A Dark enchanting tale that will sweep you off your feet. The history that surround this just fall in to place. I don know how much is actually true about the brother Grimm's and the Wild`s, but it is wonderfully told. This will be one of the few love stories that I enjoy reading. ( )

I enjoyed this. Basically, the book is about the romance between Wilhelm Grimm (yes, the fairy tale one) and Henriette Dorotea "Dortchen" Wild who became his wife. Not much is known about her except that she was the daughter of an apothecary who was their neighbour in Cassel during the Napoleonic Wars.

Dortchen was the "wild" daughter of the family - and her tyrannical father does his best to break her spirit, disapproving of any connection with the poverty-stricken Grimm family. However, Dortchen and her sisters get round his rules (not without consequences) and Dortchen is one of Grimm's storytellers, contributing several stories to the book of fairy tales. Starting out fairly light-hearted, as Dortchen's sisters get married and move out, the story gets darker in tone culminating in Herr Wild sexually abusing his daughter after his son is conscripted into the Russian invasion and he dismisses the family servant who is protecting Dortchen from his attentions.

Eventually, her brother returns (the only young man from Cassel to do so), and Dortchen's life becomes easier. Then her parents die, and Dortchen becomes the foster mother to her deceased sister's children. Slowly she learns to trust men again and the book ends with her agreeing to marry Wilhelm Grimm.

Very much fictionalised, the sexual abuse is inferred from reading the original version of the story of 'All-Fur'. The more modern tellings tend to be based on a later version, which Grimm made more palatable. It's an instructive read; the hardships endured by the two middle-class families during and after the Napoleonic Wars were not uncommon even up to fairly recent times.

Recommended.

So well written. ( )

We're all at least nominally familiar with The Brothers Grimm and their fairy and folk tales, but who were Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm, and how did they amass such a collection of stories? Author Kate Forsyth, who holds a doctorate in the marvelous-sounding field of "fairy-tale retellings," brings these two legendary folk heroes to life through the eyes of their real-life contemporary neighbor, young Dortchen Wild.

Right off the bat I should mention that Forsyth's characters are regrettably two-dimensional throughout most of the book. However, I was able more or less to look past this, being swept up in the world of Cassel in the early 1800s during the Napoleonic Wars. If even only partially true, this is a pretty magical, and yet meticulously researched, behind-the-scenes story surrounding icons of Western literature. ( )

Well I expected a fairy tale, but got a very different tale from this book. The story is about a young girl, who lives next door to the Grimm family. The story is set during the Napoleon wars and is at time shows the very dark side of human nature. Once I got into the story, I found myself wanting to find out what happens to the characters. ( )