Vendor
	Liepman Literary Agency Marc Koralnik
Original language
English

THE MERRY SPINSTER

Mallory Ortberg

Tales of Everyday Horror

THE MERRY SPINSTER, Mallory Ortberg's darkly mischievous new book of classic folk and fairy tales with a feminist spin. You know Mallory from her New York Times bestseller Texts from Jane Eyre (2014), and her wildly popular humor website The Toast. Her audience only continues to build, and her foray into fiction is hugely anticipated by her loyal and dedicated fan base.

Adapted from her beloved "Children's Stories Made Horrific" series on The Toast, THE MERRY SPINSTER: Tales of Everyday Horror employs the trademark searing wit that perennially endears Ortberg to her readers. The feature became among the most popular on the site, with each entry bringing in tens of thousands of views, as the stories proved a perfect vehicle for Ortberg's eye for deconstruction and destabilization. Sinister and inviting, familiar and alien all at the same time, THE MERRY SPINSTER gives a modern update to traditional children's stories and fairy tales with elements of psychological horror, emotional clarity, and a keen sense of feminist mischief.

Readers will instantly recognize Ortberg's boisterous good humor and uber-nerd swagger: and those new to Ortberg's oeuvre will delight in her unique spin on fiction, where something a little devilish and unsettling is always at work just beneath the surface.

Unfalteringly faithful to its beloved source material, THE MERRY SPINSTER also illuminates the unsuspected and frequently alarming emotional complexities at play in the stories we tell ourselves, and each other, as we tuck ourselves in for the night. Bed time will never be the same again.

Mallory Ortberg is Slate's "Dear Prudence." She has written for Gawker, New York Magazine, The Hairpin, and The Atlantic. She is the co-creator of The Toast, a general-interest website geared toward women. She lives in the Bay Area with her laptop and her cat.

Mallory is a real influencer, and she and The Toast have been hugely instrumental in changing the face of Internet feminism. Smart and plugged-in, she writes with a wry, biting sensibility reminiscent of Shirley Jackson and Karen Russell. And if you're not already a reader, I highly recommend a visit to her Slate advice column - you'll fall in love with her while giggling in public.

Available products
Book Published 2018-03-01 by Henry Holt

Comments

"A wholly satisfying blend of silliness, feminist critique, and deft prose makes this a collection of bedtime stories that will keep you up at night for all the right reasons."

Look out, Angela Carter. There's a new feminist fairy tale queen in town, and her imagination is as sharp as her wit. Ortberg, co-founder of the beloved website The Toast, takes her column Children's Stories Made Horrific to new heights in this collection of twisted tales that will shock and delight you.

Ortberg's sly, scathing renditions. . . .strike directly at the heart. . . . .The book brings the shock of the new and the shock of recognition into play at the same time; it's a tour de force of skill, daring, and hard-earned bravura.

These stories are full of suffocating generosity, aggression so passive it's like breathing splinters. There's not a single weak link in the cat's-breath chain of this collection only an initial shock at what sort of experience the book is. If you're familiar with Ortberg's work as a humorist, either from The Toast or Texts From Jane Eyre, this is something else; even the stories adapted from the Children's Stories Made Horrific series on The Toast have sharper claws, are more primly vicious. It may ruin tea for you, or teach you something of how not to be a terrible person. Either way, it's incredible. Read more...

Feminist fairy tales? Just what the doctor ordered. Texts From Jane Eyre and Dear Prudence agony aunt Mallory Ortberg conjures up the kinds of stories that will hopefully scary the bogeymenwith the emphasis on 'men'away.

Mischievous, unsettling, and often feminist, the stories in THE MERRY SPINSTER are a delightful, ingenious spin on beloved classics.

The remixed fairy tales of Mallory Ortberg's 'The Merry Spinster' Read more...

I always want to dive into the mind of Mallory Ortberg (co-creator of The Toast). Adapted from her 'Children's Stories Made Horrific' series, this book provides some updates to well-known children's stories that change them into something else entirely.