Published in 2025
300 pages
Plum Johnson is an author and artist living in Toronto. Her 2014 memoir, They Left Us Everything, won the RBC Taylor Prize and was a #1 national bestseller.
What is this book about?
The long-awaited second memoir from Plum Johnson
The Trouble with Fairy Tales is a wise and insightful reflection on the relationships that sprawl across a lifetime. In it, Plum explores how we often sacrifice our independence and identity in our love lives, falling for the fairytale notion of “happily ever after”, and how it can take years, and many detours, to fulfil the most important relationship—the one with ourselves.
Ripe with the humorous anecdotes, charming insights, and aching revelations so characteristic of Plum’s style, the book is our window onto her reinvention of self as she moves through the various roles that many women inhabit: from compliant child to loving mother, rebel wife, artist, and successful writer.
Plum’s writing urges her readers to turn inward to reach a deeper understanding of their own tangled relationships. Funny and resonant, The Trouble with Fairy Tales is the kind of striking personal narrative that will stir and inspire women of all ages.
“Plum Johnson upends every cliché about growing old in this prequel/sequel to her award-winning memoir, They Left Us Everything. This ‘coming of age’ story grabs you and shakes you up, catching you off guard as Plum takes the art of reinvention to new heights. . . . Forget Aesop, Brothers’ Grimm, or TV’s Golden Girls: Plum’s real-life cast is pure platinum.”
─Roxana Spicer, bestselling author of The Traitor’s Daughter
