Books
‘Hansel and Gretel’ Resurrects One of Stephen King’s Most Mysterious Characters
We all know the story of Hansel and Gretel. Two children use breadcrumbs to navigate a treacherous forest, only to stumble into the clutches of a bloodthirsty witch. While trapped in the cackling woman’s gingerbread house, they outwit the ostensibly friendly cannibal and leave her to bake in her own oven. First collected by the Brothers Grimm, the story has become canon in Western culture, with elements filtering through our popular lexicon. Award-winning children’s author and illustrator Maurice Sendak muses, “It’s the toughest story in the world and people are afraid of it, yet it’s famous because it’s so truthful.” In 1997, the author created a series of illustrations designed to be used as set and costume designs for a new production with the Humperdinck Opera. Though a televised production premiered in 1998, Sendak’s undeniably eerie work has now caught the attention of another creator.
Master of Horror Stephen King has always had a fascination with heroic children. His second novel, Salem’s Lot, follows an intrepid tween who squares off against a clan of vampires, while his third, The Shining, matches a little boy’s psychic powers against a nexus of impenetrable evil. Mark Petrie and Danny Torrance would fit right into Sendak’s stories while arguably beginning a long line of young adventurers who continue to populate King’s literary universe. Clearly fascinated by the Grimm Brothers’ story, the author has incorporated elements into his own work, employing the ubiquitous fable as an object lesson in his 2000 memoir On Writing and drawing from Hansel’s ingenious breadcrumb trail for his 2022 fantasy novel Fairy Tale. King’s latest publication ties together Sendak’s haunting imagery in a retelling of the classic yarn. Hansel and Gretel is a colorful, yet frightening children’s book blending Sendak’s award-winning visual style with King’s knack for chilling readers to the bone.
From “Hansel and Gretel.”Credit…Copyright © The Maurice Sendak Foundation, Inc.
In a candid introduction to the story, the horror connoisseur describes the image that first caught his eye. Sendak’s reimagining of the infamous gingerbread house is a jovial structure decked out in treats. Gumdrops line the cobblestone walls while rows of smiling gingerbread cookies invite unsuspecting children to step inside. Yet, the minute they cross the sugary threshold, the house transforms into a snarling face set to devour its unsuspecting guests. King explains, “I thought, This is what the house really looks like, a devil sick with sin, and it only shows that face when the kids turn their backs. I wanted to write that!”
Sendak’s illustrations set an ominous tone, presenting a hostile and dangerous world. We’re introduced to our two blond protagonists gazing in wonder at an angelic figure hovering in the midst of a darkened wood. They gravitate towards this vision of safety while crouching lions and cackling witches hide among the vine-like branches. King names another of the story’s sinister figures as his favorite of Sendak’s illustrations. Early in the story, Hansel dreams of a bulbous witch who rides her broom through the cloudy sky while frightened children scream from a sack slung casually over her shoulder. Another witch seems to break through the page to stare directly at the reader. Presented in shades of ominous gray, her eyes glow a disturbing pale yellow while her bony, claw-like fingers cross in front of her mouth, as if to keep a deadly secret. Readers bold enough to remove the book’s stunning dust jacket will meet this fanged creature gazing back at them from the front cover.
Though suitable for younger children, King leans into terror when describing this brutal fairy tale world. He pairs Sendak’s image of the family’s dilapidated shack with damning descriptions of the children’s wicked stepmother. Not only does she hound her husband to murder his kids, but she also steals food away from the rest of the family to keep her private pantry full. Hansel’s famous trail of pebbles is set against creepy images of a darkened forest where wailing faces emerge from the trees. King seems to enjoy building out this legendary world filled with child abuse, murder, and cannibalism. Yet his characters feel relatable and fresh, straddling the centuries of this story’s existence.
From “Hansel and Gretel.”Credit…Copyright © The Maurice Sendak Foundation, Inc.
While King doesn’t change much of the Grimm brothers’ tale, he does make a shocking connection to his own literary universe. The witch Hansel and Gretel meet in the forest is none other than Rhea of the Cöos, a major antagonist in Wizard and Glass. Fourth in King’s legendary Dark Tower series, this fan-favorite entry follows the powerful sorceress as she torments Roland and his love Susan in a relentless quest for power. Also seen briefly in the YA fantasy novel Eyes of the Dragon, here Rhea uses a plump, white bird as a duplicitous servant—contrasting the black crow that symbolizes stalwart villain Randall Flagg.
