ON THE SAME PAGE: THE GOOSE GIRL by SHANNON HALE
On pin-pointing why some books click and others don’t
It wasn’t until I started writing my review for THE GOOSE GIRL — originally intending to use that as my post for On the Same Page this month — that I finally came up with a good topic to really dig deeper into my experience with the book. THE GOOSE GIRL is one of Amy’s favorite books and with Alyssa and I never having read it, we chose it as one of our group reads. Honestly, before we chose to include THE GOOSE GIRL as one of our On the Same Page books, it wasn’t even on my radar. I actually thought it was a middle grade book (it has a sort of middle grade feel at times, I think, but the age range of characters is more young adult) and there was just something about it that I couldn’t quite pinpoint that just didn’t jump out at me, begging to be added to my TBR.
When I started the book, I started feeling that dread creeping in. The feel of the book was pretty much what I had anticipated (or did it come off that way BECAUSE that’s what I was anticipating? Self-fulfilling prophecy? Hard to say) and I was so upset that no matter how hard I tried, I just couldn’t get into the book. It was one of Amy’s favorites!!! I was seriously in fear that she would disown me if I didn’t like it and I didn’t even give it a rating on Goodreads when I finished because I didn’t want her to see and know my true feelings. I really worked hard to get into it, but I just wasn’t connecting and the overall feel just wasn’t clicking with me. (Alyssa started the book after I had finished and told me, “Oh, yeah, I can see why you didn’t’ like this.” She just knows my tastes haha.)
It dawned on me once I started to try and write my review for the book… Why didn’t I enjoy THE GOOSE GIRL? I enjoy many, many, many other fairy tale adaptations/retellings. Hell, The Lunar Chronicles is one of my favorite series of all time! So what’s the deal? I took a quick look at what I loved about The Lunar Chronicles and saw that aside from characters and plot and all of those easy-to-analyze things about a book, the series just has a completely different feel and the feel that makes the big difference for me is the setting. I would say the majority of the fairy tale retellings and adaptations I’ve read are either set in the present day or have a futuristic feel while books like THE GOOSE GIRL tell the story in a more traditional setting. Its original story is by the Brothers Grimm and it was originally published in 1815 and the book definitely takes after that sort of feel — I’m no fairy tale expert so forgive me for sound uneducated on this little section, but I feel like so many of the traditional and original fairy tales are difficult for me to connect with because that’s just not a time period I connect with. I’m guessing that if these fairy tales — when first penned — weren’t written as if they were in the present day, then they referred to times even before that time period, pushing the setting of the fairy tale even further back into history. From the historical fiction I’ve read, I’ve found that I’m extremely picky about what time periods work and what don’t for me and I think the general feel of the time period in THE GOOSE GIRL was one that just wasn’t clicking for me.
Seems unfair, right? It totally is. I don’t know why only certain historical settings/feelings work for me and some don’t. I loved the His Fair Assassin trilogy even though it was set in the 1400s — a time period I would never have expected to enjoy — and I really enjoy several high fantasy settings like in A Game of Thrones, Graceling, and Throne of Glass. Then on the other hand, I didn’t really enjoy the feel of Cruel Beauty and that was a retelling as well. So what’s the difference between these? The only possible explanation I can come up with is the tone. Yes, all of these are fairly serious books with heavy subjects, meanwhile with dashes levity to keep the book from getting too dark… But I feel like there’s an overall feeling that I got from THE GOOSE GIRL and CRUEL BEAUTY that I didn’t get from the others that somehow had me feeling like something was missing.
Every way I try to describe what didn’t work for me, it just comes back to that feeling. For THE GOOSE GIRL, I was hoping to connect to the book in spite of the feel that I was anticipating but I was either searching for it and found it, or just failed to connect to the characters and plot despite it. I can’t help but wonder if it was the exact same story but told a bit more modern or set in a different time period or added a few more light moments, could that have changed the whole book for me?
