A modern reimagining of a classic fairy tale by one of most bewitching, idiosyncratic British writers of the twentieth century.
Bella Winter has hit a low. Homeless and jobless, she is the mother of a toddler by a man whose name she didn’t quite catch, and her once pretty face is disfigured by the scar she acquired in a car accident. Friendless and without family, she’s recently disentangled herself from a selfish and indifferent boyfriend and a cruel and indifferent mother. But she shares a quality common to Barbara Comyns’s other heroines: a bracingly unsentimental ability to carry on. Before too long, Bella has found not only a job but a vocation; not only a place to live but a home and a makeshift family. As Comyns’s novel progresses, the story echoes and inverts the Brothers Grimm’s macabre tale The Juniper Tree. Will Bella’s hard-won restoration to life and love come at the cost of the happiness of others?
- ISBN10 0312302193
- ISBN13 9780312302191
- Publish Date 1 December 1985 (first published 4 April 1985)
- Publish Status Active
- Out of Print 23 June 2016
- Publish Country US
- Imprint Griffin
- Format Paperback (US Trade)
- Pages 192
- Language English