In a heartwarming introduction to this creepy tale, King reminisces about reading Sendak’s beloved stories to his own young children, specifically naming Higglety Pigglety Pop! Or There Must Be More to Life and the iconic Where the Wild Things Are. By bringing to life the late creator’s illustrations, he’s given Constant Readers a similar gift. Those who grew up with King’s longer works will delight in introducing the next generation to the Master of Horror’s treacherous world in a deceptively terrifying yet simple story specifically geared towards a younger audience. True gateway horror, Hansel and Gretel combines the talents of two literary giants to create a bridge between childhood frights and the adult world of narrative horror.
Chuck Tingle‘s writing is embedded with a particular tonal trick that makes him perfectly suited to horror. “Propulsive” is the first word that comes to mind when I think of Tingle’s energetic prose, and when his books start wrapping themselves around characters and digging through their various complexities, it’s easy to be pulled along, absorbed in the feeling that an old friend is simply telling you a story.
Then Tingle will drop one of the single creepiest bits of imagery you’ve ever read, and you’re right back in the horror space. It’s not always a jump scare, but it is always a pulsing feeling of dread that keeps you hooked through the rest of the book.
Fabulous Bodies, Tingle’s latest horror novel, carries on these gifts, and the promise Tingle showed on books like Camp Damascus and Bury Your Gays. His fiction’s growing ever more confident and precise, and his eye for horrific detail hasn’t dimmed in the least, making this a summer reading delight for horror fans.
Poppy is a single mother determined to make a better life for her daughter, particularly after growing up in group homes and foster systems. By day, she works hard to keep up the flow of upbeat, enthusiastic content as a fashion influencer, and while that’s going well, it’s not yet making ends meet. To make up the difference, she moonlights as a grave robber, lifting bodies from morgues and funeral homes and selling their pieces on the black market. It’s grueling, dangerous work, and it’s about to pay off big. Out of the blue, Poppy gets a call to transport the newly dead body of her musical hero, the legendary Eddie Michaels. It’s a weird gig, but the payout is big enough that she could walk away from her macabre side gig forever. Poppy takes the job, and things get complicated when Eddie turns out to be, well, only mostly dead.
From the moment Eddie’s corpse enters the picture, Fabulous Bodies takes on the vibe of a road novel, as the grave robber and the undead rock star make stop after stop, and Poppy tries again and again to wrap her mind about what she’s gotten herself into, and how she might get herself out. It’s a delightful premise, and Tingle never loses his grip on the fun of it. No matter how dark the novel gets, and it does get quite dark, the narrative keeps barreling forward, delivering macabre laughs and moments of beautifully gruesome invention along the way.
Because he’s set his protagonist up as a fashion influencer, Tingle has lots of room to play in the space of how we view human bodies, both alive and dead, how we use them, and what we value in them. This is the emotional core of Fabulous Bodies, and while it’s sometimes overshadowed by the runaway train of the plot, it remains a potent source of thematic exploration throughout the book, and it gets more complicated when you consider certain gifts Eddie’s been granted in his strange supernatural state.
In essence, we’re looking at a story about a grave robber who discovers a body that not only fights back, but takes control of any given situation. That throws Poppy for repeated loops and keeps the plot moving, but it also makes us consider on a deeper level exactly what we value about our own physical form, and what might happen when we lose our grip on it entirely.
The book’s themes and emotional concerns hum through the whole narrative, but the overwhelming impression I got while reading Fabulous Bodies was just how much damn fun this book is. I couldn’t stop reading it, not just because it’s so filled with sudden swerves and ghoulish setpieces, but because Tingle has honed his horror storytelling down to a fine, very sharp point. Fabulous Bodies moves like a roller coaster, complete with a tension-filled ramp-up and a finale that’ll leave you breathless by the time the ride is over.
If you haven’t been reading Chuck Tingle’s horror work up to this point, it’s time to get on board, because he’s just getting started, and he’s already mastered the art of the scary page-turner.
Fabulous Bodies is available now.
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