Tales Faeries Tell About Humans

How many people have actually wondered what a fairy tale (that is, a tale told by a fairy) would be like? The thought may have crossed people’s minds but lingered in few, and fewer still would have made anything of it.

Freya Binkley is one of those few. Her collection, with its apt and descriptive title, is a brief collection of poetry and short stories from the perspective of fairies looking in on the human world, sometimes from within that world itself. Some of the works are straightforward, giving up their meaning easily. Others are more obscure, as befits a story from an inhuman perspective. Many are works that I know I will have to revisit to gain another layer of meaning from. Their brevity does not mean they can be easily digested.

I enjoyed Binkley’s turns of phrase in creative descriptions in these pieces, many of which added to the otherworldly nature of the narration. A few were jarring, but most flowed beautifully, showing a knack for combining unique choices of words with the ability to make the piece as a whole feel casual, at times even breezy.

It was this tone only which struck me as odd. The introduction to the book brings up the sanitizing of fairy tales (the human-written kind) which happened in the Victorian era, and the way fairies were made into small and largely harmless creatures. While this collection does take the position of humans being the more dangerous creatures (which fits in well with the social commentary it provides), that comes at the expense of providing depth and shadow to the fairies themselves. A few pieces come close to doing so, but often the fairies seem blandly misunderstood and generally irritated and scornful of human blindness.

Taken as a whole, the piece can seem repetitive in its themes, which is why I have only rated it four stars. I do recommend it to people who enjoy their social commentary with a side of fey whimsy, however, and advise that the book be dipped in and out of. Read it in order, if you like, or read it by skipping from poem to poem, but be sure you take time to digest the works and let them settle before moving on to the next. You might even want to read something else between every other poem. The poems may serve better as intriguing seasoning than as a main course.