Hag- Audible Series Review

I love fairy and folk tales because they offer a window into the past where society had collectively agreed that the messages and morals were important enough to keep alive through the generations. I'm sure we all have personal feelings and experiences with fairy tales and what we take away from them rings true for different people for different reasons. Lots of these fairy tales have been Disney-fied, which often altered the moralizing through its retelling. For some, Disney's is a shallow style of retelling which tries to apply a formula or an agenda. I don't agree with this point of view per se, but I do think the essence of these stories has been altered.

Luckily, there are plenty of modern interpretations of fairy and folk tales that keep to the core message and one of these is Hag, a free Audible series, where a variety of writers each undertake retellings adding something personal and relatable. The stories are from across the UK and the interview with the writers and Professor Carolyne Larrington, a specialist in Old Norse and British fairy tales at St John's College, Oxford, offers provenance into the tales. As an old anthropology student, it's great to hear different takes and angles and to explore old and new meaning.

For a society that has taken the edge away from many of these tales of otherness, identity, faith, religion, gender and sexual trauma, this production is like a breath of fresh air. It's like a modern version of Angela Carter's ouvre, which looked at the power dynamics of females and their potency, or Neil Jordan's classic Company of Wolves, which looked at the often misogynistic or sexist moralising intended to keep the female power in its place and subverts them.

As the cold, dark nights close in, Hag is a welcoming chair near a crackling warm fire - Lovely unsettling stuff!