First, a preamble: I swear I didn’t mean for my first “short” review for
fantasy short stories to be for a work with a synonym in the title. The concept
and the decision to do it at all was very short
notice. I put little thought into it,
but I figure that some tiny effort
should be made on my part to include short fiction in the fantasy genre in my small but growing repertoire.
Sorry, sorry. Forgive the slight digression.
THE SHORT VERSION:
Michael Cunningham is one of those contemporary literary
writers I really should be reading (I have at least one of his novels on
my shelf), but instead I’m engorging myself on fairytale-inspired fantasy books
and TV shows. So Cunningham did the only thing he could to get my attention: write
his own fairytale-inspired story.
Of course I speak in jest, but an eerie tingle went
down my spine when I saw that “Little Man” was published in the New Yorker last
summer. Oh, and he published a collection of reduxed fairy tales in A Wild
Swan and Other Tales AND a novel titled The
Snow Queen. All right, Michael, you’re on my list.
