George MacDonald is the Victorian C.S. Lewis; apparently Jack even wrote a book about him—the other Christian who wrote fairy stories for a machine-made age. He’s rather romantic although not bad about it, and I liked his girls, like the gray wolf, the girl at the end of “Broken Swords”, and the wives are nice too. They’re good stories and they have a nice flow to them like the tracks on a smart music album do. The almost Hebrew parallelism of the last two stories was especially beautiful. People are generally the authors of their own woes and can often be happy if they make up their mind to be cured of their little neuroses, but if it is the other way, then if you may not teach God you can perhaps teach the little children, and then in the end if you may not be a parent it is alright for you are always Somebody’s child, and really you are born and you die and you live, regardless of whether you get married in between. It’s a nice Christian story. Sometimes people think it is only Christian if there are proof texts and Greek linguistic work, you know, and though the Bible is certainly quite alright the way one's parents are alright, that’s not so. Certainly even little Scotch Victorian fairy tales can be full of meaning.

The gray wolf -- The cruel painter -- The broken swords -- The wow o-rivven -- Uncle Cornelius, his story -- The butcher's bills -- Birth, dreaming death ( )

"The Gray Wolf" is such a wonderful short story! It sparks my imagination and leaves me wanting more--badly. It leaves me with questions, and a longing for a different ending. But the bitter loneliness, the weight of the curse, and the mystery all make for a fascinatingly bittersweet read from George MacDonald.The audiobook version of "The Gray Wolf" can be downloaded from LibriVox for free (http://librivox.org/short-story-collection-003/). ( )

The stories in this collection show the variety of George MacDonald's writing and the elegance of Victorian fantasy. These stories cover a great range from a Gothic tale on a moor to a haunting tale of a marriage spiraling out of control. For any reader of current fantasy, MacDonald's stories create the history of fantasy and are worth reading and digger deeper into. ( )