![]() ![]() ![]() Also: AIDS, homosexuality, stigma aimed or defied, destruction of self or other or all. I want to reread it already.Įach documented passage of Haley’s comet, and several to come in future years, become the timepoints of evolving variations and reflections of the Hansel and Gretel story: the deep bonds of siblings cast out by parents and otherwise finding in each other their only reliable aid. I picked it up expecting nothing at all and finished it knowing it was a new favourite. The Archive of Alternate Endings is by far the most surprising book of the year for me, not to mention a severely underrated one. The art of storytelling, his brother said, is all about where and how to leave the voids." Some things must be left unsaid and disguised. "In order to record a tale, something must always be lost. It's incredibly layered and genuinely meaningful, simple in a way that makes it affect you all the more. The biggest compliment I can give this book is, I would love to study it in class. Her novel is sprawling and specific, widening and narrowing the scope of its story with beautiful fluidity. Drager has written a story about stories-in the moment of their telling and through time-and about the powerful bonds that tie siblings together. But most of the stories that have survived the ages are told for one purpose only, and that purpose is to say this: 'Being human is difficult. We are quick to say that folktales have a moral or a lesson or a creed. "It is easy to forget, but stories need not always have a purpose. Each time it arrives, our cast of characters, including the comet’s scientist discoverer himself, Halley, ponder some current societal woe plaguing our tiny blue dot. Over the course of one millennium-from 1378 to 2365 AD- The Archive of Alternate Endings is populated by numerous characters affected by the arrival of Halley’s Comet, which visits Earth every 75ish years after completing its long trip through our solar system, curving near the Sun and zooming past our skies. Drager has a unique ability to breathe life into some of history’s most unique and unassuming characters, from world-famous scientists and Renaissance thinkers, to the fictional personalities of Hansel & Gretel.ĭrager’s novel follows a series of characters, sometimes loosely related, through an interesting pattern. In Lindsey Drager’s The Archive of Alternate Endings (Dzanc Books), the author takes her readers on a ride through the vast and intricate world of human storytelling and the ramifications of memory and forgetting. We human beings are nothing more than a collection of our stories, stories which comprise the vast histories of ourselves and the world around us, for better or worse. My live review is now up at the Michigan Quarterly Review: Through a relay of speculative pieces that oscillate between eco-fiction and psychological horror, The Archive of Alternate Endings explores sibling love in the face of trauma over the course of a millennium, in the vein of Richard McGuire's Here and Lars von Trier's Melancholia. ![]() Breadcrumbing back in time from 2365 to 1378, siblings reimagine, reinvent, and recycle the narrative of Hansel and Gretel to articulate personal, regional, and ultimately cosmic experiences of tragedy. ![]() In 1986, a folklore scholar and her brother come to find the record is wrong about the figurative witch in the woods, while in 2211, twin space probes aiming to find earth's sister planet disseminate the narrative in binary code. In 1835, The Brothers Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm revise the tale to bury a truth about Jacob even he can’t come to face. In 1456, Johannes Gutenberg’s sister uses the tale as a surrogate for sharing a family secret only her brother believes. Tracking the evolution of Hansel and Gretel at seventy-five-year intervals that correspond with earth’s visits by Halley’s Comet, The Archive of Alternate Endings explores how stories are disseminated and shared, edited and censored, voiced and left untold. ![]()
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