The Reasonable Ogre: Tales for the Sick and Well

"The Reasonable Ogre is a marvel, and a tribute to the power of story. The illustrations and language are so entwined as to be inseparable, and they cast a beautiful spell. Mike Barnes is a real fairy-tale creature."—Kate Bernheimer, author of Horse, Flower, Bird

In the world of The Reasonable Ogre, magic is nothing if not paradoxical. Ogres can indeed be reasonable, prisons may prove porous, gifts often come disguised as curses, and springs gone dry are only waiting to resurface. At once comic and moving, troubling and restorative, Mike Barnes’s original stories are here to remind us that fairy tales aren’t about the happily-ever-after: they’re about the strange detours we take trying to get there. With seventy drawings from the striking brush of Segbingway.


Mike Barnes is the author of The Lily Pond: A Memoir of Madness, Memory, Myth, and Metamorphosis, two novels, two volumes of poetry, and two short fiction collections.

Segbingway is an artist who lives in Toronto.