Project and content management for Contemporary Authors volumes
WORK TITLE: The Hazel Wood
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE:
WEBSITE:
CITY: Brooklyn
STATE: NY
COUNTRY: United States
NATIONALITY: American
Founding editor of the Barnes & Noble Teen Blog and the managing editor of BN.com
RESEARCHER NOTES:
PERSONAL
Married.
EDUCATION:Attended University of Iowa, c. 2001-03; Columbia College, Chicago, IL, B.J., 2006.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Powell’s Books, Chicago, IL, bookseller, 2003-05; Encyclopaedia Britannica, Chicago, copy editor, 2006-08, research editor, 2008-10; Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn, NY, associate editor and Web editor, 2010-13; Barnes & Noble, Inc., New York, NY, editor of B&N Reads, 2013-16, founding editor of Barnes & Noble Teen Blog, beginning 2013, and managing editor of BN.com website. Also worked as freelance research editor, copy editor, and proofreader. Reckless Records, record seller, 2004-05; Madwell, copywriter, 2013.
WRITINGS
Contributor to periodicals, including Chicago Journal, Hairpin, Hollywood Crush, McSweeney’s, SparkLife, and Time Out Chicago.
SIDELIGHTS
When Melissa Albert published her first teen novel, she had already spent several years in the book business. The Illinois native began her career in Chicago in 2006 as a copy editor for Encyclopaedia Britannica. A year later she was supplementing her income as a freelance writer for local periodicals. Albert moved to New York City in 2010 to work for the Brooklyn Museum as an associate editor and Web editor. She also worked as a copy editor of fiction for young readers. In 2013 Albert joined publisher Barnes & Noble as a blogger and editor of B&N Teen Blog and B&N Reads. Wherever she lived and worked, Albert brought with her a lifelong love of fairytales and fantasy novels, and not just the “happy ending” variety. She told an interviewer at Book Wars that her debut novel is “informed by all the stories and books I’ve loved since I was a kid.”
The Hazel Wood was described in Kirkus Reviews as a “pitch-black fantasy.” It features three generations of women toughened by lifetimes of flight from bad luck bordering on terror. The youngest is Alice Proserpine, who–at age seventeen–is endowed by her creator with the ambience of “a world-weary noir detective … resourceful, whip-smart, and incredibly impulsive,” according to Emma Carbone’s assessment in School Library Journal. Alice has spent her entire life on the road or in hiding. Until now she has been protected by her mother Ella, but Ella is missing, kidnapped perhaps by interlopers from the Hinterland first exposed by Alice’s grandmother Althea many years ago.
Readers learn that Althea achieved cult status in the 1980s when she published Tales from the Hinterland, stories described in Kirkus Reviews as “simultaneously wondrous and horrific, dreamlike and bloody, lyrical and creepy, … brutally cruel.” Then Althea retreated to her Hazel Wood estate to spend the rest of her life in seclusion. Alice never met her or read the book, which is now almost impossible to find. When news of Althea’s death reaches the fugitives, they believe the family curse has died with her. Then Ella disappears, leaving Alice with a warning to stay away from the Hazel Wood.
Alice cannot stay away. Furious that otherworldly visitors have the power to draw her into their evil world, she resolves to track them to their source and destroy their hold over her family. Their source seems to be the Hazel Wood, a mysterious location that had never been revealed to the teenager. Alice recruits classmate and obsessive Hinterland fanatic Ellery Finch to help her find the elusive estate. He is only too happy to help, until the darkness descends upon their journey. “The ruthless citizens of the Hinterland creep further and further into reality,” explained Caitlyn Paxson in her interview at the National Public Radio Website. When Alice arrives at the portal that Althea called the Hazel Wood, she realizes that the answers to her questions lie on the other side. She must decide whether the truth is worth the price she may have to pay for it.
“Some fairy tales ask to be lived in,” Maggie Reagan observed in her Booklist review. The Hazel Wood is not one of them, she pointed out, “yet it is a dark story that readers will have trouble leaving behind.” “The smoke-and-mirrors world of the Hazel Wood is deliciously creepy,” noted Elizabeth Norton in Voice of Youth Advocates, and “Alice is a likeable, slightly jaded heroine” with a secret identity unknown even to her. A Publishers Weekly contributor highlighted “Alice’s sharp-edged narration” and her determination “to be in charge of her own story.”
