Aimee Bender s stunning debut collection, The Girl in the Flammable Skirt, proved her to be one of the freshest voices in American fiction. Now, in her first novel, she builds on that early promise. Mona Gray was ten when her father contracted a mysterious illness and she became a quitter, abandoning each of her talents just as pleasure became intense. The only thing she can t stop doing is math: She knocks on wood, adds her steps, and multiplies people in the park against one another. When Mona begins teaching math to second-graders, she finds a ready audience. But the...
Aimee Bender s stunning debut collection, The Girl in the Flammable Skirt, proved her to be one of the freshest voices in American fict...
"Contemporary fairy tales, cushioned by goofy humor and a deep tenderness for her characters, that aren't always as dark or as sinister as they initially appear." --The New York Times Book Review Aimee Bender s Willful Creatures conjures a fantastical world in which authentic love blooms. This is a place where a boy with keys for fingers is a hero, a woman s children are potatoes, and a little boy with an iron for a head is born to a family of pumpkin heads. With her singular mix of surrealism, musical prose, and keenly felt emotion, Bender once again proves herself to be...
"Contemporary fairy tales, cushioned by goofy humor and a deep tenderness for her characters, that aren't always as dark or as sinister as they ini...
On the eve of her ninth birthday, unassuming Rose Edelstein bites into her mother's homemade lemon-chocolate cake and discovers she has a magical gift: she can taste her mother's emotions in the slice. To her horror, she finds that her cheerful mother tastes of despair. Soon, she's privy to the secret knowledge that most families keep hidden: her father's detachment, her mother's transgression, her brother's increasing retreat from the world. But there are some family secrets that even her cursed taste buds can't discern.
On the eve of her ninth birthday, unassuming Rose Edelstein bites into her mother's homemade lemon-chocolate cake and discovers she has a magical g...
In these tales, with one foot firmly planted in the present, Maxwell brings a certain sophisticated urbanity to the oral traditions of the fable and fairy tale. The total effect is of something midway between the Brothers Grimm and Kafka, with perhaps a touch of Zen. (NYRB April 1966) While modern enough in locale and context, they are as old as humanity itself in what concerns them. And always that voice, the age old voice of the storyteller, the eternal magic of the speaking human voice. Such simplicity takes true artistry and Maxwell has that in spades."
In these tales, with one foot firmly planted in the present, Maxwell brings a certain sophisticated urbanity to the oral traditions of the fable and f...
