We are overly accustomed to seeing women set against one another. Snow White liked her stepmother. Donoghue's women spin, are spinsters, spin tales. They play with words and expectations. They are friends, protectors, teachers and lovers to one another.
Men are sometimes absent, sometimes patronizing and sometimes abusive.
Fathers treat their daughters like dolls, abandon them in the woods or try to tear their clothes from their bodies. We are at an odd point in history, when a boy reading a book like this can be angry that there are no good male role models, but girls still get Grimm's fairy tales, with those endless passive beauties and wicked old women. Mothers come in for their share of blame, too. They make their daughters feel worthless or overprotect them with gold mesh gloves. But a child snatcher can be gentle and loving, and the witch in Hansel and Gretel is really just providing shelter to two children who've been left out in the forest to die.