This collection of short stories from 1979 (I have been reading the 1993 edition) is certainly a classic if you like feminism and fairy tales. It includes seven stories that reimagine classic fairy tales (two of them being versions of "Little Red Riding Hood") and changes them into something more. It is not a simple change of roles so the women are cast as the active players in their own stories. Instead they are allowed to be everything. They can be monsters and still remain heroes, they can be damsels who need to be saved, they can be evil and die at the hands of society.
My favorite story might be "The Tiger's Bride," a version of "The Beauty and the Beast," as it starts with the remarkable sentence "My father lost me to The Beast at cards." It then follows the heroine in her way through captivity, reflecting on her life before, in which she is utterly dependent on her father.
"That clockwork girl who powdered my cheeks for me; had I not been allotted only the same kind of imitative life among men that the doll-maker had given her?"
Her reflection on her own agency is typical for the book that also offers well known stories with new twists - or maybe twisted - in beautiful lyrical language.
This book might not be for everyone; the language is at times overly complicated and quaint, the stories are full of sexual and violent imagery and the feminist ideas seem rather white and (hopefully) dated. Still, if you are interested in different versions of fairy tales this seems like a classic you rather not want to skip.
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