I first read this De Meisjes: Zeven Sprookjes (literally, “Girls: Seven Fairy Tales”) in Dutch before it got translated into English last year with the extra “Life Isn’t A Fairy Tale” slapped onto it by the English language publishers, who must’ve wanted to boost sales by appealing to the “feminist retellings” market popular in the Anglosphere. I don’t think Schaap herself set out to do that, because she told the Dutch press in interviews that her retellings were inspired by episodes from her own life, “to write about my own life, about things that have happened and that occupy my mind, disguised as fairy tales” were her exact words when asked what her goal had been for the anthology, hence the mix of sad and hilarious, and surrealistic and whimsical.

If you want to read the entire anthology, I’d recommend you take the author’s words into account and approach the stories as parodies more than as retellings, because most of the tales have been subjected to changes to introduce themes and messages they never had in the first place, to the point some read like Schaap is strawmanning in order to drive a message home. Schaap’s fixation is an overarching motif of her own making than the fairy tales’ native themes, so she went for a focus on the trope of “waiting for the prince” (thanks for nothing, Disney, it’s your fault that so many people think fairy tales teach the “someday my prince will come” slop you fed us) throughout all tales including those that don’t have it organically, like the Rumpelstiltskin story. If you approach the short stories as retellings, they’re terrible and miss the point of each and every single tale, very typical of literalist interpretations, as well as have implausible and surrealistically forced plots. But if you remember what Schaap said and look at them as comedic spoofs parodying the original tales, then they make sense and, depending on your sense of humour, you could even like them.

Speaking of humour, the original Dutch makes it all more evident what Schaap wanted to achieve. The humour shines through brighter, you don’t even need to be told this is parody. But the English translation . . . Well, it’s not bad, but it doesn’t transmit Schaap’s brand of humour and her wordplay is either missing or just doesn’t sound the same even if translated “correctly.” Taking the Rumpelstiltskin story as an example again, I can’t say I was a fan of it, but at least in Dutch I was chuckling at its silliness and goofiness whilst in English I was rolling my eyes at it in exasperation.

That gives you an idea, doesn’t it?

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