Synopses & Reviews
The Complete Tales of Ketzia Gold is a lavishly poetic novel that recounts through folklore and fairy stories the visionary obsessions of a passionate young woman. The narrative moves freely through time and space, uniting Ketzia Gold's early childhood with her sexual awakenings, creating a dreamscape of haunting vividness. Young Ketzia inhabits a storybook world of hallucinatory comedy and terror, surrounded by predatory adults, talking magnolias, and troll-like siblings. Her childhood romance with talented, brilliant Adam Brown flowers briefly into a marriage of tenderness and erotic fervor, but Ketzia cannot escape her own intelligence, and soon finds herself compelled toward intoxicating self-destruction.
Kate Bernheimer draws upon the motifs of traditional German, Russian and Yiddish folklore to shape Ketzia's bewildering adventures. The Complete Tales of Ketzia Gold embroiders a visionary realism in the manner of Doris Lessing and Clarice Lispector, making Bernheimer's story a rich tapestry, patterned after childhood longings and the luxuriant complexity of womanhood.
Review
"The Complete Tales of Ketzia Gold is an exceptional...book, beautifully enigmatic, speaking a language that mysteriously evokes the unspoken." Lydia Millet
Review
"Bernheimer has constructed a...compelling narrative by cobbling together the plot lines of a wide variety of fairy tales." Kathryn Davis
Review
"Original and beautifully written...Kate Bernheimer is an exceptional writer of fiction." Fanny Howe
Synopsis
The Complete Tales of Ketzia Gold is a lavishly poetic novel that draws upon the motifs of traditional German, Russian and Yiddish folklore and fairy stories to recount the visionary obsessions of a passionate young woman.
Synopsis
The Complete Tales of Ketzia Gold is a lavishly poetic novel that draws upon the motifs of traditional German, Russian and Yiddish folklore and fairy stories to recount the visionary obsessions of a passionate young woman. The narrative moves freely through time and space, uniting Ketzia Gold's early childhood with her sexual awakenings, creating a dreamscape of haunting vividness. Marked by a logical illogic and disarmingly sane madness, this haunting and innovative fable creates an emotional landscape that's as impossible to escape as it is for young Ketzia to inhabit. Kate Bernheimer interweaves hypnotic imagery and everyday life, moving back and forth through time, piecing together the fragments of memory and imagination with an obsessive lyricism that recalls the poetic fictions of Carol Maso. Bernheimer's story is a rich tapestry, patterned with childhood longings and the luxuriant complexity of womanhood.
About the Author
Kate Bernheimer is a lecturer in English at Pacific Northwest College of Art in Portland, Oregon. She has been a George Bennett Fellow in Creative Writing at Phillips Exeter Academy in New Hampshire and has taught in the Summer Writing Program at Harvard. She edited Mirror, Mirror on the Wall: Women Writers Explore their Favorite Fairy Tales (Anchor Books, 1998). The Complete Tales of Ketzia Gold is her first novel.