About six months ago I sent Angela Carter’s Book of Fairy Tales to a friend to mark the completion of her first novel. I was privileged to have an early read of the manuscript, and was struck by its once-upon-a-time quality, and the elemental nature of the heroine’s quest. I also knew that Holly and I shared a love of fairy tales. Living on opposite sides of the earth, we decided to embark on a synchronised reading adventure, taking turns to nominate a tale then sharing the experience via email. There is little critique; how do you evaluate stories that are hundreds or even thousands of years old, that have been formed and shaped through fireside talk, bits added and taken away in the endless retelling, the product of a collective mind? Like those before us, we share our responses and understandings, connect the stories to other narratives (real and imagined), locate them in time and place. Despite the technology involved, the process has felt oddly intimate and immediate, like we are lying in our bunks listening to the story being read aloud then whispering together in the dark.

Which was just how I first garnered an understanding of what a story was, and could do. My father used to read Brothers Grimm to my sisters and me when we were small (I think he fancied himself king, sometimes widowed woodcutter). I had the bottom bunk in the front bedroom of the crumbling brick terrace my mother had left. There was a dusty sash window that shuddered in high winds. On Wednesday and Friday nights, and every second weekend, Dad would tuck us in, reeking of cheddar and burgundy and pipe, and take us into the dark woods where families were as royally—or commonly—broken as ours. There was lust, envy, treachery, heartbreak, and lashings of cannibalism. He never spared us the blood and guts of the wundermarchen, as the Germans called them—for which I am grateful. ‘The Robber Bridegroom’ was my grisly childhood favourite. But we loved, too, the sapphires and rubies; the wise and communicative animals; the brave and bonny heroes (Angela’s collection goes some way to rebalancing the shortage of heroines in Grimm); romantic love; and all that mind-boggling transmogrification.