work. Overall, a fantastic book.

Liked the illustrations to this volume of the darker tales, especially Juniper Tree, which was an amazing story that makes you realize just how awful the stepmothers of fairy tales are. Some of the stories are familiar but quite a few were new to me, so this was something of an adventure.

I grabbed this for free out of a bookclub: and that's about all I'd tell you to do and save your money. So why the two stars, instead of only one? I thought it was a bit comical to read this from The Brother's Grimm; the idea of children's writers cranking out a story about decapited body parts back then seemed funny to me. It's worth the time to read and just say, "I never knew they wrote this." But if you want the real thing like, Clive Barker, older Stephen King, Lovecraft, etc., look there and not here. 2 STAR RATING **.

These are original, bloody tales collected by the Brothers Grimm. Very few end with "they lived happily ever after" and even less beginning with "once upon a time".

Containing cannabilism, incest, murder, sex, and a host of many things not consider "good" for children. Many of these stories evoke visions of Vincent Price rather than the canned, sanitized Disney movies. These are stories of goodness and purity most often - not always! - winning the day. The wicked are punished brutally for their misdeeds.

Printed on yellowed paper with both black and white and color illustrations it feels as if you are reading a book far older than it is. The story structure is rough, crude because these are oral stories written down perhaps for the first time when the Brothers gathered them. The language and pacing stay true to this oral tradition making the reading rough to a reader used to modern well edited stories. I could almost smell the smoke from the poorly vented fireplace as an old grandmother spun a tale to frighten and delight.

Grimm's Grimmest has more incommon with Freddy Kruger and Jeffery Dahmer than Disney - definitely not for the squeamish.

About the only fairy tale we will notice is the Cinderella story called Aschenputtal in this book. It is very different from the Cinderella we know. These tales are pretty good, but kind of dark and dreary. The gore is graphically and literally depicted. There are ninteen stroies and they are pretty well developed. They really give us a great glimpse into the past. The book is designed really well and the art in the book is excellent as well. The cover is great too. If you get the book and don't like it at least you will have a unique addition to your collection.

If yo enjoy ny type of horror thi book is worth reading. I loe this book, it is my faveorite book

From the editorial review: "Most of the tales will be unfamiliarto American and English readers, who may be surprised by the graphicdescriptions of murder, mutilation, and cannibalism"

The "graphic descriptions" of the aforementioned evils are grossly overrated. They are merely stated or less yet, alluded to. Even when described, the artistry is such that the reader has difficulty connecting with the text as the descriptions are not picturesque but instead, one dimensional.

Based upon the editorial review, I expected that I would be chilled and thrilled from here to doomsday. Hardly. This was a horror free read, after which I slept like a lamb. This book was the equivalent of a kiddie ride at Six Flags.

However, while it did not deliver the promised goods, I did find it appropriate for a very young adult with whom you are interested in rekindling a love of stories and reading. While tame for adult standards, it might prove to be an odd twist on the traditional *G* rated nursery fare, and could possibly provoke a discussion on the differences between these tales and ones with which they are more familiar.