The world inhabited by Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm was one of verdant forests, folktales and a myriad of tiny kingdoms.  It was the world of the stories that they collected for posterity and used to campaign for a unified Germany.  But by 1863 Jacob is the only surviving brother and a sick old man, on one final journey to the place of his birth with his niece and the mysterious manservant Kummel.  Interwoven with this are flashbacks to Jacob’s own life – his parents, sickly brother Wilhelm and the woman they both loved, story collecting and getting published and becoming famous.  And also in here is a fairytale of a son leaving home to have adventures and then face the worst thing of all.  The three stories twine with each other like briars around Sleeping Beauty’s Castle and converge, telling Grimm’s tale and those of the people whose lives have touched his – surely very akin to a fairytale itself.  It is his niece’s dearest wish to unlock his secrets and find out about her family before it is too late, but does the storyteller want to tell the world his own tale?

If anybody has ever wondered how relevant the tales told in Grimm’s Fairytales are to real life then look no further; Haydn Middleton shows here how those stories contain the components of all our relationships and our place on earth which is why they have such strong appeal.  Middleton manages an admirable economy of words to tell his three-stranded story and tells it in a way akin to a fairytale itself – full of twisted relationships, dark yearnings, quests, adventures and tests.  It is a skillfully written treat and is sure to appeal to all those who have ever wondered about the creators of Grimm’s Fairytales and the world that engendered these timeless stories.