What the...? Another odd 'Goosle' review

From Sam Lubell in SFRevu:

Margo Lanagan's horrific and disturbing "The Goosle" is a sequel to the fairy tale of Hansel and Gretel in which a mentally handicapped Hansel returns to the mudwife's castle in the company of a con artist who regularly takes sexual advantage of the ignorant Hansel.

Mentally handicapped? This is a boy who's taught himself to navigate by the stars, a very thoughtful boy with a strong sense of justice and an instince to act on it at the first opportunity. His only handicap has been his own youth, innocence and physical powerlessness; oh, and the fact that his family cast him out might have set him back a bit, too. But mentally handicapped? Sam, you are just wrong.

And where did this castle come from? Where was the castle in the original? And how do you manufacture a castle out of:

Why, that is the mudwife’s house, I thought. ... The house looked just as it did in my memory: the crumbling, glittery yellow walls, the dreadful roof sealed with drippy white mud. ... then came a convulsion in the house. A face passed the window-hole, and there she was at the door. ...As soon as I was out of sight of the mud-house I stopped in the forest...

Don't tell me there's not enough fantasy in the story, and you have to go creating your own...

And yes, I know, authors shouldn't respond to reviews. But, really.