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Kate Forsyth

The Wild Girl Kindle Edition

by Kate Forsyth (Author) Format: Kindle Edition

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One of the great untold love stories - how the Grimm brothers discovered their famous fairy tales - filled with drama and passion, and taking place during the Napoleonic Wars.

Growing up next door to the Grimm brothers in Hesse-Cassel, a small German kingdom, Dortchen Wild told Wilhelm some of the most powerful and compelling stories in the famous fairy tale collection.

Dortchen first met the Grimm brothers in 1805, when she was twelve. One of six sisters, Dortchen lived in the medieval quarter of Cassel, a town famous for its grand royal palace, its colossal statue of Herkules, and a fairytale castle of turrets and spires built as a love nest for the Prince-Elector’s mistress. Dortchen was the same age as Lotte Grimm and the two became best friends.

In 1806, Hesse-Cassel was invaded by the French. Napoleon created a new Kingdom of Westphalia, under the rule of his dissolute young brother Jérôme. The Grimm brothers began collecting fairy tales that year, wanting to save the old stories told in spinning-circles and by the fire from the domination of French culture.

Dortchen’s father was cruel and autocratic, and he beat and abused her. He frowned on the friendship between his daughters and the poverty-stricken Grimm Brothers. Dortchen had to meet Wilhelm in secret to tell him her stories. All the other sisters married and moved away, but Dortchen had to stay home and care for her sick parents. Even after the death of her father, Dortchen and Wilhelm could not marry – the Grimm brothers were so poor they were surviving on a single meal a day.

After the overthrow of Napoleon and the eventual success of the fairy tale collection, Dortchen and Wilhelm were at last able to marry. They lived happily ever after with Wilhelm’s elder brother Jakob for the rest of their lives.

Length: 510 pages	Word Wise: Enabled	Enhanced Typesetting: Enabled
Page Flip: Enabled	Language: English

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'History and fairy tale are richly entwined in this spellbinding story. Unputdownable!'Juliet Marillier, author of Daughter in the Forest --This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.

Book Description

"One of the great untold love stories - how the Grimm brothers discovered their famous fairy tales - filled with drama and passion, and taking place during the Napoleonic Wars." --This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.

ASIN ‏ : ‎ B00ANG3WZQ
Publisher ‏ : ‎ Random House Australia (18 March 2013)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
File size ‏ : ‎ 895 KB
Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled
Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Print length ‏ : ‎ 510 pages

Best Sellers Rank: 156,365 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- 2,145 in Mythology & Folk Tales
- 9,913 in Contemporary Fiction (Kindle Store)

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87 ratings

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Mary Wingrave

Put that time of history into perspective nicely. Good historical research

Reviewed in Australia on 20 September 2015

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Oh now here was an interesting read. Put that time of history into perspective nicely. Good historical research . Sad but believable reporting of incidents of child abuse.

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cazlibrarian

Wild girl, lovely story.

Reviewed in Australia on 28 July 2019

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Beautifully written historic story cleverly combining real history and fiction.

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Angela

Really good to read about these families and to get to ...

Reviewed in Australia on 20 June 2016

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very interesting read, well written and researched. Really good to read about these families and to get to know the central characters so well and find out about the history.

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Captivating!

Reviewed in Australia on 16 April 2014

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A historical fiction that I couldn't put down until I had finshed. Kate Forsyth's detailed research on the historical events of the era were cleverly interwoven with the love story between Dortchen Wild and Wilhelm Grimm. Just captivating!

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David

Three Stars

Reviewed in Australia on 4 September 2015

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very good book, very well written but spoiler alert, could gave been better without the abuse.

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Marcia@Book Muster Down Under

Rich and Imaginative

Reviewed in Australia on 4 August 2015

Opening in December 1814 and set against the backdrop of the French Revolution which affected the kingdom of Hessen-Cassel in Germany, where the Grimm and Wild families lived, this novel pays homage to Dortchen Wild, the woman who went on to share her stories with the Grimm brothers and enabled them to become famous for the treasury of fairytales that most of us grew up with.

