Holly Black's The Darkest Part of the Forest: Coming of Age in Dialogue with Fairy Tales

This essay examines how the coming-of-age process in Holly Black's The Darkest Part of the Forest correlates with the characters' interactions in the forest, both literal and metaphorical. Farris argues that by layering the novel first with the fairytale story of the evil Alderking and the cursed prince and then moving outward to the story of Ben and Hazel and their own abuse, Black presents readers with a story about the ways in which our lives are shaped by the tales that we read and those that we choose to tell. Accordingly, Farris contextualizes Black's novel within the field of other feminist fairy-tale writers who have sought to subvert traditional fairy-tale tropes in favor of more inclusive and equitable worlds.