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Fabulous

ebook
2 of 2 copies available
2 of 2 copies available
Not since Angela Carter's The Bloody Chamber have old stories been made to feel so electrically new. Not since Wim Winders' Wings of Desire have the numinous and the everyday been so magically combined. It's in the nature of myth to be infinitely adaptable. Each of these startlingly original stories is set in modern Britain. Their characters include a people-trafficking gang-master and a prostitute, a migrant worker and a cocksure estate agent, an elderly musician doubly befuddled by dementia and the death of his wife, a pest-controller suspected of paedophilia and a librarian so well-behaved that her parents wonder anxiously whether she'll ever find love. They're ordinary people, preoccupied, as we all are now, by the deficiencies of the health service, by criminal gangs and homelessness, by the pitfalls of dating in the age of #metoo. All of their stories, though, are inspired by ones drawn from Graeco-Roman myth, from the Bible or from folk-lore. The ancients invented myths to express what they didn't understand. These witty fables, elegantly written and full of sharp-eyed observation of modern life, are also visionary explorations of potent mysteries and strange passions, charged with the hallucinatory beauty and horror of their originals.
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    • Publisher's Weekly

      November 25, 2019
      The characters in the eight clever stories collected for this offbeat volume include estate agents, window washers, and pest controllers, all of whom have the souls of gods and legendary beings from myths and folktales. In “Orpheus,” a music hall singer named Oz is devastated to discover that his wife Eurydice’s essence has been trapped in the underworld, leaving her comatose body aboveground. The title character of “Piper” is a bus-driving exterminator who abducts a town’s children to become his traveling commune of performing “folkies” after the parents refuse to pay him for remedying their rat infestation. In “Pasiphae,” Minos is a refugee-exploiting business manager and his consort gives birth to a bull-like son spawned from her liaison with a short-order cook nicknamed Toro. “Joseph” and “Mary Magdalene” both present characters from the Bible in inventive modern scenarios. Hallett (Peculiar Ground) forges novel situations for her quirky characters, and each retelling works well as a modern story in its own right. This collection shows how classic themes continue to inform the fiction of today.

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  • OverDrive Read
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Languages

  • English

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