One of six children, five sisters and a brother, Dortchen and her family live across the lane from the impoverished Grimm family and her best friend, Lotte, their only daughter. Gentle but headstrong, Dortchen is full of life and vitality and finds peace in the forest and garden where she eagerly gathers herbs and plants for the mixtures and tinctures that her father, an apothecary, mixes for the retail shop attached to their home. Her knowledge of these herbs as well as the mixing of the remedies is vast and goes a long way in assisting this selfless young girl, at the risk of angering her father, to secretly aid the Grimm family in times of hunger and sickness.

Herr Wild is a tyrant and, along with their incapable mother, a weak Laudanum-dependent woman who constantly bows under the pressures of her husband’s controlling and violent behavior, all the Wild girls find themselves slaves to their parents’ demands and maladies, having to clean, cook, mend, wash, assist in the retail shop and basically run the household with Old Marie, their only servant – and at times, the only source of motherly love in Dortchen’s dark life.

When Lotte’s two older brothers, Jakob and Wilhelm, arrive home amidst the escalating war, Dortchen, at the tender age of twelve, finds herself smitten with the much older Wilhelm.

With the events in this novel taking place over many years, we get to see Dortchen grow into a beautiful albeit physically and mentally abused young woman whose feelings for Wilhelm strengthen and become more than just a fanciful teenage crush.

Wilhelm, a literary scholar who is unable to find work amidst the turmoil of war and, in trying to keep the German customs, language and heritage alive, as well as sustain his family, begins the process of gathering and transcribing all the German folk tales handed down from generation to generation for publication into a book. When he approaches Dortchen and asks her to share the stories that she knows, he doesn’t realise at the time that her input will be tremendous.

Spending many happy hours with Wilhelm and other town folk translating their old stories for Wilhelm’s quill to record and, with her imaginative storytelling abilities, Wilhelm eventually begins to see her as a young woman and no longer merely just Lotte’s best friend.

However, as Dortchen’s older sisters marry and move out of home to create their own lives and her brother is called to serve in the war, life in the Wild household begins to change and, left behind with her youngest sister and an incapable mother, becomes subjected to life in her father’s oppressive shadow. While her feelings for Wilhelm strengthen and it becomes apparent that he feels the same way, she is all too aware of the fact that her father will never approve of any union between the two of them, not only because of Wilhelm’s penurious circumstances, but because of his intense dislike for the Grimm family.

As the wages of war begin to show their true colours, so, too, does Herr Wild, who deteriorates into a bluebeard of that time and, whilst he doesn’t physically murder, this supposedly pious man stealthily begins to smother Dortchen’s beautiful nature with acts of abuse and humiliation. Forbidding her to have anything to do with Wilhelm and, knowing that they can’t be seen together, secret trysts between the two become the only opportunities open to Dortchen to tell Wilhelm her stories and, there are times when, through tales such as “All Kinds of Fur” (the origins of which are deeply incestuous) Dortchen tries to convey her misery and oppression to Wilhelm - but the true meaning is lost on him.

Nonetheless, it’s not all dark and, as with all fairytales, there is a happy ending in which we see both Dortchen and Wilhelm finally overcome the adversity to which they have been subjected all their life.

Let me start off by saying that I absolutely loved this book and, while I am extremely embarrassed to admit that it is the first novel I have read by Kate Forsyth, it certainly won’t be my last! Although I was initially overwhelmed at the sheer length of it, Ms Forsyth’s deft hand, rich imaginings and storytelling abilities immediately sucked me into a world where I became so emotionally invested in the plight of Dortchen that there were many times when the awful things that she suffered at the hands of her cold and abusive father, who took religious teachings just one step too far, had me wanting to climb into the book and give him a dose of something lethal from his own apothecary supplies!

For Wilhelm, I could feel only sadness at the poverty that he and his family lived in, and, even though he was quite sickly, I was most in awe of the strength and determination he showed in trying to free himself from the clutches of his dire circumstances. Of course, prior to reading this story, I had never thought of the Brothers Grimm as youthful with romantic conquests in their lives, having always pictured them as decrepit old men sitting at their antique secretaires transcribing their stories into massive tomes by candlelight, never once giving thought to their circumstances nor that these works were done in the midst of the ravages of war, so thanks should surely go to Ms Forsyth for educating me.

