Anything but Ordinary

Emily Urquhart has chosen an appropriate title for her third book, which successfully blends the analytic rigour of the essay with the structures and motifs of various “wonder tales”— a term she prefers to either “folklore” or “fairy tale.” The author’s academic and journalistic training, her eye for the strange and marvellous, and her expertise in European fables all come together in this curious gathering of stories borrowed from everyday life. While Ordinary Wonder Tales is replete with autobiographical fragments, the tone is restrained: self-analysis never courts self-indulgence, and personal experiences merge seamlessly into the yarns we spin and the beliefs we pass down.

The book’s third essay, “Chimera,” opens like an anthropological study. In Mesopotamia, we read, pregnant women kept amulets in the shape of Lamashtu, a “feathery, lion-headed demon” whose name means...