The Trouble with Fairy Tales - by Plum Johnson (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

The long-awaited second memoir from Plum Johnson, bestselling author of They Left Us Everything.

The Trouble with Fairy Tales is a wise and insightful reflection on the relationships that sprawl across a lifetime. In it, Plum explores how we often sacrifice our independence and identity in our love lives, falling for the fairytale notion of "happily ever after", and how it can take years, and many detours, to fulfil the most important relationship--the one with ourselves.

Ripe with the humorous anecdotes, charming insights, and aching revelations so characteristic of Plum's style, the book is our window onto her reinvention of self as she moves through the various roles that many women inhabit: from compliant child to loving mother, rebel wife, artist, and successful writer.

Plum's writing urges her readers to turn inward to reach a deeper understanding of their own tangled relationships. Funny and resonant, The Trouble with Fairy Tales is the kind of striking personal narrative that will stir and inspire women of all ages.

Review Quotes

"Reading The Trouble with Fairy Tales is like a delightful conversation with a witty, wise, wry friend who splits open those myths we grow up with, the ones that both sustain us and entrap us. Plum Johnson has done it again."
─Jeannette Walls, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Glass Castle and Hang the Moon

"A fascinating cautionary tale told with verve and wit, The Trouble with Fairy Tales explores the complexity of our individual realities and the hollowness at the heart of the very things we are taught to value and desire."
─Mary Lawson, internationally bestselling author of Crow Lake and A Town Called Solace

"Prince Charming, Bluebeard, the Pied Piper and more─Plum Johnson brings to vivid, infuriating, seductive life the whole repertoire of mythic men around whom women were expected to centre their lives. Turning every stereotype inside out and upside down, she is funny, thought-provoking and devastatingly honest. . . . A tonic for readers of every age."
─Katherine Ashenburg, award-winning author of Margaret's New Look and The Mourner's Dance

"Plum Johnson . . . is a writer who has no need of a Rumpelstiltskin figure to help her weave the complexities and complications of decades of lived experience-relationships both mistaken and enduring, work, art, homes, friendships, family-into story gold: a generous and often hilarious account of a woman's life eagerly and creatively lived."
─Kathy Page, award-winning author of Dear Evelyn and In This Faulty Machine

"Plum Johnson is a natural storyteller, and what a tale she has to tell. Not a fairy tale but real life adventure, brimming with spirit, and full of the bruises, scrapes and glories that come from living courageously. What a treat to be along on this exciting ride and to watch our heroine blossom into seeing herself as the kickass queen she clearly has been all along."
─Gill Deacon, bestselling author, journalist and podcaster

"Plum Johnson upends every cliché about growing old in this prequel/sequel to her award-winning memoir, They Left Us Everything. This 'coming of age' story grabs you and shakes you up, catching you off guard as Plum takes the art of reinvention to new heights. . . . Forget Aesop, Brothers' Grimm, or TV's Golden Girls Plum's real-life cast is pure platinum."
─Roxana Spicer, bestselling author of The Traitor's Daughter

"This memoir of love reminds us that fairy tales course with darkness. Plum Johnson describes with great clarity of prose and heart how the men she's loved didn't exist except in her own longing. And we long with her. Johnson sent me running back to my own well-worn book of fairy tales and the archetypes we've been locked into since we were little girls. You'll find yourself in this brave and thoughtful book, if you dare to look into the mirror."
─Cathrin Bradbury, author of This Way Up

About the Author

PLUM JOHNSON is an author and artist living in Toronto. Her 2014 memoir, They Left Us Everything, won the RBC Taylor Prize and was a #1 national bestseller.