Like many others out there I, too, was brought up with the tales of the Brothers Grimm and, whilst I was introduced as a child to Cinderella, Little Red Riding Hood, Hansel and Gretel, Rapunzel and Rumpelstiltskin (to name a few), Kate Forsyth reveals through this novel that there are so many more which found their way into the world albeit with far grimmer beginnings. Who knew that the original works were so gruesome!

I also didn’t’ realise the depth of destruction that the Napoleonic wars left in their wake and, while I wish I had listened more intently to my school history lessons about Napoleon, Kate Forsyth provided me with an illuminating historical backdrop and, through her extensive research, has done a brilliant job in exploring the little known historical facts about Dortchen Wild’s life and blending it with fiction.

Ultimately an enduring love story spanning almost two decades, Ms Forsyth does weave some terribly dark and disturbing scenes into this novel and, while the subject matter is dealt with skillfully and sensitively, leaving it to the reader’s imagination rather than plying us with a graphically articulated narrative, we are given a glimpse into Dortchen and Wilhelm’s lives which, long after the final page was turned, profoundly impacted this reviewer’s thoughts.

Rich and imaginative, Kate Forsyth vividly evokes the scenery, the depth of human emotion, the violence of war and some fascinating herb lore as her characters attempt to overcome life’s adversities, and I do believe that she has gifted us with a memorable literary exploration of the life of a girl who lived her own dark fairytale!

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‘Happy endings are only for fairy tales, Dortchen thought, stepping through to her father’s walled garden.’

Reviewed in Australia on 1 July 2015

Once upon a time, during the Napoleonic Wars, the Wild family lived in the medieval quarter of Cassel, next to members of the Grimm family. Dortchen Wild and Lotte Grimm were the same age, and became best friends.

The novel begins in December 1814: Napoleon is in exile, and Dortchen Wild’s father has died. Dortchen has good reason to dance for joy. Shortly after, Wilhelm Grimm, whom she first met in 1805 when she was aged twelve, re-enters her life. Dare they hope for a life together? Her parents have disapproved of the impoverished Wilhelm.

This is both a love story and an account of how the brothers Grimm discovered their famous fairy tales. In 1806, Hesse-Cassel was invaded by the French and Dortchen met with Wilhelm in secret to tell him the stories she knows. The brothers Grimm collected these old stories, wanting to save them from the domination of French culture.

‘No story was just a story, though. It was a suitcase stuffed with secrets.’

Dortchen is trapped at home with her parents as one by one her sisters marry and move away. Her father is cruel and abusive, and Dortchen longs to escape. Even after her father dies, she and Wilhelm are unable to marry: he is too poor to support himself, let alone a wife. But, despite setbacks, and not being acknowledged as a source of some of the stories, Dortchen eventually finds her own happy ending. After Napoleon is finally overthrown, and once the fairy tale collection becomes successful, Dortchen and Wilhelm are finally able to marry. They then live, happily ever after, with Wilhelm’s elder brother Jakob.

‘To see the ordinary as extraordinary, the familiar as strange, the mundane as sacred, the finite as infinite.’ (Novalis)

I enjoyed this novel and the way the story is presented. Much of the story is told through conversation, which brings the people and the times to life. The collection of the fairy tales specifically referred to in the novel serves to underline some aspects of the lives of the Wild sisters. Truth and myth reinforce each other. Until I read this novel, I’d not given a lot of thought to either the lives of the brothers Grimm, or how they collected their stories. And I’d never heard of Dortchen Wild.

‘Stories are important too,’ Dortchen said. ‘Stories help make sense of things. They make you believe you can do things.’

Jennifer Cameron-Smith

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Sasha Rajak

Enchanting!

