The Hazel Wood & The Night Country
By Melissa Albert The Hazel Wood and its sequel, The Nigh

The Hazel Wood & The Night Country


By Melissa Albert

The Hazel Wood and its sequel, The Night Country, are stories I almost wish I could experience again for the first time. An exploration of the fairytale underworld, the tales follow Alice, a beleaguered, haunted teenager, as she lives a piece-meal life, constantly moving cross-country with her mom. The duo flees makeshift homes regularly, with bad luck always nipping at their heels.

 
Though Alice and her mom live modestly, Alice’s grandmother is world-renowned, the author of a sublimely notorious and equally hard-to-find compendium of fairy tales. After receiving word that the estranged grandmother has died, mother and daughter finally settle in NYC, sighing with relief that their bad luck is behind them. Finally, Alice has a chance at a normal life. 


But then, Alice’s mom goes missing and all clues point to the grandmother’s mansion, and beyond - to the morbid world of her concocted fairytales, tales that are starting to materialize on the streets of NY. 


The Hazel Wood is a gritty Brothers’ Grimm bumming a cigarette, a jaded teenager stuck on the dark side of a NYC daydream, a haunted subway ride. It’s the stuff of nightmares but more gruesome and modern than Grimm. Imbued with young adult emo, it is also surprisingly poetic - much like our teenage years. 

The Night Country follows in its footsteps, imagining a world that would make Mary Shelly shiver. 
Albert’s world is a fanatical escape for these dark times if you want to get away and indulge simultaneously.
 And for those hungry for more of Albert’s macabre marvels, the actual book of grandmother’s fairytales is slated to be released this winter. A book within a book. How apropos for a tale like this… Just take care you can separate story from reality. Fairytales are, after all, only make believe… aren’t they?