Multiple reviewers recognized the affinity of Albert’s work to classic fairytale literature. She has been credited with reworking parts of familiar stories into original and unsettling tales of her own. Albert filled the volume with references that reveal an intimate knowledge of children’s literary classics. She peppered the narrative with snippets of frightening tales attributed to Althea’s original collection, mimicking the traditional structure and foreboding tone of the darkest of the world’s classics.
Paxson offered a mixed review of The Hazel Wood: “I enjoyed this book very much. But it also made me melancholy.” She explained: “There is never a moment where we are allowed to look around the Hinterland and enjoy it.” She would have preferred a story that could “show us how to win against the dark.” Albert may not offer readers a typical happy ending, but Carbone informed readers of School Library Journal: “An aggressive lack of romance and characters transcending their plots make this story an empowering read.”
For readers who might, like Paxson, wish for a chance to explore the Hinterland in greater detail, the author of the Kaley Connell Website offered hope. She learned from the author at a book signing that Albert has two more books in progress. One is expected to be another novel set in the world of The Hazel Wood. The other is a collection of the full-length Hinterland stories referenced in Albert’s debut.
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Booklist, November 15, 2017, Maggie Reagan, review of The Hazel Wood, p. 52.
Kirkus Reviews, October 15, 2017, review of The Hazel Wood.
Publishers Weekly, November 13, 2017, review of The Hazel Wood, p. 65.
School Library Journal, October, 2017. Emma Carbone, review of The Hazel Wood, p. 102.
Voice of Youth Advocates, December, 2017, Elizabeth Norton, review of The Hazel Wood, p. 64.
ONLINE
Book Wars, http://thebookwars.ca/ (January 21, 2018), author interview.
Kaley Connell Website, https://kaleyconnel.wordpress.com/ (February 2, 2018), review of The Hazel Wood.
National Public Radio Website, https://www.npr.org/ (January 30, 2018), Caitlyn Paxson, review of The Hazel Wood.
Melissa Albert is the founding editor of the Barnes & Noble Teen Blog and the managing editor of BN.com. She has written for McSweeney’s, Time Out Chicago, MTV, and more. Melissa is from Illinois and lives in Brooklyn, New York. The Hazel Wood is her first novel.
Blog Tour: Question and Answer with Melissa Albert, author of The Hazel Wood
POSTED ON JANUARY 21, 2018 IN BLOG TOURS
Q: What kind of research did you do for The Hazel Wood? In particular, what legends and myths did you draw from to create the enchanting fae world?
A: Though I didn’t do research explicitly for The Hazel Wood, it’s definitely a product of my lifetime of reading. As a kid I devoured the Grimm Brothers’ tales, Andrew Lang’s colored fairy books, the Thousand and One Nights, all the fairy stories I could get my hands on, as well as wonderful fantasy novels like Ellen Kushner’s Thomas the Rhymer and Monica Furlong’s Wise Child. All of these books gave me the grounding in fantasy literature from which I worked in creating my own first book, a mashup of contemporary and second world fantasy. Some of my personal favorite fairy tales include the very creepy “The Juniper Tree” and “The Twelve Dancing Princesses,” which, for me, remains the most visually evocative of the classic canon. Though The Hazel Wood isn’t a retelling of anything, it’s definitely <
LinkedIn
I'm the author of THE HAZEL WOOD (Macmillan/Flatiron, 2018), the founding editor of the B&N Teen Blog, and the managing editor of BN.com. Previously I've written for SparkLife, MTV’s Hollywood Crush, The Hairpin, Time Out Chicago, and the Chicago Journal. I was a copywriter at Madwell and web editor at the Brooklyn Museum, and wrote a TV novelization for Alloy Entertainment and a young adult thriller and middle grade historical novel for Working Partners. See my B&N Teen clips at http://www.barnesandnoble.com/blog/teen/author/melissa-albert.
