As all of this hit me, he was already standing up, grabbing his book off the table, and striding out of the café. Before the bells on the door stopped jingling, I was after him. Someone’s laptop cord crossed my path, and I nearly sent the thing flying; by the time I finished apologizing and wrenched open the door, the man was out of sight. I looked up and down the quiet sidewalk, my hands itching to hold a cigarette—my mom and I had quit when we moved in with Harold.

We tried to wait out a full school year in an LA guesthouse Ella rented from an earnest hippie with a trust fund, but four months in the woman’s husband started suffering from symptoms of chronic fatigue. After Ella moved to the main house to help out, the ceiling fell in over the master bedroom, and the hippie sleepwalked into the swimming pool. We didn’t want to start a death count, so we’d moved along. So, yeah, definitely not for me, but I would recommend this for those who like Wonderland retellings, and those who enjoy really lyrical prose over characters and/or plot. I can’t get enough of Melissa Albert’s Hazel wood series, and this collection of dark fairy tales set in the Hinterland (some featuring familiar characters, some populated by new faces) was no exception. Erdogan, V.; Mehlenbacher, S. A. (2002). "Phylogenetic analysis of hazelnut species (Corylus, Corylacae) based on morphology and phenology". Sist. Bot. Dergisi. 9: 83–100.

Somehow, these stories managed to speak to people across different social classes, living in different countries and culture. Whether these stories travelled from one place and managed to take root in another, or whether they were created and evolved independently, the fact that they exist in so many forms is still absolutely remarkable. And somehow, these stories that resonate in the past, still resonate now, centuries later.

Hey, Alice,” he said, making a point of reading my name tag even though he came in every day. He bopped his head to the T. Rex playing from Lana’s phone. “Cool tunes. Is that the Stone Roses?” Alice is very mean. Unnecessarily so. I am okay with a mean character sometimes, if they are also badass and/or smart, but Alice is not extremely either of those. It makes for a bumpy ride. While ethnicities are not explicitly stated (as I recall), it is safe to say all the characters and the settings were pretty ‘white’, which if nothing else, adds to the repetitive nature of the stories.Hazel is important, however, in providing the main habitat for an ascomycete fungus ( Hypocreopsis rhododendri) which was only known from rhododendrons in North America until it was discovered on hazel in Mull in the 1970s, and then elsewhere in western Scotland. It mainly grows on standing dead stems of hazel, but also has been found on living branches. Because of its rarity in Britain, a Species Action Plan has been prepared for this fungus. In this brutal and beautiful world a young woman spends a night with Death, brides are wed to a mysterious house in the trees, and an enchantress is killed twice - and still lives. Chen, Zhi-Duan; Manchester, Steven R; Sun, Hai-Ying (August 1999). "Phylogeny and evolution of the Betulaceae as inferred from DNA sequences, morphology, and paleobotany". American Journal of Botany. 86 (8): 1168–1181. doi: 10.2307/2656981. ISSN 0002-9122. JSTOR 2656981. PMID 10449397. Yet, one of the most divisive claims is that Althea Proserpine wrote 'feminist fairy-tales' - of which we hear possibly two and a half - that aren't really feminist at all, and are barely worthy of the title of fairytale. They were flat, without feeling, without ambience and without a moral. In short, Althea's tales are pointless, making the story itself pointless.

Hazel has long been associated with the dormouse (also known as the hazel dormouse). Not only are hazelnuts eaten by dormice to fatten up for hibernation, but in spring the leaves are a good source of caterpillars, which dormice also eat. By then I’d figured out the man wasn’t who he said he was: a friend of my grandmother, Althea, taking me to see her. Althea was already secluded in her big house then, and I’d never met her. She had no friends, just fans, and my mother told me that’s what the man was. A fan who wanted to use me to get to my grandma. Male flowers are in the form of catkins, which are pale yellow in colour and up to 5 cm. long. They open in February, when hazel and its companion deciduous trees are all leafless, so they are one of the first obvious signs of spring in the forest. The female flowers are tiny red tufts, growing out of what look like swollen buds, and are visible on the same branches as the male catkins. Pollination is by wind, and hazel is self-incompatible – successful pollination only occurs between different trees, as a single tree cannot pollinate itself.Alice has long steered clear of her grandmother’s cultish fans. But now she has no choice but to ally with classmate Ellery Finch, a Hinterland superfan who may have his own reasons for wanting to help her. To retrieve her mother, Alice must venture first to the Hazel Wood, then into the world where her grandmother's tales began—and where she might find out how her own story went so wrong.

And one marooned word in a sea of singed paper: Alice. My name. I couldn’t read anything that came before or after it, and I saw no other reference to myself. I dropped the wet mess into the trash. She is really obsessed with her mom, too. Like, actually the only relationship in her life is with her mom. It’s pretty toxic stuff. Never corrected, because of course not, but there are more books. Fingers crossed.In Providence, where my mom taught art to senior citizens, the whole first floor of the house we rented flooded while we slept, on a rainless August night. A wildcat crept through a window into our trailer in Tacoma, to piss all over our stuff and eat the last of my birthday cake.