Fairy Tale

“I’m sure I can tell this story. I’m also sure no one will believe it. That’s fine with me. Telling it will be enough. My problem – and I’m sure many writers have it, not just newbies like me – is deciding where to start,” the narrator states in the first paragraph of Fairy Tale, a novel that actually starts pretty great, but gradually loses both its focus and force.

Our narrator is Charlie Reade, who, one fateful day when he was a 17-year-old boy, heard some barking coming from his neighbor’s property and went there to help, finding the old and reclusive Mr. Howard Bowditch injured next to his equally old German Shepard, Radar (a good girl). Charlie agrees to take care of Radar while Mr. Bowditch stays at the hospital, and inevitably grows fond of the dog (a natural reaction to good girls). During his stay at the house, however, the boy begins to suspect there may be something off with Bowditch’s locked shed, for one time it seemed as if there was an animal inside trying to get out.

Fairy Tale’s first chapters are by far its strongest ones, filled as they are with melancholy and pathos. We’re told about the death of Charlie’s mother and how that broke his father, George, who decided to search for solace inside a bottle: “He still didn’t go out to bars at night (‘Too many assholes like me,’ he said once), and he still never laid a hand on me, but the booze was out of control. I know that now; then I just accepted it. Kids do that. Dogs, too,” Charlie narrates, revealing how he blames himself for his father’s state, even though he was just a kid at the time – it was his father who was supposed to take care of him, and not the other way around.

For Charlie, however, that’s no excuse. He had to grow up with an absent dad, having to learn how to take care of himself too early in life. Instead of worrying about his grades, he lived with the constant fear of losing his home; instead of playing with his friends, he had to find work and grieve alone. Having been robbed of the chance of simply being a kid, Charlie’s soul hardened, turning him into that sort of man who thinks crying is a sign of weakness – and his father cried a lot. So, that self-recriminating “Dogs, too” – unfair to Radar as it may be – is a telltale sign of how he chastises himself even now, narrating the story years after the events, and resents his own attitude at the time, still judging his childish resignation: it was his father’s choice to drink each day, but Charlie believes he could have done something. He could have helped in some way.

However, when Charlie met Mr. Bowditch, his father had already come around, and became a functional adult again, going regularly to support meetings and being able to once more financially help his son. But throughout the whole novel, Charlie still carries that old burden, fearing that if something happens to him, that could very well trigger a relapse in his father and start everything again: although gone, George’s alcoholism is an enduring specter, forever haunting his son’s thoughts. It’s one of those things that don’t go away just because it got better.

“A brave man helps. A coward just gives presents.” Mr. Bowditch tells Charlie once, presenting what could pass for the novel’s main thesis. Bowditch is that type of grouchy old man with a heart of gold that J. K. Simmons could play in his sleep. It doesn’t take long for him to take a liking to Charlie, for example, seeing how the boy cares deeply for Radar (who’s a good girl, after all) and has even decided to help him recover from the accident. Bowditch is too proud to accept help at first, but his age eventually gets the better of him, and so he invites Charlie to stay for a while at his house. The boy, however, is quick to notice an air of melancholy in the man’s actions, and a dose of fatalism in his words, sensing how that infected the atmosphere of the place:

“There was something sad about it. I couldn’t express the reason for that sadness then, but I’m older now and think I can. It was about the jigsaw, but it was also the antique TV and the Hall of Old Reading Matter. It was about an elderly man’s solitary pursuits, and the dust – on the folding chair, on the books and magazines – suggested that even those were winding down. The only things in the cellar that looked like they were used regularly were the washer and dryer.”

In other words, what Charlie was sensing was the slow approach of death: Mr. Bowditch’s secluded life displayed no signs of energy or vigor anymore. He had few interests, basically no hobbies, no friends to speak of besides our good girl Radar, and even she was too old as well, having trouble climbing stairs or running after rodents: Mr. Bowditch was alive, but only in the technical sense of the term. This makes his growing friendship with Charlie incredibly touching: while he gives the boy the chance to act, to make a difference, to finally help someone in need, Charlie gives him the warmth of a social interaction again; the comfort of finally having someone caring if he was alive or dead. The book also leaves plenty of room for the friendship to breathe and be developed, with no hurry to move toward the more supernatural elements that will follow.

Which is great, because they don’t work as well. When Charlie finally discovers what’s inside that locked shed, he ends up in another world altogether, being accompanied by the valiant Radar (for she’s old and tired, but still a good girl). There, he meets silent princesses and weird shoemakers, learns about a terrible curse, and is attacked by the undead.

On paper, this is great, but the problem lies in the way this fantastical world is presented to us, as it makes it feel… derivative. Charlie, as a narrator, fills the descriptions with countless parallels to famous stories, books, and movies, which makes everything he sees and encounters look and function like something that we already know from somewhere else. So, things may appear otherworldly to Charlie, but to us, they’re now very familiar bits: “I was looking at Mr Bowditch’s version of Jack’s beanstalk. It went down instead of up, but there was gold at the other end. I was sure of it,” the character observes at one time.

Yes, there are unique elements to the setting, such as the nature and form of the vicious curse that has befallen most of its inhabitants, but the constant references end up robbing the world of Fairy Tale of the opportunity to inspire that child-like wonder so prevalent in, well, fairy tales. When he first spots a city in the distance, for example, Charlie remarks: “Daylight reflected hazily from its highest towers, as if they were made of glass. Green glass. I had read The Wizard of Oz and seen the movie, and I knew an Emerald City when I saw one.” Imagine this happening all the time regarding most of the fantastical elements Charlie comes across in his adventure.

But even so, the novel would still have been great if it weren’t for the long and odd detour it takes after its second act, when it abruptly turns into Hunger Games with a supernatural twist (if Charlie can make such comparisons, I can too), and abandons the tone and characters of the previous pages, including Radar – which is the biggest crime of all, not only because she’s the most important secondary character at this point in the novel, but also because she’s a good girl and deserves better.

Suddenly, Charlie is in a prison cell and is expected to kill his newfound colleagues in a public game while secretly organizing a revolution. The issue here is that this is not just one more episode in Charlie’s adventure, but actually takes several chapters to unfold, becoming the sole focus of the narrative… until the climax. And it feels disconnected from everything that came before, especially since the emotional build-up was all related to our good girl Radar, and she’s nowhere to be seen. The games give Charlie one more chance to do something to help those in need, to be brave and act, but the event comes too late for us to properly care for those involved, and takes too long for us not to be bothered by it.

Finally, there are plenty of red flags about Charlie that turn out to be just red herrings instead. The whole book seems to hint that there’s a dark side to Charlie; that eventually he’s going to be tempted or make a terrible mistake: we see him going to Bowditch’s safe while he sleeps, for example, just to feel the old man’s gold pellets on his hands, and we often see that he enjoys hurting people who he thinks deserve it. Charlie himself sometimes says bizarre, on-the-nose stuff like, “I liked that scream, because I was a dark prince and that was a scream of pain.” But, in the end, this never amounts to anything meaningful besides turning Charlie into someone more grounded than, I don’t know, a Disney Prince.

Fairy Tale, then, is a novel that starts building some fascinating characters and conflicts but eventually loses track of what’s important and gets lost in a tangent for far too long.

May 31, 2025.