On the Edge of Dream: The Women in Celtic Myth and Legend

Rating:
Summary: Be swept away
Review: I love Celtic legends, especially stories about goddesses and heroines. Unfortunately, the Celtic legends have been revised, sanitized, and edited over the centuries to the point that sometimes they can seem very dry--as if all the spirit has been sucked out of them.

And then there's _On the Edge of Dream_.

Jennifer Heath draws on the oral tradition of stories handed down by her mother, plus written sources, blending different versions of stories together into an enchanting brew. She doesn't just retell the stories the way we've always heard them, she spices them up, adds a dash of feminism here and there, and breathes new emotional life into them. I cry every time I read the scene where Pwyll, lacking the words to apologize to Rhiannon, simply carries her into the court, the way she has carried all visitors for the past seven years.

You'll especially like this if you liked Caitlin Matthews' _Celtic Love_. Both are collections of old Celtic stories told with new-found emotional "oomph" by women with true bardic talent.

Rating:
Summary: Good writing
Review: Not as moving to me as it was to the rest of these reviewers, and I bought it on their recommendations. I wished it had been. She has written a very creative creation of a Celtic creation myth using the Dagda. (Celts had no creation myth that still exists today.) She has a very melodic way of getting words onto paper.

Rating:
Summary: A most outstanding re-retelling of Celtic tales!
Review: The 15 wonderful stories in this book were written with the unique combination of many years of research and stories remembered from childhood (the authors mother & grandmother use to tell her these stories as bedtime tales). This "pearl" of a book dares to go where few other Celtic re-tellings have gone. It portrays the women as equal among their male counterparts in both mental strength and wit, but never in a superior way. And yes, the characters in this book also engage (never explicitly) in that most wonderful of human pleasures--sex!

The colorful stories within the pages of this book will stir the emotions and leave one laughing and crying, angry and joyous, troubled and relieved and always, always yearning for more.

I truly hope that Jennifer Hearth puts pen to paper once more so that we may be delighted a second time around. To you Jennifer Hearth I say BRAVO!