Experience
Barnes & Noble
Senior Editor, B&N Teen Blog and BN.com
Company Name Barnes & Noble
Dates Employed Jul 2016 – Sep 2016 Employment Duration 3 mos
Location Greater New York City Area
Barnes & Noble
Editor, B&N Teen Blog and B&N Reads
Company Name Barnes & Noble
Dates Employed May 2013 – Jul 2016 Employment Duration 3 yrs 3 mos
Location Greater New York City Area
Working Partners
Writer
Company Name Working Partners
Dates Employed Aug 2012 – Jun 2016 Employment Duration 3 yrs 11 mos
Location London, United Kingdom
Writes young adult and middle grade novels for fiction development house, including The Gilded Cage (Henry Holt, 2016) and The League of Archers (Simon & Schuster, 2016).
The Criterion Collection
Freelance Copy Editor
Company Name The Criterion Collection
Dates Employed Jan 2011 – Jan 2015 Employment Duration 4 yrs 1 mo
Copyedit packaging materials and film essays for DVD and Blu-ray releases.
Madwell
Copywriter
Company Name Madwell
Dates Employed Mar 2013 – May 2013 Employment Duration 3 mos
Location Brooklyn, NY
MTV Networks
Freelance blogger at Hollywood Crush
Company Name MTV Networks
Dates Employed Sep 2012 – May 2013 Employment Duration 9 mos
Location Greater New York City Area
Wrote posts for MTV's pop culture blog.
SparkLife (Barnes & Noble)
Blogger
Company Name SparkLife (Barnes & Noble)
Dates Employed Sep 2010 – May 2013 Employment Duration 2 yrs 9 mos
Location Greater New York City Area
Wrote blog posts on books, pop culture, and teen life.
Brooklyn Museum
Associate Editor/Web Editor
Company Name Brooklyn Museum
Dates Employed Dec 2010 – Mar 2013 Employment Duration 2 yrs 4 mos
Edit and post all web content, including exhibition materials and event text; edit print pieces including marketing materials, exhibition texts, and email blasts.
Encyclopaedia Britannica
Research Editor
Company Name Encyclopaedia Britannica
Dates Employed Sep 2008 – Nov 2010 Employment Duration 2 yrs 3 mos
Fact checking, updating existing articles, writing new articles, handling user feedback. Programs used: Workflow Explorer, Adobe FrameMaker, Microsoft Word, Excel.
Time Out Chicago
Freelance Writer
Company Name Time Out Chicago
Dates Employed Mar 2007 – Nov 2010 Employment Duration 3 yrs 9 mos
Wrote feature pieces, books section reviews and features, and theater reviews.
Chicago Journal
Freelance writer
Company Name Chicago Journal
Dates Employed Feb 2007 – Aug 2010 Employment Duration 3 yrs 7 mos
Reported on neighborhood news and wrote human-interest pieces and arts reviews.
Encyclopaedia Britannica
Copy editor
Company Name Encyclopaedia Britannica
Dates Employed Sep 2006 – Sep 2008 Employment Duration 2 yrs 1 mo
Editing for grammar, style, sense, and accuracy. Programs used: Workflow Explorer, Adobe FrameMaker, Excel
Quarasan
Freelance proofreader
Company Name Quarasan
Dates Employed Jul 2006 – Nov 2006 Employment Duration 5 mos
McDougal Littell
Freelance research editor
Company Name McDougal Littell
Dates Employed Jun 2006 – Sep 2006 Employment Duration 4 mos
Reckless Records
Record seller
Company Name Reckless Records
Dates Employed Aug 2004 – Feb 2005 Employment Duration 7 mos
Powell's Books (Chicago)
Bookseller
Company Name Powell's Books (Chicago)
Dates Employed Dec 2003 – Feb 2005 Employment Duration 1 yr 3 mos
Education
Columbia College Chicago
Degree Name Bachelor's
Field Of Study Journalism
Dates attended or expected graduation 2003 – 2006
Activities and Societies: Echo Magazine contributor (at Columbia), KRUI disc jockey and album reviewer (at University of Iowa [2001-03]), Earthwords literary magazine poetry editor (at U of Iowa)
Albert, Melissa. The Hazel Wood
Elizabeth Norton
Voice of Youth Advocates.
40.5 (Dec. 2017): p64+.
COPYRIGHT 2017 E L Kurdyla Publishing LLC
http://www.voya.com
Full Text:
Albert, Melissa. The Hazel Wood. Flatiron/ Macmillan, January 2018. 368p. $16.99. 978-1-250-14790-5.
