Faery Tale

Faery Tale : One Woman's Search for Enchantment in a Modern World by Signe Pike
Hardcover: 320 pages
Publisher: Perigee Trade (November 2, 2010)
ISBN-10: 0399536175

Product Description

In search of something to believe in once more, Signe Pike left behind a career in Manhattan to undertake a magical journey-literally. In a sweeping tour through Mexico, England, Ireland, Scotland, and beyond, she takes readers to dark glens and abandoned forests, ancient sacred sites, and local pubs, seeking people who might still believe in the elusive beings we call faeries. As Pike attempts to connect with the spirit world-and reconnect with her sense of wonder and purpose-she comes to view both herself and the world around her in a profoundly new light.
Captivating, full of heart, and unabashedly whimsical, Faery Tale is more than a memoir-it's the story of rekindling that spark of belief that makes even the most skeptical among us feel like a child again.
This book had a slow beginning for me... but somewhere along the line I found myself thinking that this was something that many of us would like to do. Go back to a simpler time.  Go back to before you found out there was no Santa Claus or Easter Bunny. When it was simple to believe in things that made you happy.  Find the Faery that makes your dreams come true.
Excerpt:
"I really don't believe in faeries.  But I really want to.  Not just for me, but for all of us.  Because we are battered by adulthood...by taxes, by loss, by laundry, by nine to five, by deceit and distrust, by the crushing desire to be thin, wealthy, successful, popular, happy in love. All the while, we are walking on a planet that is disintegrating around us.
Wow.. what a great paragraph.. I think it was then that I decided I really wanted to read this book. .... Let's go find us some faeries!
The best thing I can do for a review for this book is to write some excepts from the book..... so here we go...
While talking with locals in England:
"Have you been out to the stone circle in Scorhill? Of course I hadn't. "If there are faeries anywhere, she smiled, You'll find them on Dartmoor."
I had also thought that the stone circles were somehow connected with the Druids. But hard facts  pointed out that this was an impossibility..these circles predated Druids by thousands of years. So why did I have the impression that Druids and faeries might be connected anyway?  Maybe because if faeries weren't a Christian convention they had to be a Pagen one.  And Druids were pagens.  But then again, wasn't everyone back then who wasn't a Christian considered a Pagen?
Also when she was searching in  England, Chagford Devon, to be precise, she decided to see if she could meet and talk with  Brian and Wendy Froud. (...yes, Froud of the famous Faery artists)...
As I approached the tiny hamlet of Stiniel, the leaves from the towering oaks overhead dappled the road with patterns that danced in the sunshine. 
A tall hedge ran, ten feet if not taller, on both sides of me, and I couldn't help but feel as though I was walking a lordly green corridor that led all the way to the ancient "Stone Hall".  At last the hedges ended and I came to a rusted fence that ran alongside a field of tall grass and wildflowers.  Beyond, the cluster of cottages that made up Stineiel came into view. A two-story house had been clipped from the pages of a Grimms' fairy tale and duly pasted onto the horizon.  Tall and hewn out of hefty stone, a thatched-straw roof arched across it from which two chubby stone chimneys protruded.  Just gazing at it made me hopeful.  Who knew places like this could really exist?
Their clothes were simple, ordinary... but there was something about the way they looked that made them seem somehow timeless.  Maybe it was Wendy's long, wavy red hair, or Brian's mustache, glasses, and rosy cheeks.  But something told me I had stumbled into Faery land.  A rather complicated woman once asked me, "what are we here for, if not to live our own fairytales?"  Sitting at the table with Brian and Wendy Froud, I knew I'd been led to exactly the right place.
I will leave you with one last excerpt from the book...
..as they mountain climbed...
Eventually we were completely enclosed by the sheer rock walls, and the boulders and split fissures in the rocks were easy homes for elves and dwarves.  I felt like we could be ambushed by Orcs at any moment. I hoped Orlando Bloom would step out to save me.
I definitely want to be on that mountain when Orlando Bloom comes bounding out!!!
So here we are.. I finished the book and now want a Faery home and I want more than ever to go to England!  Not only do I want to see Cath and Merlin's cave but now I want to see some Faery's!  Or at least where they once existed.
This was an enjoyable book.  It didn't leap out at me, it had a slow beginning and it lacked only one thing... photographs!! It would have been even more interesting if I could have seen some of the area's she was describing!  I guess that's why there are airplanes huh?!   :o)