The Squirrel Wife

One stormy night, a young swineherd exploited by his cruel brother enters a menacing forest to save the life of one of the elven green folk who live there. His reward is marriage to a squirrel woman who uses her instinctive knowledge of the forest’s riches to enable them to prosper. But all such faerie marriages come with a dowry of complications, and when the swineherd’s jealous brother has him imprisoned for theft, he has to face the kind of choice faced by many a shape-shifter’s husband before him. The late Philippa Pearce published this beautifully written and gracefully rounded ‘original fairy tale’ in 1971. Wayne Anderson has transformed it into a rhapsody in green: each of the pages is dominated by shades of the forest, speckled with brighter tints of fritillary, convolvulus, plumage and squirrel fur. Our view of the green people at the heart of the book and the story is enthralling. The story can be read aloud in less than half an hour, but the book is one that you will want to revisit frequently.