Customer Reviews

Fairy Tales provides healing and humor for gay men - By: , 16 Apr 1998
In this book, Peter Cashorali takes familiar folk tales & recasts them with gay men & boysin the starring roles: finally, a world where it's the gay man who finds love or fulfills his dream or solves the problem.

As I read these stories, I felt emotional blocks inside me falling into place, having been suspended for decades; as a child, I had read the original versions of these stories, but I could not identify with the heterosexual protagonists & so felt a certain distance from the stories. Those stories weren't about me.

But now, I have this wonderful set of tales, filled with humor, wisdom & compassion. The archetypes are there for me too, now--I can my heart resonating when the prince loves a boy, when the outcast gay man ends up succeeding. I believe that every gay man will benefit from reading these stories, to repair his childhood tapestry that included no gay figures.

The stories work well when read aloud, too. The sources of the tales are given, so that you can trace them. The illustrations are charming & delicate.

I would say that sometimes the humor of the texts is a little cheesy--for instance, getting a laugh by introducing some anachronistic detail like a car--but not enough to really detract from the effect. It's also worth noting that a quite wide spectrum of gay life is represented here, & Mr. Cashorali is brave about playing with stereotypes, subverting them & showing the nuggets of truth inside them.

(I have to confess--I have not read a couple of the stories yet, though I've had the book for a year. I couldn't stand to reach the end, so I have saved two of the stories... I also bought the sequel to this book, which is equally good.)

This book, & its sequel, are the only books I would unhesitatingly recommend to every gay man.