Up till now, fans of Eugie Foster’s clever, crystalline fairy tales, drawn from Chinese and Japanese mythology, had to seek out single instances of her stories in various magazines and anthologies. However, with the March publication of Returning My Sister’s Face: And Other Far Eastern Tales of Whimsy and Malice, old aficionados can relish 12 of her tales all in one place…all the more convenient to enthusiastically press upon fellow fantasy lovers. Besides the stories themselves, there is also the added bonus of Foster’s comments after each tale, about the folklore and life experiences informing each story.

“Daughter of Bótù,” the longest and most cunningly constructed of the collected stories, plunges readers into the autobiography of an ambitious, restless rabbit, An-ying. Her prayers (to the Immortal Rabbit, of course!) to preserve her warren lead to her entire family’s transformation into human beings, their rabbit fur having become beautiful robes. An-ying courts and marries a nobleman, but does not live happily ever after. Her husband’s stepmother sows discord between An-ying and her husband, bringing An-ying and her newborn son to heart-wrenching extremity. Foster characterizes An-ying with sensuously vivid descriptions of her life in rabbit form, giving readers a sample of her joyous four-footed life, which contrasts sharply with her anxious, curtailed movements as she tries to figure out human society. We see An-ying turn her back on her family and her essential self in favor of infatuation with her husband-to-be, and we know that no good can come from such an irrepressible spirit denying herself. Though unhappy in one sense, “Daughter of Bótù” does end auspiciously. Through her trials, An-ying learns the age-old lesson to accept herself. It is to the credit of Foster’s rich prose full of rabbity sensations and her wise wielding of fairy-tale tropes that An-ying’s journey appears fresh, new, and satisfying. As in all her stories of shape-changing animals, Foster makes her nonhuman animals both realistically rabbity (or tanuki-like or foxy), but also identifiably and endearingly human.

In “The Tiger Fortune Princess,” Foster draws on Chinese lore around pregnancy, astrology, and good fortune to reinterpret Snow White/Sleeping Beauty stories. Sweet, kind, and beautiful, Wen-Xiu grows up under the burden of a fortune describing how she must ride the dragon’s tail in order to survive and to be devoured by a monster. Her mother works assiduously with her ancestral spirits and soothsayers to protect her daughter, but, when Wen-Xiu turns 18, she must let things happen how they will—in unexpected ways, with unexpected consequences. This story illustrates Foster’s facility in depicting Chinese mythology with love rather than exoticism and her originality in subverting the dire expectations of soothsayers (and readers) with happy twists.

“A Thread of Silk” follows archer Mae, who wishes to avenge a disastrous attack on her family’s residence. With the help of the God of War, she gains strength and invulnerability so that she can defeat her enemy, Masakado. Then the Goddess of Love pops up, complicating Mae’s designs. In one of Foster’s favorite plot developments, Mae and Masakado fall in love, developing a contentious relationship. Usually I’m not impressed with the truism that “love is war,” but Foster’s treatment of their similarities brings conflict, ambivalence, and excitement to stories that could easily be straightforward triumph or tragedy. The modern-day vignettes bracketing this ancient-history fairy tale add another layer of sweet subtlety to the melodrama.

“The Snow Woman’s Daughter” follows Sekka, whose mother, a beautiful but literally cold snow spirit, left Sekka and her human father when Sekka was young. Forever saddened by her mother’s absence in her life, Sekka calls her mother back the night before her own wedding to figure out if her mother ever loved her father and her. Though the figure of the snow woman, or yuki-onna, usually appears as a distant, cruel figure in Japanese lore, Foster revises this by giving us understandable reasons for her seemingly frigid behavior. Foster treats the snow woman again in “Honor Is a Game Mortals Play” with more complexity, but I wouldn’t say “Honor” is better, only different. I like the nonstop action of “Honor,” and I like the insight in “The Snow Woman’s Daughter.”

“The Tanuki-Kettle” brings Foster’s mischievous sense of humor to the fore in a tale about a lowly tea girl, Hisa; a boisterous nobleman’s son, Akio; and the shape-changing tanuki, or Japanese raccoon dog. Known for its trickster-like nature, the tanuki turns into a kettle to escape a hunting party. Though the tanuki seems playful and meddlesome, Hisa, like all truly worthy fairy-tale characters, acts respectfully and kindly towards him, and he repays her by wreaking ultimately beneficial havoc in her and Akio’s life. The energetic pacing neatly reflects the bouncy nature of the raccoon dog, bringing a high note of playfulness to a deeply intense and melodramatic collection. Condensed, balanced, and perfectly polished in every word, “The Tanuki-Kettle” is my favorite of the book.

