Rapunzel's tale is told at last
Marvellously inventive, often hilarious and sometimes tragic, Namjoshi tells stories of blue donkeys and giantesses, of princes and swans who simply do not do as their stereotypes have done. The creatures are all recognisably modern humans confronted with quintessentially modern dilemmas.
She writes with a heartwarming humour that belies the seriousness of her purpose. Bluebeard's story becomes a chilling tale of the organisation of human society along patriarchal principles; the Arabian Nights reads like an epitaph to womanhood itself. Yet, happily, the fables are free from the tedium of political correctness and never become a grimly modernist revision of traditional allegories. Instead, there are some delicious send-ups of female solidarity, of "rebellion" and of anthropological cliches like "local history" or "acquired characteristics". Namjoshi uses her experience as a university teacher to satirise academic jargon and question the "my sister, right or wrong" version of feminism.
But one cannot help wishing she had written a longer, meatier story at some stage, rather than concentrating only on vignettes—some only a paragraph long—that leave the reader yearning for more.