Mangled relationships

 I thought I could be both. Mostly grandmother, and on occasion a bit wolf.

Idra Novey, Take What You Need

Little Red Riding Hood is not the only fairy-tale allusion in Idra Novey's striking 2023 novel Take What You Need. The story may also remind readers of Cinderella or any fairy tale with a wicked stepmother. Is Jean, Leah's stepmother, wicked or not? Is she the grandmother or the wolf?

Leah loved her stepmother when she was a little girl, but Jean's marriage to her father didn't last, and the two were separated for many years. A reunion a few years before left Leah questioning her previous affection for Jean, and they parted under unpleasant circumstances. Now with a family of her own, Leah learns Jean has died and she is invited by a man named Elliott to come to Jean's house to, in effect, "take what you need."

In alternate chapters we read Leah's story in the present and Jean's story filling in the time between her marriage to Leah's father and her own death from falling off a sculpture in her own home.

Jean is a frustrated artist who uses her retirement years to create sculptures in her living room. She calls them Manglements. Her art is made from scrap metal, discarded mirrors and other junk found in her Appalachian town —"take what you need," in other words. Eventually it becomes so enormous, yet so impressive, that after her death nobody knows what to do with it.

Elliott is a young man with no apparent future,  but with an unsuspected appreciation for art. He provides the muscle for her work and eventually moves in with her. In between he often breaks into her house at night (while she listens from her bed) and steals things — once again, "take what you need."

The novel's three major characters have complex relationships with one another, each of them mostly grandmother, and on occasion a bit wolf.