book: tender morsels

In response to the question, "...[W]hat message would you like readers to take away after reading [your book]? The author, Margo Lanagan responds, "No message. I'd like to think that they'd look up from the last page, shake themselves, and find it hard to come back to the real world. I'd like to think for the next several days, questions that were touched off by the novel would keep being brought back to their mind...."(1)

Well, I think she accomplished that.

This book is the story of Liga, her early life that is heavily tainted by sexual violence, her two girls that come as a result, and their life in Liga's personal heaven. To keep this review from going off into tangents, I will restate what I wrote in my journal last night after finishing:

What I got from it [the book] is that sometimes, after bad things happen to us, we go to our own personal heavens to keep out the hurt. But without hurt, there is an absence of joy, as well. And as hard as it is [for Liga and her daughters] to return to the real world, it is necessary; [they were] unable to progress in [Liga's] 'personal heaven.'

I'm not sure if I would recommend the book heartily - no - I would recommend it. However, it deals very bluntly with violence agains women, mainly sexual violence. Specifically incest and rape. As the author says, the acts are never "on-screen"(2), [but] you definitely know what is going on. The author becomes/is quite adept with her euphemisms.

An interesting point is that in Australia, the book is marketed for adults, and in the USA the book is marketed to Young Adults.(3) The back contains a Q&A with the author. 

I would only add that it is the author's reaction to the Brother's Grimm, Snow-White and Red Rose. And the "super-nice"(4) women in that version "to be passively accepting and reliably amiable...." Lanagan much prefers Caroline Stahl's earlier tale, "The Ungrateful Dwarf."(5)


All quotes are from the author's interview, found in the back of the 2008 paperback version of the book.
1- 14
2- 6
3- 12
4- 10
5- 6