It's been a while since a book has moved me this much.
After my recent realization that sent Rapunzel from being my most hated fairy tale, to my most favorite fairytale, I was intrigued when I saw this novel retelling of it.
Rapunzel Let Down by Regina Doman.
What happens to the fairy tale when the Prince fails?
It's a modern retelling of the fairy tale of Rapunzel.
Not the cute Disney version. The Grimm's version. With a 15 yr old getting knocked up by a Prince (or in this case, a politicians son) who wants to keep his secret.
It is on my "top 50 books to save if the world burns down" list.
The only caveat, is parents should pre-read it before giving it to their young teenagers. The story is about a 15 year old getting knocked up (Rapunzel, after all), and a statutory-rape trial. So it is a book on sexual themes. But not in an escapist voyueristic way, but a very thought-provoking and deeply moving way...
.....us human beings struggling with our biology and our ideals of love and our theories of reality and trying to figure out who we really are.
Parents, read it first and see if it's what you want your kids reading. But I think I would let my own sorta-sheltered homeschooled kids read this, perhaps when they're about 15. Maybe black out a couple sentences. Not sure yet. If kids are already reading the sort of YA novels popular these days, it probably won't be too new to them.
It is a deeply moving story. About clashing ideals of the world, of what the world is, about what we are. Failing at our various religions. Struggling with the nature of reality. About feminism and misogyny. A coming of age story, about women's choices in the face of so much that is wrong in the world---with men, with themselves, with the justice system. And about men's choices, sometimes in a system that feels stacked against them. It was about the prison system, and undocumented/illegal immigrants...the terrifying twisted humanity of inmates, realizing it is ourselves....it was a very very thought-provoking book, but so full of twists and turns that I was turning the pages in an adrenaline fueled-frenzy till 4am, knowing I would have to be up in a few hours with the kids.
I haven't done that in a few years. This book got me to.
It touched my soul. And made me think. Alot.
Despite some of the more fantastical things that happened at the end (and it got pretty fantastic) the book felt.....so incredibly real.
Because the people in it, the characters were so real. The people, their choices, their snap decisions and their failures and their broken dreams and forced to face their own failure....trying to figure out reality, trying to figure out who we are in the world.
I highly recommend it. It goes on my list of "Top 50 books I would save" if I could only take 50 books with me. I never thought I would say that about a YA novel fairy-tale rewrite. (I would urge you not to read the reviews that give spoilers. There are some 'turn' moments in it that work best if you experience it with the characters.)
It was good. Perhaps fantastical, perhaps clumsy in parts, but so real. The inner-monologue of our characters, their bitterness, their thoughts, their prayers....it felt all real to me. So real.
Because its very much about humans, the hypocritical believers, the bitter inmates, the unhinged theater major, the Aspie scientist, the smooth politician, the undocumented immigrants, the vying theories of reality, and a girl having to make her own choices in the middle of all of it.