Reviewed in Australia on 1 June 2015

This novel is a wonderful introduction to historical fiction. Enthralling and intriguing, Kate Forsyth once again demonstrates her talents in reimagining the lives of Wilhelm Grimm and Dortchen Wild’. I finished The Wild Girl in one sitting – it is that sort of book. Right from the first page, the lyrical words enchant the reader and hold them captive until the very end. It is a tangible world of the 1800s, full of darkness and festivals; joy and captivity. Kate Forsyth must be congratulated for the detailed research she has conducted, and for all the hours it must have taken her to complete this masterpiece. Truly an instant classic, The Wild Girl is a novel that will sit on shelves for many years to come.

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Pollyanna

A magical read

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 9 April 2017

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I loved this book.It had a lovely balance of realism and fairytale.
It is the very well researched tale of The Brothers Grimm and their neighbours, and concentrates on the relationship and romance between Wilhelm Grimm and the girl next door,who told him many of the tales which were recorded in his books.
The book finds a beautiful balance between fact and imagination.I found myself absorbed in the history and could see the houses, streets and people so clearly, I felt like I was actually there.I could almost smell the food cooking over the fire!
This isn't a flowery tale for the feint hearted.It is gritty and sad in places and there are descriptions of sexual abuse which are quite harrowing, though sensitively portrayed.

Kate Forsyth has obviously spent a long time researching her characters and has included all the history of the time in a very palatable way.She is a gifted story teller who has told the story of other gifted story tellers in a beautiful way.Thank goodness for The Brothers Grimm and thank goodness for Kate Forsyth.

Reader

A wonderful book

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 18 November 2013

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The Wild Girl is a beautifully written account of how the Grimm brothers came to collect their folk tales, evoking snowy woods and the
danger and poverty of living in Germany through the Napoleonic wars. I loved the evocation of the life of the Grimm family and the family of Dortchen Wild,
who was the source of many of the folk tales. I had always wanted to know more about this time period, on the cusp of the Romantic movement, and found it
fascinatingly and believably evoked.

This is also a very clever book, revealing how the psychology of old legends and fairy tales can sometimes speak to and heal the lives of those who
tell them. The author has a very interesting take on how the tales that Dortchen told to Wilhlem Grimm were a vehicle for communicating a dark secret
that was hard to convey in any other way. This is based on the author's research and I found it very convincing.

This is a wonderful book, especially at winter time and for reading on snowy nights by the fireside. It also contains a satisfying slice of pre-
Victorian history.
Highly recommend. I am now reading Bitter Greens and I hope that these books will be the first of many historical novels by Kate Forsyth.

4 people found this helpful

Paula Mc

Fantastic storytelling.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 5 August 2014

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I read 'Bitter Greens' also by Kate Forsyth a few months ago and I enjoyed it immensely, the story was well written and I loved all the characters and how I grew to care for them.

I enjoyed 'The Wild Girl' just as much, the character of Dortchen is brilliant to read, there is so much to like about her, she's responsible, spirited, caring, stubborn and tells wonderful stories which she shares with Wilhelm Grimm.

The story intertwines history that Dortchen and her family witness and suffer and the joys of storytelling. I felt they worked well together because during the times of darkness and unrest the stories that were shared helped the people around them. Dortchen's relationship with her father is complicated and as the story progresses it becomes more complicated, it leaps off the page as you read, I could not help but hate her father, there was rare moments of how caring he could be but they were few and far between.

Dortchen and Wilhelm's relationship was lovely to read and so much keeps them apart, I have never wanted characters in a book to have a happy ending as much as I wanted Dortchen and Wilhelm to have theirs.

After I finished 'The Wild Girl' I read about Wihelm and Dortchen, they had a good life together which make this story even more special.

I am looking forward to reading more books by Kate Forsyth.

Lady Fancifull

Dark story needing more spark in the telling

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 20 June 2015

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I started Kate Forsyth's The Wild Girl, a weaving of the story of the Brothers Grimm and the mostly female storytellers who recounted the folk tales to the brothers, with high hopes, which, sadly, were never quite met.

