Tender Morsels by Margo Lanagan

I'm not even sure how to start this review. I've typed and deleted the first sentence about eight times.

Liga lives with and suffers under the hand of her father (her mother is dead, of course) in a small cottage just outside of a small village. After living through various versions of hellish ordeals, Liga is granted a gift of kindness from an otherworldly being and finds herself in an idealized dream world where she raises two daughters (the products of her previous traumatic experiences). Everything goes great until a witch and a ne'er-do-well ruffian create a rift between the real world and Liga's dream world, and Liga is forced to face the real world again. What does the cover have to do with the story? Well, a man dressed as a bear (something that used to happen during festivals in France for-realz?) is transported from real time to the magical land where Liga and her daughters live, and he (turns into a real bear while in the magical land) stays with them and secretly wishes he was part of their family. Unfortunately for him he is forced back into his own time, time in the magical land moves much more quickly that that of the real world.

This book is a retelling of Rose Red and Snow White with some other myths/cultural references thrown in. This is a book contains the results of the ugly emotions human can potentially harbor and act upon and some scenes are difficult to read. The concept was interesting, the mixing of folk tales was interesting, the ability of the author to use language of the time period was commendable. There is some fantastic imagery in this book. This book is much like Living Dead Girl in that it is teetering on the very edge of YA/Adult fiction. While well-written and complex, I have a hard time thinking of a teen Iwould feel comfortable recommending this to. Its language and diction will be difficult for some readers. While not everything is spelled out on the page, the allusions and imagery is hard to take in. Much like Wideacre, readers who enjoy this kind of story will find it and love it.

WARNING: This book contains incest, rape, assault.

I haven't read anything by Margo Lanagan before, and this book was recommended to me by a committee I'm on.