What she comes up with in The Holloway is, instead, a clever contemporary take on a Somerset folktale about a drunken, abusive farmer who gets what he deserves at the hand of the pixies. Originally this collection was a published as an Audible podcast where the authors were interviewed after each version of their folktales. Being buried alive, domestic abuse, miscarriage, infertility, infidelity, racism, abuse, shame of single parents, cancer, eye gouging, death and more. As I grew up, this love for the wyrd and eerie remained, but I began to appreciate how this edge could be reinvented time upon time. I felt that the strident anti-Catholic rhetoric actually lessened the impact of the original by highlighting and underlining what is more subtly conveyed in the folktale.

My fascination with folktales originally sprung from the hidden mystery in the fog, the twisting path in a dark forest, the never-ending echo of a deep well, the sudden end to footsteps in the snow. I'm exhausted by stories about pregnancy and childbirth being the only Universal Womanly Experience and that's a core feature of the majority of these stories (and you'll never guess what core underlying trait isn't in the two I sort of liked).

All of the stories are set in and around the UK, but some carry flavours from their author’s cultural experiences and heritage that enrichen the style and content of the stories, and add layers to these stories of female ‘otherness’. The Panther's Tale' by Mahsuda Snaith, based on the tale around Chillington House, was beautifully imaginative and a real surprise. Another domestic story, which gives you a chance at the end to decide whether it was a supernatural or human coincidence! So, the copy I have did not have any of those issues, the grammar was spot on so maybe that's why I enjoyed it more.

When it's time for Lowan to pay the cost, he comes up with something completely unexpected and things turn around for him.I found the framing of this collection to be very enjoyable (retelling traditional folktales) and I liked that "traditional" did not entail "white, male, and hetero. The eeriness of the story really draws you in, but I think the shortness means it falls flat as there's not much time to really carve out a solid, captivating ending. Among the best stories are those which let the original material speak for itself, albeit in a changed context. I enjoyed this collection, especially the stories, where bad men are put to a gruesome end, richly deserved.

Hag: Forgotten Folktales Retold is a collection of ten short stories or I should say re-tellings of ten short stories. She is the author of nine books, including those published by Bloomsbury, Quercus and the National Trust. As with most short story collections, some were absolutely standout (for me, A Retelling and The Panther's Tale), most were enjoyable, and I didn't gel well with a couple of them. The 103 third parties who use cookies on this service do so for their purposes of displaying and measuring personalized ads, generating audience insights, and developing and improving products.Overall I feel this is a solid collection and would be perfect for a cosy, mildly spooky, unsettling read. Surprising, gorgeously written, and profoundly unsettling, this genderfluid retelling of Oedipus Rex will sink into your bones and stay there.

It has both given me a much longer TBR pile, and also made me want to complete a 'Hag tour' so I can explore the areas it describes. These stories are accessible to the unfamiliar but there is a reference to the original tales included as well. The daughter of a Trinidadian father and an Irish mother, Rosheen leaves Killarney in the 60s to seek her luck on a farm in Norfolk.

After that the baby, Muir starts to spend six months with his mother and six months with his father until one day, he decides that he wants to spend all his time with his mother. I couldn't think of any better book to be curled up with under a blanket with a cup of something warm as the Autumn wind howls and the nights draw in even more.