Our Fairy-Tale Book Club Pick for June 2022 is:
Thorn
by
Intisar Khanani
Join us in reading this retelling of the fairy tale “The Goose Girl.” In June, Mary and Elizabeth will each share a review of this novel. Then, they will discuss the book and share their discussion here. You can join the discussion as you read along by joining our Discord community or our Facebook group!
Keep reading for more information about this book and the fairy-tale which inspires it.
Thorn was first published independently in 2012, but then was picked up by HarperCollins, edited with that publisher, and re-published as a HarperTeen novel in 2020. While it is not explicitly labeled as such, the blurb for Thorn alone makes it pretty clearly a retelling of the Grimm-collected fairy tale “The Goose Girl” (“Die Gänsemagd”, Grimm 89). This German fairy tale at core is the story of a princess sent far away to marry a prince whom she has never met, whose place is stolen en route to her betrothed, and who is forced to become a lowly goose girl in her betrothed’s kingdom whilst he marries her usurper. Ultimately, the woman who stole her place is discovered to be a fraud and given a punishment of her own design.
You can find the full text for “The Goose Girl” here (D. L. Ashliman’s revision of Margaret Hunt’s 1884 English translation).
Die Gänsemagd Illustration by Heinrich Vogeler, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons