The Girl with No Hands and Other Tales

Award-winning Angela Slatter started retelling some of the sixteen fairy stories that make up her collection The Girl with No Hands and Other Tales as part of her Master’s thesis project. Published in 2010, the stories are familiar narratives mainly from European tradition that have been reworked into surprising, dark, and no longer child-friendly versions. Slatter fills her adaptations with more carnage, erotica, psychological realism, and twist endings, adding feelings of danger and warning to tales that began as entertainment for adults. One of Slatter’s goals was to give agency and voice to the women whose personalities and individuality are often missing from the original incarnations of the stories. Because of this, some readers complain about the strident tone, or about male characters being flattened into evil caricatures of abuse and neglect.

The collection, which also includes a few original stories, ends with an afterword in which Slatter explains the genesis of each story, explaining where and why she deviated from her source material. Here is a brief description of each story in the collection:

The sexually explicit “Bluebeard” retells the story of the murderous groom from the perspective of Lily, whose mother is a high-class prostitute in thrall to wealthy banker Davide. Lily finds the requisite locked room hiding a gruesome secret, but in this case, it is not clear who is responsible for all the murders—Davide or his horrific mother­­­­—nor are there hearty brothers nearby to save the day.



In “The Living Book,” the female narrator is literally a book that is alive. Although she is amazing—her skin flashes words for people to read—only her male creator is praised for her existence.

“The Jacaranda Wife” transports the Celtic mythology of Selkies into Australia. In the 1840s, James Willoughby finds a mute, white-skinned, violet-eyed woman under his jacaranda tree. The indigenous farmworkers warn him against it, but he marries her anyway. Soon, he becomes jealous of how much his wife loves jacaranda trees, and could turn back into one, so he spends more and more resources cutting all the jacaranda trees cut down, especially the one that refuses to die.

In Slatter’s version, Red Riding Hood is a werewolf herself. In “Red Skein,” Mathilde is more than capable of standing up to the wolf—both the one that haunts the forest and the one inside herself. However, in this take, Mathilde can’t resist the mix of sexuality and danger, eventually offering herself to the wolf in a dark sex scene.



“The Chrysanthemum Bride” is a reworking of a story from ancient China. A poor peasant girl obsessed with her own beauty is thrilled to become one of the emperor’s brides. However, her vanity causes her destruction, as she is tricked in a horrific way.

In “Frozen,” it is clear that not every woman should become a mother, as a woman incapable of maternal love leaves her child to freeze to death.

The wistfully sad story “The Hummingbird Heart” is about coping with a child’s death. Here, desperate parents place a small bird into the chest of their daughter. The magic works for a time, and the girl lives again briefly, but soon she turns into a bird that flies away.



“Words” is about a female writer defying the norms of the community in which she lives.

Hans Christian Andersen’s feeble and weak beggar is updated into a grown woman in “The Little Match Girl.” In Slatter’s version, she chooses what happens to her rather than just being a victim.

In “The Juniper Tree,” the evil stepmother and neglectful father that are common to many fairy tales are explored as cruel monsters.



Slatter returns to the Selkie figure in “Skin,” which imagines the mythological creature as a seal-woman out for revenge and redemption.

The Russian fairy tale monster Baba Yaga is reimagined in “The Bone Mother,” where instead of a tricky and malevolent witch, she turns out to be a warm-hearted and loving herbalist. The traditional hero Vasilisa is revealed as her granddaughter.

“The Dead Ones Don’t Hurt You” is an original work, a zombie romance written in a lighter tone than the rest of the stories. Sick of terrible and abusive men, Melanie orders an EZ-Boy, a docile and obedient Zombie Boyfriend named Billy. Nevertheless, his demeanor soon turns Melanie into an abuser herself.



The story “Light as Mist, Heavy as Hope” takes on Rumpelstiltskin. Alice’s molester father brags about her ability to turn straw to gold. When a king marries Alice and demands she performs this impossible task or be strangled, she makes a deal with a magical being. However, when this helper demands her child in return, Alice has to desecrate her mother’s grave to escape.

“Dresses, Three,” depicts an encounter between a lonely seamstress and her small son, a beautiful rich woman who needs clothing, and a repulsive relative who lusts after her.

The collection’s title story, “The Girl With No Hands,” is particularly gory. A greedy miller agrees to give the Devil whatever happens to be in his backyard in exchange for wealth. It turns out that what was in his backyard was his daughter Madchen. When Madchen’s mother tries to stop the Devil from taking the girl, the miller chops off Madchen’s hands at the Devil’s behest. Madchen flees, but the Devil is always close behind.