Bound to be the Wetlands of the short-pants set

From the Guardian comes the story of a rather grim fairytale:

The word "slut" appears in the first line of Margo Lanagan's new book, Tender Morsels. The next few paragraphs describe an unsettling sex scene between a witch and a dwarf. For some parents this will simply be an upfront way of indicating the challenging content of an interesting novel for young people, for others it will signal the end of children's literature.

The novel, published this month by Random House, is a lurid reworking of Grimm's Snow White and Rose Red fairytale and also contains a gang rape and a frank description of a miscarriage. Within the book industry, the new title from the Australian author is already being described as uncompromising and controversial.

Of course, there’s a renewed call for some kind of book rating system as a result of all this. (I wish they had something like that when I was a kid. It would have saved me a lot of time, otherwise wasted on reading books without lurid depictions of sex or violence.)