5Q * 4P * S
Seventeen-year-old Alice Crewe was raised on the road as she and her single mother, Ella, tried to outrun
the bad luck that seemed to follow them everywhere. When Ella's mother, Althea, a reclusive author of dark
fairy tales, dies, Alice is sure that their bad luck is over and they will be able to move into Althea's estate,
the Hazel Wood. Instead, her mother disappears, leaving only a cryptic message telling Alice to stay far
away from the estate, and strange people start cropping up, intent on doing Alice harm. Joined by her
classmate Finch, Alice sets off for the Hazel Wood, intent on finding her mother. Along the way, Alice and
Finch encounter great danger and dark secrets about Alices past and the bad luck that has plagued her entire
life.
Albert weaves a spellbinding, dark tale for those who enjoyed Holly Blacks Tales of Faerie books. <
is nicely paced, with revelations about Alice's past and her true identity adding to the suspense. <
purchase for young adult collections.--Elizabeth Norton.
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
Norton, Elizabeth. "Albert, Melissa. The Hazel Wood." Voice of Youth Advocates, Dec. 2017, p. 64+.
General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A522759451/ITOF?
u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=d9933a9f. Accessed 3 Mar. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A522759451
3/3/2018 General OneFile - Saved Articles
http://go.galegroup.com/ps/marklist.do?actionCmd=GET_MARK_LIST&userGroupName=schlager&inPS=true&prodId=ITOF&ts=1520121723562 2/5
The Hazel Wood
Maggie Reagan
Booklist.
114.6 (Nov. 15, 2017): p52.
COPYRIGHT 2017 American Library Association
http://www.ala.org/ala/aboutala/offices/publishing/booklist_publications/booklist/booklist.cfm
Full Text:
* The Hazel Wood.
By Melissa Albert.
Jan. 2018. 368p. Flatiron, $18.99 (9781250147905). Gr. 9-12.
<
kind maidens, and wishes come true. Others are darker. Others I have teeth. The Hinterland is one such
savage place, not that Alice would know--she hasn't read Tales from the Hinterland, the book penned by a
grandmother she's never met. They aren't children's stories, her mother, Ella, says, and besides, the book
itself is infamously elusive. Alice, quick to anger with a heart of ice, has spent her 17 years in constant
motion; trailed by bad luck, she and Ella move from place to place, never staying anywhere long enough to
put down roots. But when Ella is taken suddenly, the lines between the real world and the Hinterland start to
blur. Faced with the loss of the only person she's ever loved, Alice must rely on Ellery Finch, the kind of
Tales from the Hinterland superfan she's always avoided, to help her track down the world she thought
existed only in her grandmother's imagination. In this unsettling debut, Albert takes familiar stories and
carefully pulls them apart; the end result is a sort of deconstructed fairy tale that, despite its familiarity, gets
under the skin. Highly literary, occasionally surreal, and grounded by Alice's clipped, matter-of-fact voice,
it's <>.--Maggie Reagan
[HD] HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: The buzz for Us! this debut is deafening, and the fact that the film
adaption is already in the works doesn't hurt.
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
Reagan, Maggie. "The Hazel Wood." Booklist, 15 Nov. 2017, p. 52. General OneFile,
http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A517441853/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=4d905970.
Accessed 3 Mar. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A517441853
3/3/2018 General OneFile - Saved Articles
http://go.galegroup.com/ps/marklist.do?actionCmd=GET_MARK_LIST&userGroupName=schlager&inPS=true&prodId=ITOF&ts=1520121723562 3/5
The Hazel Wood
Publishers Weekly.
264.46 (Nov. 13, 2017): p65.
COPYRIGHT 2017 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Full Text:
* The Hazel Wood
Melissa Albert. Flatiron, $16.99 (368p) ISBN 978-1-250-14790-5
Alice Proserpine has grown up on the run, haunted by a book her mother, Ella, has forbidden her from
reading: Tales from the Hinterland. It's a collection of unsettling fairy tales written by a grandmother Alice
has never met, a recluse with an obsessive fandom. Then Althea, the grandmother, dies, and Ella cryptically
declares them free. Alice is focused on how they can turn their straw existence into a brick one after so
many peripatetic years, and she's bitterly disappointed with Ella's solution: marry up. Shortly after, Ella
goes missing, sending Alice and classmate Ellery Finch directly to the place Ella warned Alice to avoid: the
Hazel Wood, Althea's estate, where Alice painfully unravels the mystery of her childhood. Albert's debut is
rich with references to classic children's literature; <
fairy tales, interspersed throughout, build a tantalizing tale of secret histories and magic that carries costs
and consequences. There is no happily-ever-after resolution except this: Alice's hard-won right <
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
"The Hazel Wood." Publishers Weekly, 13 Nov. 2017, p. 65. General OneFile,
http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A515326077/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=843bbb4a.
