The most astonishing American literary debut of the year. Judy Budnitz might just be the most exciting and unusual literary figure to emerge from the US literary thicket this year. This is a truly strange and striking tale that begins in the deep, and deeply magical, European forest, in the world depicted in Chagall's paintings and Grimms' Fairy Tales, and proceeds to tell the story of four generations of women from one fated family. Budnitz builds her book with wit and art somewhere in the gaps between magic realism, family saga and female bildungsroman. She marries great technical skill to quirky humour and dizzying metaphor. She has an uncanny knack for the destabilizing and indelible image, but does not abandon sense for sensibility. She is always readable, albeit strangely so. She might yet be an Americanized heir to the throne left vacant by Angela Carter.
- ISBN10 0002259052
- ISBN13 9780002259057
- Publish Date 11 April 2000 (first published 27 November 1999)
- Publish Status Active
- Out of Print 18 July 2001
- Publish Country GB
- Publisher HarperCollins Publishers
- Imprint Flamingo
- Format Hardcover
- Pages 304
- Language English
- URL http://harpercollins.co.uk