Rosie Little's Cautionary Tales for Girls
A series of contemporary fairy tales populated by wolves, witches, snakes, and an entirely new breed of heroine.\ In this Brothers Grimm–meets–Bridget Jones collection of linked stories, Danielle Wood introduces readers to Rosie Little, a thoroughly modern Little Red Riding Hood who offers her sharp, rueful take on life, love, and everything in between.\ Rosie knows better than most that some men are wolves at heart, that the snake in the grass is to be avoided, and that fairy-tale endings...
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A series of contemporary fairy tales populated by wolves, witches, snakes, and an entirely new breed of heroine.In this Brothers Grimm–meets–Bridget Jones collection of linked stories, Danielle Wood introduces readers to Rosie Little, a thoroughly modern Little Red Riding Hood who offers her sharp, rueful take on life, love, and everything in between.Rosie knows better than most that some men are wolves at heart, that the snake in the grass is to be avoided, and that fairy-tale endings are usually, after all, only fairy tales. And yet stout-hearted Rosie reassures us that there are ways out of the deep dark forests of our own making in these survival tales of teenagers deflowered at parties, a young journalist who misses the chance to write a front-page story because she’s busy flirting with a married man, and two women who must cope with the loss of their babies.A brand-new take on the age-old fairy tale, Rosie Little’s Cautionary Tales for Girls will appeal especially to readers like Rosie, with “boots as stout as their hearts, and who are prepared to firmly lace them up (boots and hearts both) and step out into the wilds in search of what they desire.”
ELEPHANTIASIS\ A chronic form of filariasis, due to lymphatic obstruction, characterised by enormous enlargement of the parts affected\ --Macquarie Dictionary\ My cousin Meredith has elephantiasis. To say this is not to imply that she is fat, though, coincidentally, she is. Not just a little overweight, but quite fat. Meredith has the kind of body that means shopping for clothes in the Big is Beautiful section; that entails judging carefully the width of chairs with arms. Hers is the kind of flesh that feels, sliding over it in supermarkets, in doctors' waiting rooms or worse, the Family Planning Clinic, the averting glances of whip-thin girls with blonde ponytails and long necks with which to flick them.It's not only Meredith that has elephantiasis. Her villa unit -- one of a set of brick and tile triplets nestled on a landscaped block -- has elephantiasis also. In the lounge room, the suite is piled with plump cushions embroidered, cross-stitched, latch-hooked, printed and painted with elephants. Others are simply in the shape of elephants. Sentinel to the hearth are two mahogany elephants, which, by virtue of timber that is unrefined and almost hairy, bears a family resemblance to their ancestor, the woolly mammoth. The mantelpiece holds a passing parade of jade, serpentine, onyx, ebony and marble elephants. Elephants have even made it into the bathroom, where the plastic bodies of Babar and Celeste are filled with bubble bath. In the kitchen, the fridge door flutters with no fewer than six fliers (the one that arrived by chance in Meredith's own post augmented by five others passed on by thoughtful friends), all seeking donations to help an unfortunate Thai elephant, the victim of a landmine explosion, in need of a prosthetic foot. Each of the fliers is attached to the fridge with a separate elephant- shaped fridge magnet.Meredith wonders at how quickly the elephant effect gained momentum. The first elephant, a palm-sized figurine carved in ivory-pale wood, was from no-one of particular consequence. The giver had sat next to Meredith in a personal development seminar, perhaps five years ago. She was a woman with raspy greying hair and a long crooked body which she was always shifting in her chair, as if simply sitting caused her pain in her bones. The woman mentioned she was planning a holiday to Africa, and Meredith -- outside in the car park after the seminar was over -- gave her a blow-up neck pillow for the plane journey. Meredith had found the pillow uncomfortable, and so it had been lying, deflated, in the boot of her car for months.The second elephant was a soft toy, pale grey and plush. It was also a thankyou gift, this time from a neighbour whose plumes of agapanthus Meredith watered while the neighbour was away nursing her sick mother. To this day Meredith does not know whether the neighbour chose the soft toy in response to the wooden African elephant on the (then relatively uncluttered) mantelpiece, or whether it was a purely coincidental choice. In any case, after that the elephantiasis spread like a virus to birthdays and Christmases, even to Easter, as friends, family and colleagues were seized by the thematic simplicity of it all. \ WHITE ELEPHANT\ An annoyingly useless possession\ --Macquarie Dictionary\ The truth is that Meredith does not even like elephants, and never did particularly. Before they took over her life, Meredith had for elephants no special feelings. Now that the elephantiasis is advanced, her house a shrine to the order Proboscidea, she resents them. Perhaps, she thinks sometimes, the elephantiasis was a punishment for an act of bad faith: giving away a travel pillow that she already knew to be uncomfortable. She feels, however, that the punishment has gone far enough, since it is now her entire existence that is stretched out of shape, swollen up and distorted with elephants.Could she have halted the stampede? Yes, almost certainly. She could, at some point, have mentioned that she would prefer to collect butterflies. Or springboks. In her most soul-bare moments she knows why she did not, does not. And it's not only because she is naturally conciliatory, and polite in a style that is grateful for a gift, no matter how awful. It's because she knows that her friends, family and colleagues see this (imagined) fondness of hers for elephants as proof of her jolliness. It is evidence of her good-natured acceptance of her fatness. A huge joke against herself. There she is, an elephantine woman surrounding herself with familiars. And a jolly fat woman without jolliness is left, she understands, with only one adjective. \ \ A Word from Rosie Little\ ON TOTEMIC WORSHIP
\ From Barnes & NobleBarnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers\ Not for good girls -- their ears would burn at Rosie's woeful tale of her own deflowering; not for good girls either, Rosie's familiarity with the intimate aspects of male anatomy; and most certainly not for good girls, her deliciously pedagogical tales of matters ranging from Brazilian bikini waxes to marriage proposals to meeting one's in-laws.\ \ With a wink and a sly nod to The Tales of Scheherazade, Rosie's tales are a cautionary compendium of necessary knowledge about relationships, careers, and of course, the right shoes. Wood employs a sparkling wit and a rueful eye as she maps terrain that all women will recognize. Whether their lot is heartbreak or wedding bells, the girls who parade through these pages have one thing in common. They want what we all want -- someone to love, a chance at happiness, a reward for hard work -- and with Rosie as their intrepid guide, there's no denying that their odds have improved immeasurably. \ \ Rosie's advice is not for the shy or retiring, but timidity has no place when the world is waiting to be your oyster and the apple is longing to be bitten. Philandering husbands, jealous colleagues, and wayward partners would do well to right their course or risk becoming fair game for Rosie's impish sass and indignant ire. This addictively readable book is sure to find a home in the hands of girls both naughty and nice. (Holiday 2007 Selection)\ \
