Grim fairy tale

Are the shocking events in Tender Morsels really for young adults? | Janie B. Cheaney

Adrian Cook

How's this for a plot outline for a young adult novel? A teenage girl lives with her widowed father, who regularly impregnates her and purchases abortion herbs from the local witch. After his accidental death, she gives birth to a beautiful baby girl and is beginning to make a new life when she is attacked and raped by five local boys, leading to another pregnancy and a suicide attempt.

And that's just in the first 50 pages.

Tender Morsels, by Australian writer Margo Lanagan, is described as "lurid." To be fair, it isn't. Its shocking events are cloaked in fantasy and rendered in a literary style that is often striking and beautiful. It might even be seen as pro-life, in that the much-abused heroine, Liga, wants and loves her babies in spite of their nightmare conceptions. A magical providence grants her an alternate reality, where no one threatens. But Liga eventually learns that life in the real world is preferable to a private heaven, because even though the dangers are great, so are the possibilities.