Book Review: Wonder Tales in the Fiction of A. S. Byatt. Ed. by Alexandra Cheira

Edited by Alexandra Cheira, Wonder Tales in the Fiction of A. S. Byatt is composed of seven essays penned by different distinguished Byatt scholars focusing on Byatt’s wonder tales covering both the single and the embedded ones. Cheira elucidates that the choice of the term “wonder tale” to “fairy tale” is based on Marina Warner’s assertion that the fairy entities are absent in this type of tales, instead there is the presence of wondrous elements (xv). The introduction of the book delineates that Byatt’s wonder tales within her fiction as an exclusive critical study has been a highly neglected research area despite several excellent monographs covering her entire fiction in that Wonder Tales in the Fiction of A. S. Byatt solely focuses on her wonder tales. Moreover, as Cheira asserts the book also scrutinizes Byatt’s claim that wonder tales are “modern literary stories” and that they consciously play with “postmodern creation and recreation of old forms.”