Savage Her Reply

A retelling of the favourite Irish fairytale The Children of Lir. Aífe marries Lir, a chieftain with four children by his previous wife. Jealous of his affection for his children, the witch Aífe turns them into swans for 900 years.

Retold through the voice of Aífe, Savage Her Reply is unsettling and dark, feminist and fierce, yet nuanced in its exploration of the guilt of a complex character.

©2020 Deirdre Sullivan (P)2021 Bolinda Publishing

Exquisite pain, beautiful weave of old & new tales

Taking something old and making it new as an art form. I was delighted by the wit, dark humor, long suffering grief, and 1,000 years of transformative experiences strip away the one dimensional “evil step mother” revealed as a flawed, foul-able childish fae. Not human or woman more an everybody else’s girl entity whose rage was given place when She, herself was not enough, those who came before her were sacrificed because they would never be enough. When four children are sacrificed to this generational pyre of rage, nothing changes but the fire and the fuel it consumes until only ash remains.

The narrator was fantastic. Her compassion was empathic. This depth of insight, lent life and believability to an engaging modern “POV” retelling for the myth of changeling swans.