'Can't Catch Me: And Other Twice-Told Tales' by Michael Cadnum is a collection of reimagined myths and legends.

Starting with a version of the Three Bears where Goldilocks is tired of the nearby bears and schemes to trap them, you know you are in for some skewed tales. Jack and the Beanstalk is told from the perspective of the giant's wife. The Graeae, who had their eye stolen by Perseus in Greek mythology tell their tale. And there are many more both familiar and less familiar.

I liked these stories that all seemed to feature an interesting twist on the familiar (and unfamiliar). Nothing stood out as either really good or really bad, but I enjoyed reading the collection.

I received a review copy of this ebook from Tachyon Publications and NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. Thank you for allowing me to review this ebook.

Release Date: 01 April 2016
Author: Michael Cadnum
Publisher: Tachyon Publications
Genre: Sci Fi & Fantasy
Rating: 3.5/5.0
One sentence review: Overall, this is a well-done collection that reaches many readers of fairytale retellings.

Review: As with any short story collection, some of these tales struck a chord with me and others passed with very little impact on me.

The writing is consistently excellent. At times, the retellings are the exact same story merely from a different perspective. As an avid reader of fanfictions that do exactly this, I am not complaining. However, I think it should be noted because the drawback to this kind of retelling is that if you’re not a fan of the original story, you won’t be interested at all in the new perspective.

Can't Catch Me: And Other Twice-Told Tales is a collection of short fiction by poet and author Michael Cadnum. Originally released in 2006 by Tachyon, it's 181 pages and available in ebook and paperback formats. The book's 18 stories (5 of which are original to this collection, by my count) are retellings/twists on mythology or fairy tales.

I love anthologies and collections because you get a broader sense of an author's style and capabilities, and if a story doesn't appeal for whatever reason, there's another one coming along in a few pages. For this reason, I often skip around when reading anthologies/collections and try to take notes during my reading. Unusually for me, I read this collection straight through, cover to cover.

The basic stories are so well known that to most readers, they'll be almost cultural background noise. Jack and the beanstalk/Jack the giant killer, Humpty Dumpty, Goldilocks, the gingerbread man and the others are instantly recognizable, but many of them are so deftly twisted, they become quite original. I especially liked the ones told from another viewpoint. Mrs. Big (Jack and the Beanstalk) was outstanding and so was Naked Little Men (The Elves and the Shoemaker). I would say all the stories rate 3-5 stars and for me the overall rating is a solid 4 stars.

I received a copy of this book through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review

Summary

You know the story of Cinderella, but do you know the story of her stepsister? And everyone knows how Jack climbed a beanstalk and bested the giant he found at the top, but how does the giant’s wife tell the story?

In this collection, we get familiar stories from unfamiliar perspectives–perspectives that often challenge the way we view those stories and present interesting questions.

Review

This collection contains 18 stories, all but two of which are retellings of fairy tales or Greek mythology, or a story about a character/creature from those stories. (The two exceptions are about Ophelia, from Hamlet, and Sir Isaac Newton.) The best way I can think to describe these stories is that they’re like a beautiful jewelry box: the outside is polished, inlaid with maybe gold, or mother of pearl, or something else shiny and precious, and when you open it, a pretty miniature ballerina spins around as a music box somewhere inside plays, but it’s empty, and you wish there was something inside to make it all feel worth it.

To be clear: the writing itself is fantastic, I just wish the stories that writing brought to life had more to offer. At least ten of the stories are just beat-for-beat retellings of the originals but from a different perspective, and what little change they offer is usually easily predicted or doesn’t actually change much about the original. Some of the others, that tell their own stories, were quite good, but even most of those left me wishing for something more.

In general, while I enjoyed the stories, they often left me with the impression of having read a second or third draft; the writing is polished and the story makes sense, but something more needed to be added to make the reading worth it.

Rating

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ 4/5 stars

This collection has some interesting, well-written stories, and if you’re passionate about fairy tales and Greek mythology, I’d say they’re worth a read. But if you’re looking for something that presents new, unique takes on the stories, you should probably keep looking.

I have a weakness for retold fairy tales, and I greatly enjoyed these! I feel like they were infused with my kind of dark humor. I’m going to buy a copy so I can have it on my shelf. Love the cover!

Fairytales retold and riffs on myths – which, as regular readers will know, can sometimes get me a bit twitchy, simply through being such an oversubscribed field these days. Then too, certain similarities recur in these pieces, so that the title story (as you might guess) is the gingerbread man's account of his escape, and it's followed fairly soon by the giant's wife from Jack and the Beanstalk giving her side of the story, and both stories make particular play of how certain famous rhymes came to be uttered, much like those generic music biopics which always have to include the scene where they're composing the big hit, even when it was a cover. True, there are exceptions of a sort to these types, like Ophelia telling us the real events of Hamlet, or the story about a certain mythological beast loose off the California coast...but they're still not a million miles from the formula, and the latter in particular mainly feels like a Peter Beagle story, only less so. And yet, on the whole I didn't mind this book, even if it didn't wow me either. The stories are brief, and have good turns of phrase, and crucially, lack any sense of the self-importance or clanging morality which can sometimes sink such reworkings. I can see why Cadnum isn't a household name, but I think he'd have done very well for himself in the days of wandering storytellers.

I love reading fairy tales to keep my inner child alive, and I appreciate nothing more than rearrangements of classic tales to shake up everything you thought you knew about the story and bring other POVs alive! I love when villains turn out to be the heroes, the princess saves the knight, and the frog is actually just a really large toad.