I discussed “Honor is a Game Mortals Play” in my review of the anthology Heroes in Training—where it was originally published—and I really liked it.

“The Raven’s Brocade” takes up the theme, present in many fairy-tale traditions, of a human man who falls in love with a supernatural woman who sheds her animal skin to become human. In this case, poor tailor Binbou marries Karasu, whose glossy hair is as bright as black feathers. She works secretly to earn money, prohibiting Binbou from peeking, but, of course, his curiosity gets the better of him. It’s a short, sad story, blessedly free of the coercive skin-stealing in many similar versions of the trope. Foster flourishes best in a short, compact format where her descriptions achieve the powerful density of poetry.

“Shim Chung the Lotus Queen” is a gentle, low-key amplification of a Korean folktale in which Shim Chung makes great sacrifices so that her blind father’s sight might be restored. I like the feminism that Foster neatly braids into old tales; instead of making Shim Chung passive, selfless, and boring, Foster shows her nervousness, her love for her father, and her hope that her sacrifice (to the fearsome-sounding Dragon King!) could be a miracle in disguise. Again Foster makes convincing characters out of fairy-tale role models.

In “The Tears of My Mother, the Shell of My Father,” Hiroki sets out to pacify his mother’s ghost and to avenge his father’s death by demon, or oni. His faithful cat, Hime, accompanies him, rising to the occasion to become a brave and loyal companion, rather than just a pet. Hiroki’s relationship with Hime, central to the story, highlights one of Foster’s underplayed strengths. She knows her fairy tales well, casting Hime in the familiar role of benevolent and secretly magical animal helper. At the same time, she combines her folkloric knowledge of animals with a keen observation of actual capricious, independent, and endearing cats. Hiroki and Hime are just as charming together as Hisa and the tanuki-kettle.

I covered “Year of the Fox” in my review of anthology So Fey: Queer Fairy Fiction, where it stood out as one of the volume’s best.

“The Archer of the Sun and the Lady of the Moon” reimagines the Chinese myth about the woman in the moon, Chang’er, who, though in love with the man in the sun, Hou Yi, can only see him once a year. In Foster’s version, Hou Yi and Chang’er fall in love when they are celestial immortals, but, when punishment brings them back into the mortal world, Chang’er watches her husband corrupted by his bitterness over aging. He schemes to become immortal once more, but she intervenes. Foster covers huge swathes of time in scant pages as she tries to encompass both the power of Chang’er and Hou Yi’s tragic love and the changes wrought on them by mortality. Known for making mythic characters sympathetic and human (or at least humanlike) personages, Foster falters here, as the speed with which the story moves leaves her little time to provide her trademark psychological grace notes. This disjointed story is the weakest here.

Foster closes with “Returning My Sister’s Face,” about a young man, charged by his sister Oiwa’s ghost to avenge her death at the hands of her husband, Iyemon. Much like “Daughter of Bótù,” “Returning My Sister’s Face” features an unhappy marriage worsened by an ambitious interloper, in this case, Lady Ami, who wishes to be Iyemon’s wife. With the help of his sister’s yurei, or angry ghost, our protagonist plays his part in bringing nasty vengeance upon Iyemon and Ami. As is usual with the great, classical tragedies, the truth comes out, many die, and no one’s really satisfied. The riveting, but depressing, story ends this collection with a taste more of malice than whimsy. A better subtitle for this stunning debut collection would be “Tales of Romance, Vengeance, and Fate.” Whatever the title, I wholeheartedly recommend this collection of tender and well-written stories.

[Reviewer's note: Though Eugie Foster is the editor of The Fix, she put me under no pressure to review her first collection of short stories. When I received the alert that Norilana was coming out with Returning My Sister's Face: And Other Far Eastern Tales of Whimsy and Malice, I eagerly volunteered.]

Publisher: Norilana Books (March 2009)
Pages: 212
Hardcover price: $23.95 [£16.00]
Hardcover ISBN: 1607620103
Trade paperback price: $11.95 [£9.00] (available July, 2009)
Trade paperback ISBN: 1607620111