The Ogre's Wife
The Ogre's Wife: Fairy Tales for Grownups is a collection of fantasy short stories by American writer Richard Parks. It was first published in trade paperback by Obscura Press in August 2002. A Kindle edition was issued in 2011, and a new trade paperback edition in September 2020. The collection was nominated for the 2003 World Fantasy Award for Best Collection; its title story won the "SF Age" Reader's Poll for short story in 1995. Summary. An "absolute treasure of a collection," the book collects fifteen novelettes and short stories by the author, one  original to the collection, together with an introduction by Parke Godwin. It includes three of his "Eli Mothersbaugh" stories, "Wrecks," "The God of Children," and "A Respectful Silence." The Kindle edition also includes the author's notes on the stories in an appendix. Reception. Parke Godwin called the book "one of the best SF/fantasy collections I've read in years" and wrote of Parks that "[l]ike any fine writer [he] doesn't label easily, which makes him hell for lazy-minded pigeonholers, but his themes are consistent and clear. He uses fantasy to underscore reality: the nature of our  humanity and the inescapability of what we are, the choices we make and the price we pay for each, right or wrong. ... [H]e can step imperceptibly from deadpan funny to deeply affecting truth with an utterly transparent style that has the reader racing down the page [and] has the rare ability to say profound things simply." Charles de Lint in "The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction" wrote "Like the best storytellers, [Parks] goes where the tale takes him, and then proceeds to write that story as truthfully as possible." Terry McGarry in the webzine "Strange Horizons" noted that "[d]iscovering Richard  Parks's fiction is like discovering a wise Zen master pumping gas at a service station or a weathered swami slinging burgers at your favorite corner diner: transcendence in the midst of the ordinary, right where it ought to be." Don D'Ammassa writes "[u]ntil I read this collection, I hadn't realized how many stories I had already read by Richard Parks, most of which I quite thoroughly enjoyed." He feels "[y]ou won't be wasting your time" on the book; "Parks' take on fantasy is sufficiently different to be worth noting." He describes the settings as "varied, including traditional  fantasy worlds and contemporary locations," and the stories as "predominantly serious but often [with] humorous undertones. 'The God of Children' and 'A Place to Begin' were my two personal favorites." In his "Locus" review, Nick Gevers praised the author as "a quiet, unpretentious storyteller whose work shrewdly inverts expectations, delivers wittily unpredictable homilies, and extracts with painful accuracy the dark experience and twisted emotion covertly underlying familiar, seemingly pellucid, folktale surfaces." Paul Di Filippo in "Asimov's Science Fiction" wrote "[d]eceptively simple, earnest, and tragicomic, Parks's tales convey deep truths beneath narratives that tumble along like limpid streams. Whether  exploring Oriental mythologies, or creating Dunsanyian wonderlands, Parks delivers stories that are rooted very tangibly in specific times and places, yet which are underpinned by eternal issues." Paul Witcover in "Realms of Fantasy" noted that "Parks's characters may win their heart's desire, but their happiness is shaded by the mature wisdom that comes with sacrifice and loss."