Hans's Reviews > The Fairy Tales of Hermann Hesse

I can feel Hesse's personal struggles through his writing. That almost all of these tales are about "coming home" clearly shows how eagerly he himself was seeking after that elusive destination. I did however struggle to appreciate the style or layout and direction. The stories felt like first drafts that he never meant to be published, like notebook doodling. It has to do with how he chose to tell the story in such a haphazard way, and I am not sure if that was his original intention or if he was merely trying to reflect the chaos and sense of meaninglessness of what he felt life is like. Either way, I got where he was going with it, I just didn't think he did it in an especially moving or telling way. I will say that most of these were written before any of his major works, so these could be looked at in light of being his "coming of age" writing