A few Grymm puns

YA Book Review

Grymm, 
Keith Austin, Random House, 2012.

KeithAustin thinks that contemporary Young Adult Fiction has become as sanitised as the modern fairy tale – cleaned up and “Disneyfied’ so that all the gruesome details have been removed. Concerned that such sanitisation may put off young readers, he has set about addressing the problem himself. With Grymm, Austin has created a fairy tale for teenagers “as bizarre and vicious and violent and nasty and funny and mythical as those original fairy tales”. 

However, Grymm is not horror for the sake of horror. Childhood fairytales and nursery rhymes come to life in this grim tale of outback horror. It is a Bildungsroman:  a coming-of-age novel that explores how a “fractured family” deals with grief and supernatural fears seem preferable to those waiting to be dealt with in real life. With a high gross-out factor.

Grymm opens with step-siblings Jacob and Wilhemina bickering in the back of the family car. Their parents George and Mary are driving them to a new home in the eponymous outback mining town. Jacob is 12 and cannot stand his 14 year old stepsister Wilhelmina: “she is such a girl.” Wilhelmina – Mina if you don’t mind – feels the same way about Jacob – he is an idiot. Besides their famous fairy tale monikers and utter disdain for one another, they think the only thing they have in common is how much they hate their baby half-brother Bryan. After all, it is his fault they have to move to a ‘Nowheresville’. Because of his extra mouth needing to be fed, Mina’s dad George is chasing ‘better than good money’ as a geologist at the local mine.

Grymm is a town far away from dark-haired, dreamy-eyed boys, surfboards and satellite connections. It is not long however before Jacob and Mina find something new to agree on – things are not what they seem in Grymm. With a very obvious nod to Frank M. Baum, the family are delivered into town on the tail of a whirling dust devil. The welcome sign warns in dripping red paint of a population in decline: “5000 3502 2006 1545 810 200”. The family finds a town filled with aptronymic characters lifted straight from nursery rhymes. There's a butcher, a baker and candlestick makers. Each over-the-top individual has a particular passion. They don’t just want to be among the best – they want to be the best, and they seem willing to do anything to achieve it.

Grymm illustrations by Croatian designer Zdenko Basic.

https://grymmworld.wordpress.com/the-wonderful-and-creepy-art-of-zdenko-basic/

The local bakery has all the hallmarks of a Hansel and Gretel gingerbread house – right down to a glass frontage that seems made of clear sugar and a baker keen to see Jacob fattened up. Butcher Flay has an on-site abattoir of horror, designed to ensure the very freshest of meat for special orders for the mine. Local pastor Eric Elland is writing the history of Grymm in his own blood. But it is the local souvenir shop that gives away the game. Maurie’s Mementos is filled with gold-like rings of iron pyrites - Fool’s Gold. The shop name is a play on the Latin phrase ‘Memento Mori’. Translated, it means ‘remember you are mortal’ or – ‘remember you will die’.

When baby Bryan disappears overnight following a terrifying dream-sequence, Mina and Jacob begin a journey of not just one but many “small steps towards maturity”.[4] Not only has the baby gone from their lives, but no-one – not even their parents – remembers his existence. It’s up to Mina and Jacob to put aside their petty bickering and work together to discover what has happened to their baby brother. As they do so, they realise that everyone in Grymm is hiding something, and that the town itself is built upon a terrible secret. Could saving their brother mean also saving Grymm?

As the story moves forward the reader is made increasingly aware of the disruptions imbuing the family dynamics. Jacob is angry at his abandonment by his father. Mina is grieving for her dead mother. We are told in the opening pages that “the children aren’t the only ones with regrets” (p. 18), so when Mary and George forget that they have a baby son together, it is no surprise that memories of past miscarriages surface. Throughout it all the town of Grymm and its bizarre characters present the siblings with ever more gruesome challenges: maggots in milkshakes; mutilated live animals; ghouls in an abandoned fairground. All the while George and Mary gradually become more absent as they fall under the town’s spell.

The conflict between the siblings soon moves to an external third party, mysterious mine manager and George’s boss, Anhanga. (For those who know their gods, the name is a bit of a spoiler.) Austin crams Grymm with enough wordplay to satisfy any logophile. There are worms that turn and anagrammatic fairy tale names (what was the pastor’s name again?). It has a gothic heritage that stretches from Stoker, to the Bible and as far back as the Australian Aboriginal Dreamtime. All of which serve as clever distractions for young adults “who want to be scared stiff or disgusted or made to laugh at something they shouldn’t be laughing at”. However it is the explanation of ‘timshel’ - “if thou “mayest” do evil, then conversely, thou “mayest not” do evil” and Anhanga’s manipulation of it that shows Mina and Jacob that everyone has a choice. It is their discovery that not making a choice is itself a choice that empowers them to confront Anhanga in an exciting climax.

Grymm author Keith Austin. Image from 

https://grymmworld.wordpress.com/keith-austin/

The twist in the tale however, is the revelation of the town’s terrible secret. Austin’s use of Australia’s contested colonial history is a clear metaphor for adolescent growth that warrants another thousand words of its own. The discovery that societal behaviours have consequences for everyone involved is reflected in Mina and Jacob’s realisation that their own actions and indifference affect the relationships of their family.

P.S.
Since Grymm's release Austin has produced two more "dark and twisted takes on some classic fairy-tale characters": Jago and Snow, White.  

Bibliography

Austin, K. (2012). Grymm. London: Red Fox.

Saxby, M. (1997). Literature for young adults. in Books in the Life of a Child: bridges to literature and learning. South Yarra, VIC: Macmillan. Pp. 352-373.