The Modern Fairies by Clare Pollard
Lauren Groff's Matrix meets Ophelia Field's The Favourite in this wry, sexy, and sharp historical novel--inspired by true events--featuring an elite group of Paris intellectuals who perform fairy tales that will change the course of literature--and put both the storytellers and their closely kept secrets in grave danger. Why don't they tell you it is the beautiful princess who becomes the evil queen; that they are just the same person at different points in their story? At a safe distance from the intrigues of courtly life at Louis XIV's Versailles, an intellectual crowd of mostly women have been gathering in a Parisian home to share what hostess Marie D'Aulnoy herself has christened contes de f es: fairy tales. Recently ousted from court and still raw from the death of his beloved wife, Charles Perrault finds companionship and creative camaraderie at the salon, where he eagerly joins the storytellers. Their hostess is impressive, fiercely intelligent, but somehow unreadable. She is harboring secrets of her own: sold off as a child in marriage to a brutal baron, imprisonment, scandal. Despite the vicious Versailles gossip, Marie has mysteriously been allowed to return to polite society and establish her salon in the heart of Paris. A devastating winter soon sweeps in, bringing with it all kinds of rumors and fears. A spate of poisonings at Versailles has led to several arrests, and no matter how high born the suspect, it seems no one is safe. Paranoia stokes the King's insecurities, and there is a wolf among the salon's members--someone more dangerous than any force they could conjure in their own tales, watching and waiting, reporting on the secret goings-on, and threatening to destroy them one by one. Brilliant and bawdy, witty and wise, Modern Fairies is a dazzling novel of stories within stories, familiar tales spun with fresh and provocative meaning, perfect for fans of Jenny Offill, Deborah Levy, and Angela Carter.
Naoko Matsubara is an internationally renowned woodcut artist, whose works are in public collections across Canada, the United States, the UK and Europe. She is the recipient of numerous awards and commissions and has exhibited in four continents. Penny Boxall is the author of two collections: Ship of the Line and Who Goes There? (Valley Press, 2018). She won the 2016 Edwin Morgan Poetry Award; the Mslexia/PBS Women's Poetry Competition 2018; and a 2019 Northern Writers' Award. She is Royal Literary Fund Fellow at the University of York, and has held residencies at Merton College, Oxford, Hawthornden Castle and Gladstone's Library.
| SKU | Unavailable |
| ISBN 13 | 9781668049419 |
| ISBN 10 | 1668049414 |
| Title | The Modern Fairies |
| Author | Clare Pollard |
| Condition | Unavailable |
| Binding Type | Hardback |
| Publisher | Simon & Schuster |
| Year published | 2024-07-23 |
| Number of pages | 272 |
| Cover note | Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary. |
| Note | Unavailable |