Magic for Unlucky Girls by A.A. Balaskovits (review)

Winner of the 2015 Santa Fe Writer’s Project Literary Award, A.A. Balaskovit’s Magic for Unlucky Girls is more than just a collection of fairy-tale reimaginings. Balaskovit’s stories are an unflinching discussion on gender norms and feminist ideals in a world of stories that has traditionally lent the tone for common narrative tropes, particularly in fairy tales and their retellings. Each of the reimaginings keeps little of the traditional story as we know it—instead Balaskovit’s masterful world-building picks apart each narrative and strings its DNA into a familiar, but altogether new creation.

Magic for Unlucky Girls features fourteen stories, thirteen of which have been published previously in a variety of literary magazines. It opens with “Put Back Together Again,” which is the most unlike other stories in the collection, as it focuses on a woman in a dying city that sees the rise of a stoic superhero. This story contrasted with the rest of the collection: the language felt stifled in comparison with the other stories, as if written by someone entirely different than Balaskovits. The exploration of the superhero was thought-provoking, suggesting questions that both classic and modern superhero stories have repeatedly asked: who gets saved and who does not? Throughout the story (despite people being saved), there is never a sense that the city is getting better; one man has not brought about enough change to end neither the earthquakes nor the crime. But despite the incongruous feel with the rest of the stories, “Put Back Together Again” is still enjoyable, and contains important themes such as the isolation of being a hero and the hazards of playing God as a hero.

There are two versions of “Little Red Riding Hood” in Balaskovit’s collection. The first is “Three Times Red,” in which we first see Red nursing from the she-wolf, then defecated from the belly of the wolf; finally, Red is explored through an insightful discussion of the endings of “Little Red Riding Hood.” The second version, “Beasts,” follows Red as she becomes enamored with the wolf, trying to change him into a domesticated being and going so far as to give him the rotting corpse of her grandmother. The story speaks to a larger issue of unbalanced relationships between men and women, which are inevitably doomed by society’s ideals of a woman calming a wild man. Both are jarring and unforgiving, with macabre images that stay with us long after we have finished reading. From “Three Times Red,” one of the lines that stuck with me most was after Red had been inside the belly of the wolf:

“Grannie, you’re melting into the earth. Your old skin is falling off, your bones are becoming water and seeping into the mud. Will I too go quietly into the earth, as if I had never walked on its surface?”

(69)

The imagery simultaneously captives and disturbs, prodding the reader to consider her own mortality and legacy in the world.

Among my favorite stories was a “Rapunzel” retelling, “Let Down Your Long Hair and Then Yourself,” in which Rapunzel marries the prince who becomes so enamored with her beauty and her hair that he begins to kill citizens at random if he deems their looks flawed in some way. As the story progresses and Rapunzel is forced to blind her husband to save the lives of those around them, she becomes more masculine, shaving and plucking all of her hair. As she rids herself of the feminine qualities that awarded her the corrupting beauty, she gains power. Balaskovit’s exploration of society’s attitude of feminine beauty and a lack of power is exquisite here. Rapunzel considers her daughter, who is not as pretty as she is, “My crooked-nose daughter watched me present myself. She has eyes like coins, and whatever she sees, she counts and discards, only keeping the important lessons in her head” (84).

Magic for Unlucky Girls is a collection suited...