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Today’s podcast guest is from the Windy City, Chicago; she enjoys running long distances, reading anything she can get her hands on and watching movies with samurai, zombies and/or subtitles in her spare time. Welcome to Christina Henry, who reinvents fantasy stories, from Red Riding Hoodto Alice In Wonderland with a dark twist.
Interview notes
The Girl In Red
- The titular “girl in red” is an amputee – Is Christina Henry an amputee? If not, how did she research this novel?
- Red Riding Hood vs The Girl In Red
- I loved The Girl In Red, in part for its storytelling – listen to me squee in the podcast! But also for its representation of disability that, in my opinion, puts Girl In Red in the same basket as A Curse of Ash and Ember by Jo Spurrier.
Looking Glass
- Alice was ‘inconveniently assaulted’. Therefore, her mother gave her up and put her in an asylum.
- Alice was the mad woman in the asylum
- Deformity symbolizes monstrous character
- “And they all watched. They were all complicit.”
- “I think the kind of mother you’re talking about doesn’t exist, not really. She’s only the idea of a mother, a perfect person who can’t be true. It’s sort of the same way your mother thought you were the perfect daughter and, when you weren’t, she couldn’t reconcile it…”
- A significant number of characters are physically malformed; Christina Henry uses physical deformity to symbolize monstrous character. This is in contrast with The Girl In Red.
- Unfortunately, Looking Glass and Monstrous Child by Francesca Simon have significant similarities.
