Maria Adelmann reimagines the victims of classic fairy tales as modern-day heroines of their own stories in How to Be Eaten, a darkly comedic novel that explores the power of storytelling to shape--and reshape--individual lives.
An invitation is sent to a group of women with strange backstories, asking them to participate in experimental group narrative therapy. In walks Bluebeard's girlfriend, the only surviving lover of the tech billionaire-turned-serial killer; a newly empty-nester whose husband is known as a good, kind hero; a slightly deranged woman named Ruby, who wears the grungy pelt of a wolf for a coat; Gretel, "the one from the strange kidnapping story that captivated the nation more than two decades before"; and a young woman flashing an enormous engagement ring. Week by week, the women return to tell each another their stories--of being kidnapped and threatened, wooed and trapped, corralled and manipulated in any variety of ways. Beyond their true stories, however, they start to explore how they each came into the public eye (media frenzies, true-crime podcasts, reality television) and in so doing, reveal how each of their stories had been re-framed by the attention paid to it by outsiders: "They shift the focus onto one little detail--like what choices we made--and miss the bigger picture."
How to Be Eaten requires some small suspensions of disbelief, which Adelmann expertly crafts to parallel the same suspensions required to truly believe the stories of each woman in this group. Was Ruby really threatened by a talking wolf? Was Gretel held hostage by an evil old woman, or was the woman merely caring for two abandoned children left on her block? Is Ashlee actually in love with her reality-star fiancé, or was she manipulated into her relationship by the show's producers? The answers to these questions become unimportant as How to Be Eaten unfolds, sweeping readers up not in the details of each woman's backstory but in the ways those misconstrued details have been used against them. In so doing, Adelmann invites readers to think about the power of stories and storytelling, and the often fine line between making space for others' stories and making entertainment (and profit) out of the same. A sardonic, poignant novel that moves in unexpected directions across each and every page, How to Be Eaten is a whip-smart invitation to reimagine familiar fairy tales in a modern age. --Kerry McHugh, freelance writer
Shelf Talker: A dark, comedic novel reimagines the victims of classic fairy tales as 21st-century heroines who come together for group therapy to tell their own stories.