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The Archive of Alternate Endings

ebook
1 of 1 copy available
1 of 1 copy available
Tracking the evolution of Hansel and Gretel at seventy-five-year intervals that correspond with earth's visits by Halley's Comet, The Archive of Alternate Endings explores how stories are disseminated and shared, edited and censored, voiced and left untold.

In 1456, Johannes Gutenberg's sister uses the tale as a surrogate for sharing a family secret only her brother believes. In 1835, The Brothers Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm revise the tale to bury a truth about Jacob even he can't come to face. In 1986, a folklore scholar and her brother come to find the record is wrong about the figurative witch in the woods, while in 2211, twin space probes aiming to find earth's sister planet disseminate the narrative in binary code. Breadcrumbing back in time from 2365 to 1378, siblings reimagine, reinvent, and recycle the narrative of Hansel and Gretel to articulate personal, regional, and ultimately cosmic experiences of tragedy.

Through a relay of speculative pieces that oscillate between eco-fiction and psychological horror, The Archive of Alternate Endings explores sibling love in the face of trauma over the course of a millennium, in the vein of Richard McGuire's Here and Lars von Trier's Melancholia.

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    • Publisher's Weekly

      Starred review from April 8, 2019
      Traversing time and space, the captivating latest from Drager (The Lost Daughter Collective) employs nonlinear structure and the cyclical, 75-year path of Halley’s Comet to link centuries of siblings and partners to the fairy tale “Hansel and Gretel.” In 1835, storytellers Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm collect versions of the narrative, and in one, Hansel is banished to the forest for being gay. Wilhelm recognizes the impact this discovery has on his brother, whom he suspects is homosexual. In 1986, a computer programmer constructing an early form of the internet contracts AIDS and visits the Witch, who dedicates herself to comforting ailing gay men in their final days. A lesbian sent to an asylum in 1910 has an affair with one of her nurses, watches for the comet, and crafts a series of illustrations of “Hansel and Gretel,” while in 1456, Johannes Gutenberg shows his sister the magic of his new printing press by duplicating copies of the fairy tale. Stretching as far back as the comet’s pass in 1378, which incorporates interactions between a real Hansel and his sister, and forward to 2365, when the comet passes an Earth void of life, Drager’s plot is ambitious and emotionally resonant, making for a clever, beguiling novel.

    • Kirkus

      March 1, 2019
      This experimental novel looks at life on Earth from the 14th through the 24th centuries during sightings of Halley's comet.In the early 19th century, Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm are collecting oral folktales to include in what will become their famous fairy tales. They are startled when they learn from a woman a variant of "Hansel and Gretel"; in the version she knows, the children are cast into the woods because Hansel "loves boys." In this tale, Jacob recognizes himself; the brothers separately wonder if it is their duty to transmit the story: "Jacob will think: What is at stake in sharing this story? And Wilhelm will think: What is at stake in leaving this story untold?" These are the questions that preoccupy Drager (The Lost Daughter Collective, 2017, etc.) in this conceptual, philosophical book. "Hansel and Gretel" becomes a motif drawn through the centuries, beginning with the actual siblings in 1378. The fairy tale symbolizes sibling relationships and difficult tenderness forged within them; it also represents storytelling itself and the power of stories to be a "safe harbor," especially for those who have been "hurt by coded forms of hate." In 1986, for example, a gay man dying of AIDS has given his illustrated copy of "Hansel and Gretel" to a lover, whose obituary he spots in the paper shortly after. The queer woman who did those illustrations is committed to an "Asylum for Women" in 1910. In 2211, two space probes beam out the fairy tale in binary code, still relaying their narrative despite the fact that no human is left alive to hear it.Drager's novel, though beautiful in its conception, is frequently dense and abstract, perhaps more interested in the nature of storytelling than in the telling of the story itself.

      COPYRIGHT(2019) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

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