From an Uncorrected Proof kindly provided by Allen & Unwin and The Reading Room.

Mothers Grimm is the third fiction book by Australian teacher and author, Danielle Wood. It is a collection of four short stories that offer strikingly different versions of fairy tales from the Brothers Grimm. The prologue describes for readers The Good Mother, a woman we all recognise but can somehow never actually be.

The first story, Lettuce is Rapunzel in deep disguise; Cottage is Hansel and Gretel with a modern day twist; Sleep, of course, takes a different look at Sleeping Beauty; while Nag is a very alternative interpretation of The Goose Girl.

These stories have beautiful women and crones; babies are abandoned at birth, or taken and left daily in the woods known as child care; mothers suffer from sleep deprivation, loneliness, rejection, exhaustion and lack of support. As well as being blackly funny, these tales are thought-provoking, clever and occasionally heart-breaking enough to produce a lump in the throat of the most cynical reader.

The characters are familiar from the preschool, the mothers group, the yoga class and the caf. The prose is often wonderfully evocative: You turn your back and walk out the door and, as you do, you hear your [baby] screaming. The effect is like having your uterus torn out through your earholes. Being the younger sister, Lauren thought, was a bit like turning up in the afternoon to a garage sale once all the good stuff was gone. the rich smell of coffee made Megs lemon and ginger tea taste even more like the overpriced hot water that it was. His crying echoed within her all the way to the car, all the way to work through the morning-choked streets, stowing away in the curling corridors of her ears Being a mother is NOT a prerequisite for enjoying this novel, but it is certainly a book that will appeal to mothers.

Reading (or rereading) the original versions of the fairy tales is likewise not absolutely necessary, but doing so (and Wikipedia is helpful here!) will demonstrate just how cleverly Wood incorporates various elements of the original tales in her own creations. Really quite brilliant!

For thousands of years humans have used the fairy tale to educate, instruct, prepare and warn our children about the dangers sure to befall the little girl who deviates from the path, the boy who declines to aid the hag at his door, the king who neglects to pay respect to the wicked fairy. But what of adults? Delighted as we are to share the very same stories we were told as children, fairy tales retain a fascination for adults, who, with the benefits of hindsight now see the deeper meaning at the heart of the story.

The re-imagining of fairy tales is by no means a new or original concept. In fact, many would argue that this is the core purpose of fairy tales, to be reworked, retold, embellished upon by the storyteller to effectively sell the story and therefore further enforce the moral or cautionary warning at its heart.

What is rare, is the discovery of an author who not only retells the story skilfully, but whose re-imagining of a fairy tale is so extraordinary, so compelling, you completely forget there was ever another version at all. These stories transcend the boundaries of fairy tales retold and become tales so powerful in their own right, that like their predecessors before them, they will live on to be retold themselves (though never as flawlessly as they exist now).

Danielle Wood has used four familiar tales as the basis for her very own, exquisitely crafted fairy tales, each as hypnotic and memorable as anything the Brothers Grimm may have written. Reminiscent of Angela Carter, but uniquely all her own, these contemporary fairy tales will resonate with absolute truth in the minds of any woman who has mothered, loved, befriended or married. A must read, again and again, and again