Fairy tales, it seems, are out of fashion. After all, what do they have to teach a modern reader? Finding Prince Charming is passé; we should be getting comfortable with our own company. Evil stepmothers aren’t such a problem when you can just go no contact. And going to sleep for 100 years no longer has to affect your career arc – we’re all on our own timelines!
Yet look a little closer and you might find that a new kind of fairy tale is alive and well. Because what are most of them if not love stories, set in magical worlds? Romantasy, a relatively new literary genre that offers exactly that, is, largely thanks to its popularity on TikTok, having a seismic effect on the books industry.
My nan wasn’t the kind of person who left a trail of anecdotes in her wake. She hadn’t really left much body in her wake, either. Physically, she was a tiny lady. Wrapped in her beige shawl and cradled by timber, she looked, I thought on my way up to the altar, like Yoda.
I worked with what I had. ‘Despite being half-blind, her eyes twinkled,’ I started. ‘She had no teeth, yet her smile lit up rooms, and though her voice rattled with the endless cigarettes that had diffused into the wallpaper, she had a contagious laugh.’
An American friend recently asked me what to wear on her first flight to Europe. "I want to be comfy but chic," she said. She'd come to the wrong person. As a travel journalist, I'm either on assignment, sun cream-smeared in hiking boots and hauling a rucksack like a tortoise shell; or travelling light with a five-piece capsule wardrobe in beige neutrals to leave space for edible souvenirs.
Meanwhile, many of my fellow travellers parade past in floral gowns, breezy summer whites or cosy pyjama-like layers. Sometimes I glimpse my own reflection and feel a pang of FOMO. Should I have worn a floral dress to photograph ruins? I don't even own one. Or perhaps instead of clunky hiking boots, I would be more comfortable in a pair of Birkenstocks, with thick white socks hiked up to my knees.
The water is “the colour of wet dirt,” but what else are they supposed to do? Ungainly as Into the Sun often is, there’s something true and touching in Ramuz’s descriptions of the “infinite troop of swimmers” who, sunstricken and desperate, spend their days in the scummy remnants of the lake. We may find ourselves, in a superheated world, putting off doomsday by doing much the same: jostling for position on a packed beach, thirsty, wretched, and uncared for. Let’s hope not.