Episode 21: Mixing fairytale, myth, and good character development
Today, Fable and The Verbivore delve into the enchanting and mystical world created in the novel Hunted by author Meagan Spooner. This book is a loose retelling of Beauty and the Beast that feels like its steeped in classic folktale and fairytale traditions, while also being refreshingly contemporary with its characters and story choices.
We recorded this several weeks ago sitting in a park soaking up the sun, with birdsong as our background music and the wind breezing through the trees. It felt like an appropriate setting to converse about a story that takes place on the edge of and within a forest of mythical proportions filled with picturesque views and unusual creatures.
We start by talking about the lovely dedication that Meagan gave at the beginning of the book to young readers, which set the tone for the overarching feel of the story with a call to adventure.
In this episode, we discuss the richness of the characters, the complexity of the relationships and dynamics that feel grounded in reality, and the choice to switch between first person present and third person past voices that allow the reader to step into the Beast’s mind while also keeping the feel of a fairytale with the main narrative. We also describe how the author uses reader assumptions and expectations from different versions of the Beauty and the Beast tale to create unexpected twists on some iconic story moments.
We also dive into the author’s use of a longer story timeline to create character transformations that feel natural and unhurried, as well as the use of images that accompany the beast’s first person entries to reflect the mental state of that character without saying one word. We greatly enjoyed her use of visual elements to communicate information. Throughout the course of the story, we could almost feel the character of Yeva being pulled into the tales that she loved so much as a child.
We don’t discuss Meagan Spooner’s other work as part of our episode, but she has also written the standalone book Sherwood as well as the Skylark trilogy and two series that she co-wrote with writer Amie Kaufman: These Broken Stars (Starbound Trilogy) and Unearthed duology.
We hope you enjoyed listening to this episode, with our unique recording location! Keep reading, and writing, and putting yourself out there!
Into the woods,
Fable & The Verbivore
Notes:
The Verbivore reads the dedication at the beginning of Hunted. Here are those words, as they were included in the book:
“To the girl
who reads by flashlight
who sees dragons in the clouds
who feels most alive in worlds that never were
who knows magic is real
who dreams
This is for you”
The Verbivore references the rule of three as part of this episode. In fairytales and many other works, you’ll find that things tend to come in threes (three little pigs, three brothers/sisters, three bears) and often the third time is the charm. Here is a link to an article we found that discusses this topic a little further:
Books Mentioned:
Hunted by Meagan Spooner
Till We Have Faces: A Myth Retold by C. S. Lewis
Music from: https://filmmusic.io
’Friendly day’ by Kevin MacLeod (https://incompetech.com)
Licence: CC BY (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)