Once on a Time by A. A. Milne

Found this short and unexpected review by Lee Randall a few weeks ago: Uncommon readings: Fairytale best read by adults.

It's a nice review for an old book, Once on a Time by A. A. Milne, the author more famously known for Winnie the Pooh. (As if you didn't know that!)

The review is informative enough that I had to find the book. It was harder than one would think because the TITLE is never mentioned in the review. (Although that's comforting when I consider all the mistakes I make as my own writer and editor...)

Here's a quote from the review:

If you too have a low threshold for Pooh, Piglet and the rest, you may have missed Milne's other work. I urge you, rethink this boycott. Instead, the next time you want to laugh out loud at satire both silly and sharp, pick up this novel, written in 1917 to amuse the author and his wife.

Milne calls it "a fairy story for grown-ups". It's his attempt to address the fact that the conventions of fairy stories don't allow for the shades of grey in real life.

The book is available on Gutenberg at Once on a Time by A. A. Milne.

During my search, I was reminded that Milne wrote a treatment of Cinderella which I have never found. The search continues. It has to be online somewhere. It was published in Punch and I want to add it to SurLaLune.

Here's a helpful paragraph from Answers.com about his fairy tale work.

Like Thackeray's The Rose and the Ring and Dickens's The Magic Fishbone, the handful of fairy tales for adults Milne published in Punch before World War I and included in Those Were the Days (1929) satirized the conventions of the genre. In ‘The King's Sons’, a fairy tests the three sons by transforming herself into a dove pursued by a hawk. The youngest son, kind‐hearted Prince Goldilocks, is prompt with his bow; unfortunately, he is a poor shot, and hits the dove. ‘A Modern Cinderella’ transposes the story to present‐day London. A blasé debutante, Milne's Cinderella, is tired of balls; she kicks off her shoes at a dance—and loses one—simply because her feet are hurting. In ‘A Matter‐of‐Fact Fairy Tale’, Prince Charming sets out to kill the Giant Blunderbus and rescue Princess Beauty's brother Udo, transformed by the giant into a tortoise seven years before. Here, as in the other tales, Milne associates the fairy‐tale tradition with a sentimental and unrealistic view of life and human nature. Udo is unromantically preoccupied by his ignorance of what tortoises are supposed to eat. Prince Charming is disillusioned when the dying giant reveals that Udo is not Beauty's brother, while the lovers, reunited at last, discover that they are no longer attracted to each other.

So if you're looking for a free book to read by a beloved author that plays with fairy tale tropes, try this one.