Accessed 3 Mar. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A515326077
3/3/2018 General OneFile - Saved Articles
http://go.galegroup.com/ps/marklist.do?actionCmd=GET_MARK_LIST&userGroupName=schlager&inPS=true&prodId=ITOF&ts=1520121723562 4/5
Albert, Melissa: THE HAZEL WOOD
Kirkus Reviews.
(Oct. 15, 2017):
COPYRIGHT 2017 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
Full Text:
Albert, Melissa THE HAZEL WOOD Flatiron Books (Children's Fiction) $18.99 1, 30 ISBN: 978-1-250-
14790-5
A ferocious young woman is drawn into her grandmother's sinister fairy-tale realm in this <
Once upon a time, Althea Proserpine achieved a cult celebrity with Tales from the Hinterland, a slim
volume of dark, feminist fairy tales, but Alice has never met her reclusive grandmother nor visited her
eponymous estate. Instead, she has spent her entire 17 years on the run from persistent bad luck, relying
only on her mother, Ella. Now Althea is dead and Ella has been kidnapped, and the Hinterland seems
determined to claim Alice as well. The Hinterland--and the Stories that animate it--appear as<< simultaneously
wondrous and horrific, dreamlike and bloody, lyrical and creepy>>, exquisitely haunting and casually, <
profane) narration, larded with pop-culture and children's-literature references and sprinkled with wry
humor; her deceptive fragility conceals a scary toughness, icy hostility, and simmering rage. Despite her
tentative friendship (and maybe more) with Ellery Finch, a wealthy biracial, brown-skinned geek for all
things Althea Proserpine, any hints of romance are negligible compared to the powerful relationships
among women: mothers and daughters, sisters and strangers, spinner and stories; ties of support and
exploitation and love and liberation.
Not everybody lives, and certainly not "happily ever after"--but within all the grisly darkness, Alice's fierce
integrity and hard-won self-knowledge shine unquenched. (Fantasy. 16-adult)
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
"Albert, Melissa: THE HAZEL WOOD." Kirkus Reviews, 15 Oct. 2017. General OneFile,
http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A509244064/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=190f3640.
Accessed 3 Mar. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A509244064
3/3/2018 General OneFile - Saved Articles
http://go.galegroup.com/ps/marklist.do?actionCmd=GET_MARK_LIST&userGroupName=schlager&inPS=true&prodId=ITOF&ts=1520121723562 5/5
Albert, Melissa. The Hazel Wood
Emma Carbone
School Library Journal.
63.10 (Oct. 2017): p102.
COPYRIGHT 2017 Library Journals, LLC. A wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No
redistribution permitted.
http://www.schoollibraryjournal.com/
Full Text:
* ALBERT, Melissa. The Hazel Wood. 368p. Flatiron. Jan. 2018. Tr $18.99. ISBN 9781250147905.
Gr 9 Up--Alice Proserpine's mother Ella was raised on fairy tales amid the cultlike fandom surrounding the
release of Tales from the Hinterland, a collection of grim fairy tales that, in the 1980s, briefly made Alice's
grandmother Althea Proserpine a celebrity. Instead of fairy tales, Alice has highways as she and her mother
constantly move around hoping to outrun their eerie bad luck--something that seems much more likely
when they learn that Althea has died alone on her estate known as The HazelWood. Everything isn't as it
seems, and soon after, Alice's mother is kidnapped, leaving nothing except a warning for Alice to stay away
from The Hazel Wood. The teen reluctantly enlists her classmate and not-so-secret Hinterland fen Ellery
Finch, who may or may not have ulterior motives for helping, to share his expertise on the fairy tales. The
path to the Hazel Wood leads Alice straight into the story of her family's mysterious past. Albert's
standalone fantasy debut has a narration in the vein of<< a world-weary noir detective>> who happens to be a
teenage girl. <
contained rage as circumstances spiral out of her control. Her singular personality largely excuses the lack
of context for much of her knowledge and cultural references that hearken more to a jaded adult than a
modern teen. The lilting structure and deliberate tone bring to mind fairy tales both new and retold while
also hinting at the teeth this story will bear in the form of murder, mayhem, and violence both in the
Hinterland tales and in Alice's reality. VERDICT <
fairy-tale retellings.--Emma Carbone, Brooklyn Public Library
KEY: * Excellent in relation to other titles on the same subject or in the same genre | Tr Hardcover trade
binding | lib. ed. Publisher's library binding | Board Board book | pap. Paperback | e eBook original | BL
Bilingual | POP Popular Picks
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
Carbone, Emma. "Albert, Melissa. The Hazel Wood." School Library Journal, Oct. 2017, p. 102. General
OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A507950800/ITOF?
