Some Kind of Fairy Tale by Graham Joyce
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is a well-written Fairy Tale in all the grand tradition of fairy tales, including the unconscious desires, the spiriting away, the self-discovery, the missing time, and then the return to our shadow world.

What makes this special is the care given to the two main characters of Tara, the girl who came back, and Richie, the man whose life was put on hold for twenty years. It's modern. It's also nicely bracketed with modern psychology, giving us all a way to view all the events and the story that Tara tells from the accepted view.

Of course, we're not really supposed to relate to it that way, but it's really striking how much Tara is not believed despite some glaring giveaways: such as not aging. The number of hoops that so many of them go through to explain it away makes this whole novel BELIEVABLE. Scarily so.

Good stuff. You must love the mystery of the Fae, however. :)

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