Lost Children by Francesca Lia Block Review (Audiobook, 2021)
content warning: blood, animal death, animal cruelty, child endangerment, child abuse, antisemitism, violence against women, violence against children
Lost Children is an Audible Originals audiobook of adult fairy tales by Francesca Lia Block. The collection features six original stories inspired by various fairy tales and fairy tale tropes.
This is not my favorite book. I think Block is a talented writer, but I do not like how she approached the material. Specifically, I think she played recklessly with content and metaphor in most of the collection for shock value. I’m used to extreme media; this did not sit well with me.
The best story in the collection is her version of the Erlking. A new college professor is teaching fairy tales, taking over for one of the most beloved and respected professors at the school. Her son becomes obsessed with the previous professor’s novel, and her students constantly bring up him, his research, and his teaching methods. This is a great, tense story playing on the Erlking figure and similar evil forces exerting their influence from the shadows tales. It reminds me of Ira Levin’s horror novels in the best way possible.
The opening story is good, too. A woman is grieving the loss of her beloved dog. She becomes convinced that his spirit is following her through other animals, bringing her in contact with a charming woman who claims she can bring the dog back. The story has a great tone and really takes the fairy tale form into a more modern direction. It’s the most unpredictable story. This dips into magic and the suggestion of various mythological creatures before revealing the secrets behind the women meeting in the pool.
I’m also going to give a lot of credit to Lauren Singerman’s narration. She makes each narrator feel distinct in the stories, and it’s always clear within a story who is speaking. Fairy tales are a storyteller’s medium and Singerman brings out the best in this collection.
The bad in Lost Children is rough. Two stories use the Holocaust as metaphor and substance. I’m not down for a period Hansel & Gretel obsessed with the oven scene or a protagonist befriending a filmmaker named Leni who serves a man who can “split the earth in two” and later appears in the story. One of these stories uses it as a twist ending; the other is incredibly predictable and not as clever for its historical connections as it thinks it is.
Two other stories deal with child abuse. The final story is about child trafficking, only it’s a fairy tale because of trolls. I barely remember the second story in the collection, but the dark secret being explored is a history of child abuse told in graphic detail. There’s a long history of violence against children in fairy tales, but the vast majority of these stories feel safer than this. These two are on the level of “How the Children Played at Slaughtering” or perhaps stories cut from Martin McDonagh’s The Pillowman for going too far.
This is not to say that no fiction should ever contend with these topics. These topics take a lot of nuance, care, and sensitivity to do in a way that doesn’t feel exploitative. I only finished listening to this book because I could not believe what I was hearing. A big part of this is the fairy tale conceit, as these feel more like splatterpunk stories with hints of The Brothers Grimm than an actual attempt at writing contemporary fairy tales. Context matters and these stories do not match the identity they claim to have.
Lost Children feels like the Audible editors approached a talented writer and let her do whatever she wanted without editorial oversight. Adult fairy tales do not have to be extreme shock texts. Seemingly dangerous genres—splatterpunk, slasher, exploitation, revenge, etc.—take a lot of planning, skill, and rounds of discussion and editing to really work well and this collection feels poorly planned and executed.