The Girls Are Pretty Crocodiles by Angela Readman

The Girls Are Pretty Crocodiles by Angela Readman

Bold, beautiful and spiky, Angela Readman's stories are both magical and real. Following her acclaimed debut Don't Try This at Home, in this new collection, she approaches the fairy tale with a scalpel. The Girls are Pretty Crocodiles reads like a love letter to girlhood and a ransom note to all the fairy tales we have been told. In her prize-winning work 'The Story Never Told', an illiterate woman sells fairy tales for a book she knows will never have her name on the cover. In 'What's Inside a Girl', a class takes lessons on dating invisible girls.

Dark, funny and surreal, these stories explore, challenge and ultimately transform the traditional fairy tale narrative. Women learn to be origami, climb into swan skins, feed wolves, flip burgers and snog kelpies. In dazzling prose that remains matter-of-fact, these tales take to task the happy endings we have been sold.

Otherworldly, yet down to earth, The Girls are Pretty Crocodiles discovers the hidden voice in the stories we know and reveals the magic of working-class lives. These stories have teeth.

Angela Readman's stories have a compelling intimacy and gorgeous imagery, and are often deeply moving - highly recommended reading. Alison Moore, author of Booker-shortlisted The Lighthouse

Angela Readman's subtly dark stories rip the covers from the everyday. She turns its innocents and introverts inside-out before us, meanwhile exposing secret rituals and Chinese-whispery legends from all our suffocating and self-contained neighbourhoods. Throughout this new collection, the other Angela - Carter - hangs on Readman's shoulder as she creates an eerie new folklore for fraught times. These are the stories we always knew existed but were never brave enough to tell, even to ourselves. Ashley Stokes, author of Gigantic, Unsung Stories, 2021

A poetic recontextualising of fairy tales and folklore, The Girls Are Pretty Crocodiles manages to be both playful and dangerous, often in the same sentence. Readman deserves to be mentioned in the same breath as Kirsty Logan and Marina Warner, as one of the natural successors to Angela Carter. Dan Coxon, author of Only The Broken Remain and editor of This Dreaming Isle

Angela Readman's stories have appeared in a number of anthologies and magazines, winning awards such as the Inskpill Magazine Short Story Competition and the National Flash Fiction Competition. In 2012 she was shortlisted for the Costa Short Story Award for Don't Try This at Home - an award she would go on to win in 2013 with the story The Keeper of the Jackalopes. In 2015, Readman won the Saboteur Awards Best Short Story Collection and the 2015 Rubery Book Award (Short Fiction Winner) for Don't Try this at Home. Readman is also a published poet.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9781912436873
ISBN 10	1912436876
Title	The Girls Are Pretty Crocodiles
Author	Angela Readman
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Paperback
Publisher	Valley Press
Year published	2022-04-07
Number of pages	160
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.