This is a first novel by Kell Woods, an Australian librarian turned writer. I chose it because the title reminded me of Jack’s (as in the Beanstalk) song from ‘Into the Woods,’ which is called ‘After the Sky.’ The song is about Jack’s emotional journey following his fairy tale adventure with the giants. After the Forest is, likewise, about the consequences on Gretel’s life, after she escapes the witch in the gingerbread house with her brother Hansel.
In After the Forest, Greta lives on the edge of Arnsburg Forest with her brother Hans, in her now-deceased father and step-mother’s cottage. She gets by selling amazingly delicious gingerbread in the nearby town of Lindenfeld. Hans spends his days mostly drinking. It seems likely that being captured as a child by an old woman who plans to eat you leads to long-term emotional issues, but this is not Hans’ story. The now-grown eight-year-old girl who everyone knows shoved the witch into an oven is not unburdened either.
Greta has more than her memories of abandonment and cruelty to deal with. Along with the trauma, she carries the burden of suspicion from the good people of Lindenfeld. This is a place that, only five years ago, sentenced a witch to burning, and many people think that Greta is one also. She killed that old woman, didn’t she? Shoved her into her own oven? They would not be completely wrong. Greta’s gingerbread recipe is from a book that she took from the old witch’s house.
They would not be wrong about witches, either. They do exist, winding through centuries of warfare and injustice. Their tales are intricately woven with the lives of Greta and Hans, and of the townsfolk of Lindenfeld. No one is entirely innocent, or entirely guilty, and many carry trauma from their own stories. The result is a beautifully-written, completely unique interweaving of old fairy tales.
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