Almost a set of short stories, this novel breaks into discrete episodes, centered on identity, love, and death. Jaqe has no identity until she meets Laurie, introduced and named by Mother Night; in that moment, she knows herself, and that she loves Laurie. But once Mother Night has become part of their lives, Laurie and Jaqe and their daughter Kate cannot live as other people do. Knowing Death, inevitably each of them seeks to use the knowledge, to bargain with Death, and to change the terms in the balance of life and death in the world. Pollack's characters, major and supporting, living, dead, and divine, are memorably human. As she transplants myths and folklore into a modern setting, she gives new life to old tales and a deeper meaning to a seemingly simple world.
Winner of the World Fantasy Award for best novel, 1997
- ISBN10 0349108366
- ISBN13 9780349108360
- Publish Date 7 November 1996 (first published 1 September 1996)
- Publish Status Out of Print
- Out of Print 31 December 2009
- Publish Country GB
- Publisher Little, Brown Book Group
- Imprint Abacus
- Format Paperback (UK Trade)
- Pages 356
- Language English