Happily Ever After. Fairy Tales and Rescue in Sandra Cisneros' The House on Mango Street

In real life, you sit on the subway and you see a beautiful girl. Truth is, you arenБЂ™t going to dinner with her, you arenБЂ™t taking her home, you arenБЂ™t going to live happily ever after. In fact, you arenБЂ™t even going to talk to her. But in a novel, all that good stuff happens. ItБЂ™s a way to live vicariously. Same for crime fiction. In real life, your house gets burgled or your car gets ripped off, they arenБЂ™t going to find the bad guys, and you arenБЂ™t going to get your stuff back. Someone bullies or disrespects you at work or in school or in a relationship, there isnБЂ™t much you can do about it. But something can be done about it in a book, and people enjoy watching it happen. They love it. ItБЂ™s closure, albeit also vicarious. So I wanted Reacher to do what we all want to do ourselves-stand strong and unafraid, never back off, never back down, come up with the smart replies. I thought of all the situations that we-timid, uncertain, scared, worried, humiliated-find ourselves in and imagined a kind of therapeutic consolation in seeing our wildest dreams acted out on the page ...»