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The Modern Fairies

by Clare Pollard

'Elegant and decadent, vulgar and clever, enchanting and dark. The love child of Angela Carter and Anaïs Nin - the book I really really needed' SARAH PERRY, author of The Essex Serpent


Why don't they tell you it is the beautiful princess who becomes the evil queen; that they are just the same person at different points in their story?

Versailles, 1682: a city of the rich, a living fairy-tale, Louis XIV's fever dream. It's a place of opulence, beauty, and power. But strip back the lavish exterior of polite society, and you'll find a dark undercurrent of sexual intrigue and vicious gossip. Nobody is safe here - no matter how highly born they are.

No one knows this better than Madame Marie d'Aulnoy. Each week, a rogue group of intellectuals gather at her Parisian home to debate, flirt and perform Contes de Fées - fairy tales - that challenge the status quo, at a salon that will change the course of literature forever. But while they weave tales of glass slippers, enchanted beasts and long-haired princesses, a wolf is lurking, who threatens to destroy the members of the salon one by one.

Brilliant and bawdy, romantic and provocative, The Modern Fairies is a dazzling novel inspired by real events, about the delights and dangers of storytelling in dark times.


'Funny, filthy, dancingly clever: a delectable confection of many-layered pleasures. A story of stories, storytellers, and the lurking dangers of fairytales. It reminded me of Jeanette Winterson's The Passion, and I gobbled it all up' JOANNA QUINN, author of The Whalebone Theatre

'Original, fantastical, historical, and unputdownable' KAREN JOY FOWLER, Booker Prize-shortlisted author of We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves

'Pollard's future, as a novelist, is very bright indeed' THE I, praise for Delphi

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FICTION & POETRY
FICTION

AUCK OUT OF STOCK

WGTN IN STOCK

Pages:

256

Published:

17 Sept 2024

Format

Hardback

Publisher

Penguin Books, Limited

Imprint

Fig Tree

ISBN:

9780241672457



'Elegant and decadent, vulgar and clever, enchanting and dark. The love child of Angela Carter and Anaïs Nin - the book I really really needed' SARAH PERRY, author of The Essex Serpent


Why don't they tell you it is the beautiful princess who becomes the evil queen; that they are just the same person at different points in their story?

Versailles, 1682: a city of the rich, a living fairy-tale, Louis XIV's fever dream. It's a place of opulence, beauty, and power. But strip back the lavish exterior of polite society, and you'll find a dark undercurrent of sexual intrigue and vicious gossip. Nobody is safe here - no matter how highly born they are.

No one knows this better than Madame Marie d'Aulnoy. Each week, a rogue group of intellectuals gather at her Parisian home to debate, flirt and perform Contes de Fées - fairy tales - that challenge the status quo, at a salon that will change the course of literature forever. But while they weave tales of glass slippers, enchanted beasts and long-haired princesses, a wolf is lurking, who threatens to destroy the members of the salon one by one.

Brilliant and bawdy, romantic and provocative, The Modern Fairies is a dazzling novel inspired by real events, about the delights and dangers of storytelling in dark times.




'Funny, filthy, dancingly clever: a delectable confection of many-layered pleasures. A story of stories, storytellers, and the lurking dangers of fairytales. It reminded me of Jeanette Winterson's The Passion, and I gobbled it all up' JOANNA QUINN, author of The Whalebone Theatre



'Original, fantastical, historical, and unputdownable' KAREN JOY FOWLER, Booker Prize-shortlisted author of We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves



'Pollard's future, as a novelist, is very bright indeed' THE I, praise for Delphi

$48.00

A novel about stories and who gets to tell them, set in the literary salons of France during the reign of Louis XIV. Madame d’Aulnoy, Charles Perrault and their associates gather to retell the stories told to them by “rustics” and servants, creating a new tradition of “Contes de Fées” , arch fairytales intended for adult entertainment. But they tread a fine line, as the King has his spies, and he has little patience for even veiled criticism of him or the society he presides over. Pollard presents the fairytales themselves as they are retold, and the vicissitudes of the court are described using poetic motifs and language which would not be out of place in one of the tales. A sweet, poisonous delight.

Karen M