A book club pick :)

The Memory Theater is beautifully written and exquisite in its *otherness* and darkness.

When I was small, a I had a favourite book of fairy tales – there were Charles Perrault’s stories, Beaumont’s Beauty and the Beast etc etc. These were the originals, not the saccharine “modern” versions stripped of their power. There was a parental advisory of sorts in the introduction, “please read these stories carefully yourself before giving them to your children”. I ignored it, of course, and my family didn’t even know it was there (thank you, family, I love you). While reading the Memory Theater I was reminded of the feel and the universe of those tales. This book also felt like an extension of the sinister undercurrents of Alice in Wonderland.

Violence becomes more stark and more terrible when described in simple terms. There is a distilled essence of many dark things in fairy tales, and Karin Tidbeck digs them out for all to see.

I liked the multiverse and how it worked in this book. And how can one not love the fact that the characters end up in Sweden at one point? (Trust a Swedish author to do this, oh yes.) It was very satisfying when creatures from Scandinavian mythology got a mention or put in an appearance.

I loved the theater troupe that acts out true stories so that they will not be forgotten. I loved Dora and Thistle.

“They’ll be angry or they won’t be,” she said. “But until you know, there’s no use in being afraid. And if they’re really powerful, then there’s nothing we can do. And then there’s no use being afraid either. I promise I’ll be afraid later if we need to.”

There is a quest, of course, as there should be. There is love, and fear, and trauma, and heartbreak.
There is also a homecoming, but not the kind you’d expect if you’ve only been reading “happy” fairy tales.

I loved this so much. ( )

Ooh, I'm in love.

Lushly macabre, a blood-soaked fairy tale in the original sense of the term. Filled with vicious otherworldly lords and ladies that delight in grisly games of endless debauchery and unlikely and, perhaps, occasionally inhuman allies who act only out of kindness, The Memory Theater was just a delicious tale that I just ate up. ( )

Familiar seeming lore but with a definite Swedish flavor. ( )

This was different. Really should be 3.5 stars. Moral of the story, you cannot escape time, it’s always there ticking away. ( )

A cross between a fable and a fairy-tale, and as such it might have worked better as a novella or short story. Because the plot is extremely basic and there's no character development at all. The world is intriguing and the way it is set up seems to promise much. I kept waiting to be surprised but nothing very unpredictable happens. As in most fairy tales, the good characters are relentlessly good, the villain is clear and not terribly complicated, and everyone gets their just desserts. Frustratingly, the theater that lends itself to the actual title of the book doesn't play as large a role as you might expect, and we never learn very much about it. ( )