I feel like the more we read, the more we realize what we won’t connect with and tend to avoid it, whether the specific reasoning as to why that feeling is there is apparent or not. It’s been two and a half years (at this point) since I’ve started my blog and I’ve tried many different age ranges, genres, topics, and characters and even still I’m never sure if a book will work for me or not but I think that more often than not, as readers we start to learn to trust our gut! I’m still glad I read THE GOOSE GIRL even if I didn’t enjoy it as much as Amy and Alyssa because it was a reading experience that helped me understand a little bit more about myself as a reader. I wish I had connected more (and Amy said she won’t disown me) but it was definitely an interesting experience to analyze after finishing!
7 thoughts on “On the Same Page: The Goose Girl by Shannon Hale”
I’m sorry this didn’t work for you! I liked it, I think because it’s a darker fairytale. I tend to really like darker, more adult retellings and even though this is meant for a younger audience, it was definitely a bit dark! I like the retelling Thorn by Tntisar Khanani even better if you’re ever looking to give the fairytale another chance.
You know what I think is one of the best things about reading as a hobby? There is ALWAYS a book for every reader. The range and diversity of subjects, age groups, inspirations, tone and more in books is freaking impressive, and it always just so happens that we are going to go for the stuff that works for us. While it might work for you, it might not work for me and vice versa – and that’s okay and awesome and cool! It makes things INTERESTING 🙂 (I know this isn’t totally related, but I still felt like it kind of was!)
It really is true that some books just don’t connect to us, for whatever reason. For example, I cannot read dystopian books. I have tried on multiple occasions, but it just doesn’t work for me. I’ve never even read The Hunger Games despite being a book blogger, a reader of YA, and a children’s librarian. It’s just not gonna happen. And I think it’s the same with The Goose Girl for you.
The Goose Girl is actually one of my favorites. I love the story so much, and am a big fan of Shannon Hale. But, just as with every book (except for Harry Potter, am I right?) it doesn’t for everyone.
As for Fairytales and Folktales. They weren’t actually created when the Brothers Grimm wrote them down. They have been passed down for hundreds of years through the oral tradition. If you ever actually read a fairytale, it’s a pretty bare bones story. I think that the storyteller would probably embellish them in his or her own way during the storytelling. That’s actually one of the reasons they are perfect for retellings, because there is so much room to develop characters, or change things slightly or whatever. But I do think that they are supposed to take place even farther in the past than when they were written down in the 1800s. I actually pictured The Goose Girl taking place more in a medieval setting that the 1800s.
I’m glad you gave it a try, though.
Awww, I love Goose Girl too, but for every book its reader and every reader his/her book 🙂
Awww… sorry you didn’t connect with this one. It’s one of my favourite books! I actually quite like the old historical kingdom settings in books.
Have you read any of Shannon Hale’s other books? Her Austenland book is hilarious.
This is very interesting. It’s a good thing to learn to pinpoint what works or not for us as readers, because in the long term we’ll enjoy the books we choose for ourselves so much more. It’s weird though to define the thing that didn’t work as a feeling, but I can absolutely relate to that, because sometimes there wasn’t anything particularly wrong with a book, but the vibe it gave you just didn’t work. And that is absolutely personal. But don’t you just treasure those moments of inspiration when you can finally determine what didn’t work?
It’s funny, that only certain time periods work for you though. That will certainly make it hard to enjoy historical fiction.
I’ve been wanting to read this one for a long time and I think it is so cool that you guys read it together. I understand that FEELING you’re talking about and not quite being able to put a finger on it – I get it sometimes too. And I sometimes have that feeling about a book that a friends LOVED, and I can often see why a friend of mine didn’t love a book that I did. You guys are hilarious and I think it is fantastic that you read together so often. (: I hope to get to this one soon – I recently added both the audio and ebook to my library wishlist and find it funny that you guys were probably reading the book AS I was doing this!