AB Endacott's Mirror Mirror

A B Endacott’s Mirror Mirror is a mini-book, an essay on the importance of narratives and a fabulous look at our world as storytellers. First up Mirror Mirror gives us reason to celebrate because it is the first offering from a new publishing house Debut Books. Against all odds it seems the Australian publishing industry managed to grow during Covid which is a stunning testament to how powerful and important stories and reading have been in our lockdown experiences. Sucha healthy industry should be fostering independent publishers and that’s exactly what Debut Books is. The mission of Debut is to foster unique Australian stories and so I’m pretty excited to see what they’ve got coming. Mirror Mirror is compact offering at under one hundred pages but it punches above its weight in big ideas. The imagery of the title explores the role of stories in reflecting our society. There’s also an interesting sleight of hand in that it also takes in the ways we as storytellers inhabit those stories and often can come to inhabit our own reflections. I don’t want to get too theoretical early in the morning but this is really where storytelling and narrative theory gets interesting. Endacott looks at the story of Cinderella, exploring the various iterations of the fairy tale back to their folklore origins. In the ways the story has been told we can see cultural values reflected. From connections to nature, to the necessity or even desirability of violence in meeting out justice. Cinderella takes us to Disney and their control of a huge market share of storytelling across the world. What does it mean for one company and presumably one company line to hold so much power over the stories that you grew up with and are perhaps now sharing with your kids. AB Endacott asks these questions in a relatable way and her conversational style guides the reader through some tricky points of theory to help us see why stories matter. And if you’ll indulge me for a sec I want to reinforce that point about stories and the way they are told being oh so important… Cast your mind to some of the biggest news stories in Australia at the moment. So much of what we are discussing depends on who gets to tell the story and whose story will be listened to. The right to tell stories and the right to be heard has never been equally shared in our society. Too often the most powerful have assumed their right to tell the dominant narrative and for it to be listened to unquestioned. But we should be asking about which stories and why. What do the stories we follow tell us about who we are as a culture. Check out Mirror Mirror on the podcast