u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=b6a69ffb. Accessed 3 Mar. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A507950800
'The Hazel Wood' Has Few Uses For Enchantment
January 30, 20187:00 AM ET
CAITLYN PAXSON
The Hazel Wood
The Hazel Wood
by Melissa Albert
Hardcover, 355 pages purchase
It's a writer problem: now and then, a book comes along with a premise so delicious that you wish you'd thought of it. But there is danger in a book like that. Will it deliver what you want like a golden box full of perfect snowmelt from atop the highest mountain? Or will you open the box to discover the cut-out heart of a poor maiden who never had a fair shot?
Alice has spent her whole life on the run with her mother, almost as if something terrible is chasing them. They can't ever seem to escape their family legacy: Alice's grandmother is a famous author, who wrote a book of dark fairy tales set in a mythical world called the Hinterland. It's a book so rare and compelling that it has die-hard fans who've never even read it — including Alice. Alice doesn't know her grandmother, who shut herself away in an estate called the Hazel Wood before Alice was even born, but she is secretly obsessed with her and the elusive world that she created.
When the news comes that her grandmother has died, it seems like maybe Alice and her mother can finally catch their breath. They settle into a life in New York, but Alice keeps waiting for the darkness to find them.
Sure enough, one day Alice goes home to find that her mother has been kidnapped by terrifying creatures who may be the denizens of the Hinterland come to life. The only clue is a torn page from her grandmother's book, and a dire message from her mother: Stay away from the Hazel Wood.
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Alice enlists the help of her classmate, Ellery Finch, a Hinterland fanboy who just seems happy that Alice has finally noticed him. But soon their fantasy adventure turns into a horror story as<< the ruthless citizens of the Hinterland creep further and further into reality>>, seeking to terrorize Alice and use her for their own means. For the Hazel Wood is a doorway, and Alice has to decide if she's willing to go through it and find out the truth about her mysterious family.
This book is crafted with all the care that goes into spinning nettle shirts for your enchanted swan-brothers and all the agony and beauty of spitting up roses and diamonds. It looks head-on at trauma, and gives its compelling heroine the space to find her truth and begin the hard work of healing her wounds. It ponders fandom and the true nature of the places we idolized as children. It even has an Alan Lomax shout-out for all the folklore nerds in the audience.
<>
If we are so focused on the terrible parts of fairyland, we risk missing its beauty altogether.
In recent years, authors have been re-examining the portal fantasies so many of us grew up reading, and reinventing them with an eye for all the horror that more innocent, dewy-eyed incarnations swept under the rug. Teatime with talking animals and magical little girls is all very well, until you realize the tea is harvested by enslaved dwarves and the little girls have dark pasts and hatchets in their pinafores, and the whole thing has been orchestrated by some strange and petty god who will only disappoint you. I respect this. It's healthy to occasionally interrogate the things that we found enchanting as children and look at the darkness beneath their surfaces.
But there is a danger there as well, a danger which The Hazel Wood does not avoid completely. If we are so focused on the terrible parts of fairyland, we risk missing its beauty altogether. <
In these times, I think we need that hope. While I appreciate the hard truths and battles that The Hazel Wood offers, I ultimately wanted a book that believed in the power of fairy tales rather than rejecting it. I think then that it is my failing, not the book's, that left me feeling somewhat hollow at its close. But I am grateful for the journey, and for the reminder that there must be a balance.
