Tender Morsels
2008 novel by Margo Lanagan
Tender Morsels (2008) is a novel by Australian author Margo Lanagan. It won the Ditmar Award in 2009 for Best Novel and was joint winner of the 2009 World Fantasy Award for Best Novel.
Plot summary
Based on the Brothers Grimm story of "Snow-White and Rose-Red", this novel tells the story of 15-year-old motherless Liga, who has been repeatedly raped by her father. When she is pregnant with her third child – the first two having been forcibly miscarried – she attempts to take her own life but is instead transported to a magical place; a haven from the real world where she and her two daughters, gentle Branza and wild Urdda, are safe from threat. But the membrane separating her new world from her old begins to rupture, bringing reality and old wounds to light, and healing.
Notes
Dedication: For my sisters, Susi, Jude and Amanda.
Reviews
Meg Rosoff in The Guardian found that "Tender Morsels, by the Australian author Margo Lanagan, is funny, tragic, wise, tender and beautifully written.
“Tender Morsels” enters the record as 2008 novel by Margo Lanagan. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Tender, Morsels and novel can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Object files, edition statements, performance records and contemporary criticism preserve different stages of the work’s history. The source revision retrieved here is dated May 28, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q21161274. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2008 and 2009.
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This entry incorporates text from “Tender Morsels” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.