The Modern Fairies

Starred review from May 15, 2024
Pollard, whose Delphi (2022) chronicled life during the COVID-19 pandemic, turns her eye to seventeenth-century France under the long rule of the Sun King, during which female-led salons celebrating literature and culture sprung up in the homes of the wealthy. One such gathering is hosted by Madame Marie D'Aulnoy, whose separation from her husband and subsequent return to Paris society with her daughters is the subject of much speculation and curiosity. Marie and her friends gather to share and critique each other's ""modern fairies,"" their unique spins on fairy tales, but there's intrigue aplenty among the regulars, all of whom are historical figures. An unhappily married woman and the daughter of her dear friend vie for the affections of the same young man. Louis XIV's illegitimate daughter longs for a young, battered wife. Marie catches the eye of author Charles Perrault, a handsome widower who has newly joined their ranks. But there's a spy among the group, who threatens the status, happiness, and even the lives of the members. With hints of the coming revolution just starting to cast a shadow over France, Pollard vividly and powerfully evokes the tumult, passion, and creativity of this bygone era, crafting a tale that's both timeless and timely.

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May 27, 2024
Pollard (Delphi) delivers a delightfully raunchy romp through the court of Louis XIV in 1682 Paris. A group of women led by Madame Marie d’Aulnoy meet regularly to discuss 25 fairy tales, which lend themselves to the title and themes of each chapter, beginning with “The Tale of Donkey-Skin,” about a king who seeks to marry his daughter. Soon men start joining the gatherings, and the group is dubbed the Modern Fairies by others at court. As the members discuss the tales of Cinderella, Rapunzel, and Prince Charming, the women note how their own husbands could have them banished for infidelity—indeed, one of them has been sleeping with a bachelor member of the Modern Fairies while her husband is away. In “The Tales of Anguillete and Red Riding Hood,” Pollard’s omniscient narrator suggests there’s a “wolf” monitoring the group for Louis XIV, who fears the political power of storytelling. Pollard’s ribald prose is addictively amusing, as in her depiction of the king as “short, pockmarked, always some problem with his arsehole... his little dick florid with some new sexually transmitted infection... such a pathetic little horn-dog.” This magnetic revisionist historical deserves a wide readership. Agent: Lucy Carson, Friedrich Agency.

June 15, 2024
Not fantasy fiction or a collection of fairy tales, but a historical novel about the people who told them. Pollard, a poet, sets her second novel for adults in the Parisian salon of Marie-Catherine d'Aulnoy during the reign of Louis XIV, with Charles Perrault as a frequent point-of-view character. D'Aulnoy's salon and Perrault's stories are still famous for their role in literary history. There intellectuals, mostly noblewomen, gathered to share fairy tales, some literary elaborations of folktales and some inventions of their own. Pollard draws on a rich lode of source material: "I must tell you, an almost unbelievable amount of this is true," she writes in her author's note. Each chapter in the novel is named after a fairy tale, some ("The Tale of Bluebeard") more familiar to contemporary readers than others ("The Tale of the Ram"). In most chapters a member of the salon tells the tale in question. These stories are a safe way for the characters to examine and criticize the world of the Sun King's court without--they hope--falling afoul of the power-greedy monarch and his bloodthirsty spies. Not coincidentally, the lives of the salon members, with their poisonings, forced marriages, dead spouses and parents, cruel rulers, illegitimate princesses, secret affairs, hints of incest, and horrifying punishments, sound like the fairy tales themselves. Cold, clever, and glittering, this beautiful novel resembles both the court and the stories it depicts.

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