Caitlyn Paxson is a writer and performer. She is a regular reviewer for NPR Books and Quill & Quire.
If you’ve not heard anything about this book, then I must assume you’ve been living under a rock or have just teleported in from another dimension. This book has gotten so much pre-release buzz that I was worried no other book would be talked about this month. I’m always skeptical about a book with this much hype. I’ve been disappointed a few too many times to take these things at face value. But I looked up the snippet inside the dusk jacket, followed the author on Instagram and Twitter to get a feel for it, and eventually decided to preorder a copy.
To say it was worth it wouldn’t give the book justice.
So I found out a day or two before the release that Melissa Albert was actually going on a book tour, which included a stop at a town about an hour away from me (with great traffic). This incited me to jump into the book earlier than I had been planning since I’m the type of person who hates spoilers and I wanted to go into this talk/signing having read it and knowing how much I would care about this book. I received my trusty Amazon package on Tuesday afternoon but didn’t start it until Wednesday because FFXIV patch 4.2 dropped the same day and I had my priorities straight. So Wednesday afternoon I started to read the book during down time, and by the time Jon and I crawled into bed, I was hooked. I was up until sometime after 1:30 a.m., woke up the next day and jumped straight back in. I had The Hazel Wood finished just before 5 p.m., giving me enough time to get dressed and make the almost two hour drive (thanks to the wonderful Boston traffic) to Brookline Booksmith and listen to Melissa Albert and Kristin Cashore talk about their releases.
This book, guys. It’s beautiful, and dark, and twisted. It’ll make you think one thing, only to throw something else in your face. Some of these scenes are the stuff of nightmares.
Alice Proserpine is the daughter of Ella Proserpine, who is the daughter of Althea Proserpine, who was born Anna Parks. Althea wrote a book of dark fairy tales titled Tales from the Hinterland, which gained an occult following. Alice has never met her grandmother, who lives secluded from the world on her property called The Hazel Wood. Instead, she and her mother have lived like drifters, never staying in one place too long. And it’s not just because people keep tracking the pair down to ask about Althea or to get a glimpse at the famed woman’s only family. It’s because bad luck follows them like a shadow.
One day, Alice’s mother goes missing, and the only clue left in her absence points to The Hazel Wood, and a message from her mother to, “stay the hell away…”. But, like any good protagonist, Alice is determined to save her mother from whoever, or whatever, stole her away, but she’ll need the help from classmate and Hinterland fanatic, Ellery Finch, to navigate her way through more than just her own dark story.
My score: 5/5
I cannot tell you enough how much I adored this book. I love fairy tales, from Disney to the original Brothers Grimm, and this book is stuffed full of new and original ones, and they’re as dark as the sea is deep.
In my opinion, the book is told in two parts. The first sets up the characters: Alice, Ella, Ellery, and Althea. You get the picture of who they are and what you can expect from them as well as the setting and tone of this story. This is my favorite part. Alice sprinkles in bits of her past as ways to tell a story, to explain why she is how she is, and because she realizes that some of her memories are connected to what’s happening now. I also loved the language, both Melissa Albert’s and Alice’s. It’s fresh, and new, and eye-catching. I found myself making mental notes of my favorite lines, or rereading pages because I liked them so much.
The second half of the book is the epic quest part, or at least that’s how I think of it after so many lectures in school about Joseph Campbell and The Hero with a Thousand Faces. This part is great in terms of content, plot, and visuals. I’ll be honest, I did find some things lacking in this section. There were many pieces of plot that were brushed over, not explained, and/or just left me feeling unsatisfied. I get what she was going for, though. When you read The Hazel Wood, (and you totally, totally, need to read this book) you’ll get what I mean. The story is Alice’s, and therefore we will only get Alice’s knowledge. But it doesn’t mean I don’t wish she asked more questions about the things I wanted to know.
This book is a standalone story, so there aren’t any cliffhangers you need to be prepared for. However, Melissa Albert announced at the book signing that she has two books in the works, one being another story set in this same world, the other being the actual stories from the book inside of her book, Tales from the Hinterland. While I’m excited for both, it’s the latter that has me fangirl squealing on the inside.
As a whole, this book is fantastic and so worth your time. It is easily my favorite book I’ve read this year, and is definitely something I’ll be recommending to friends. So read it. Read. This. Book. I promise it’ll be worth your time.