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Product Description
There is a little brick house in an isolated valley in deepest Wales. To this idyllic retreat come Eloise and Simon, a young couple escaping the city. Eloise has led the way, inspired by the teachings of her muse, Moonbird, who holds that Mother Nature looks with benign concern upon her human children and sees to their well-being. At first all is well for Eloise and Simon and their cat M'sieu. Eloise spends her days sewing old-fashioned night dresses and petticoats which she sells to an exclusive shop in town; Simon does woodworking and odd jobs for the nearby farmers. The garden, the woods, the hills, the silence are all as Moonbird had promised. Or almost. For one day, four men, incongruously dressed in city suits and street shoes and carrying briefcases, walk up the country lane to the little house, and things begin to happen. Uncanny, inexplicable things. Things even Eloise's mother, Clare, and Clare's best friend, Miriam, who arrive from London, can't make heads or tails of. The two older women bicker and fuss, trying to decipher the younger woman's increasingly strange behavior. And then Eloise returns from a walk in the woods with a baby in her arms...
Amazon.com Review
Imagine Rumpelstiltskin, Snow White, and Morgan Le Fey folded into one story and you'll have some idea of Alice Thomas Ellis's quirky novel, Fairy Tale. Set in the wooded hills and remote valleys of Wales, Ellis's modern-day romance follows the fortunes of young Eloise and her paramour, Simon, as they leave promising careers in London behind and adopt, instead, a rural life. Simon, who had a future in advertising, becomes a woodworker, while Eloise makes her living sewing chic clothing out of old lace. Despite their idyllic surroundings, Eloise is beginning to feel bored by the quiet life--so much so that she wishes for a baby to give her life purpose. Be careful what you wish for, Eloise--the magic begins when four mysterious men appear in Eloise's garden just as she pricks her finger with a needle, dripping a drop of blood onto her white lace. Before you can say "Magic Mirror on the Wall," all kinds of fey events begin to happen: Eloise disappears on long walks in the woods, one time emerging bone dry from a stroll in a rainstorm, another time returning home with a mysterious green-eyed, silver-haired baby.
Readers will understand that the characters in this novel are not what they seem far sooner than Eloise and Simon do; nevertheless, half the fun in this moonstruck novel is Ellis's juxtaposition of her oblivious human characters with her all-too-aware--and slightly scary--fairy ones. Light, slightly satirical, impeccably written, this is one Fairy Tale meant for adults.
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