I'd recently read Forsyth's earlier book for adults, Bitter Greens , a wonderfully woven story of the real woman at the court of Louis 1Vth, the Sun King, Charlotte-Rose de Caumont de la Force, who was a story teller and writer, and how her life underlined the inner story of the fairy/folk tale of Rapunzel, one of the stories which she narrated. In that book, Forsyth does a brilliant juggling act with three voices, the real Charlotte Rose, the character within the Rapunzel story, and an ancient sister in a convent who explains a certain mystery around the Rapunzel story's real provenance.

In this later book, there is one central narrator told in the third person voice, that of Dortchen Wild, `The Wild Girl' (double meanings inherent). Set in the early part of the nineteenth century, the story is one of real people and real history, interspersed with versions of the folk tales the Grimm Brothers collected. However, where research yields certain facts, there are always holes in the why of things, and it is this which lies at the heart of Forsyth's book, both its strength, in lifting dry facts into something which makes sense in the lives of real people, and its weakness - sometimes suppositions may be delivered as a kind of dark secret, a skeleton in a cupboard; one which may in fact be either bare, or hold a different skeleton entirely.

The facts are these : the Grimm Brothers were very poor, and their family was large - mainly brothers, with one sister. This sister was the playmate of one of the daughters of a neighbouring large family - predominantly daughters, of a higher financial strata - the Wild father was a herbalist. One of the daughters, Dortchen, 7 years younger than Wilhem Grimm, was the source of many of those stories. Wilhelm and Dortchen wished to marry. The Wild paterfamilias was a harsh father and the poverty of the Grimm's meant permission was denied. Indeed, the Wild father was overbearing, cruel, and incredibly controlling, by all accounts. Neither Dortchen nor Wilhelm married others, though their regard for each other was noted.

The historical background of this was primarily taking place as Bonaparte was building France an Empire, and Europe - whether in countries already occupied by France, or fighting against occupation - was at war, and its citizens often near starvation to fund that war.

When the Wild father dies, the obstacle to Dortchen and William marrying was removed, yet there was a 10 year wait, filled with unhappiness for both, before that marriage happened, and it seemed to be in the end to have been a happy marriage, which both desired. It is Forsyth's `invention, or perhaps her intuition - true or false - which provides the answers to that 10 year wait.

I had a certain unease, which I get frequently, when the lives of real people are used for invention - specifically when what is invented may be blackwash. It may be true - but then again, it may not be. It's a kind of ethical dilemma really, possibly calumny against a long dead person whom no one has probably heard of (except research scholars)

My second slight disappointment was with the extreme, almost undecorated simplicity of the story-telling and language in which it is told. Forsyth is clear and plain, perhaps too clear, too plain - in some ways it is of course the perfect voice for the telling of a fairy tale, as this is the strength of the fairy tale, its language is unvarnished, without much in the way of descriptive embellishment. But fairy tales are short. This is a novel of over 500 pages, and I began to long for the dreadful waiting for Dortchen and Wilhelm to be condensed, for the story to be nipped and tucked and condensed - or, alternatively the language in which it was being told to have more variation and richness of tone

It is certainly a more than okay book, and the weaving of some of the stories being collected, and the real events in the lives of the two families, not to mention an excellent evocation of time, place and historical detail, are all strengths, but it needed more sparkle, I think, in the telling. True, there wasn't, often, much to sparkle at - unlike her earlier book, where both Charlotte-Rose and the ancient nun were both women of wit and vivacity - the central characters in this book are all fairly ground down and a little too dour to allow for much light and colour

3 ½ stars, rounded up

Squiggle

when will the story get going...?

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 14 June 2014

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I am nearly half way through this book and don't find it particularly absorbing - I keep asking 'when will the story start?'. It's ponderous and repetitive. I read 'Bitter Greens' first and that was more involving and had a bit of mystery and intrigue figuring out how the three narratives fitted together. This is just a bit dull - a very slow burn of a 'love story between Dortchen Wild ('The Wild Girl') and Wilhelm Grimm - even the snippets of stories related to Wilhelm that he transcribes for his book of fairytales with his brother seem incidental to the story. I hope it picks up soon or it'll feel like wasted time reading it...If it does I'll write an updated review to compensate for this one!

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