Product Description
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.
From Publishers Weekly
Flitting into a state resembling madness, the protagonist of this unconventional debut snips the story of her life into a strip of patchwork pieces, alternating vignettes with retellings of German, Russian and Yiddish folk tales. Ketzia Gold is the middle of three sisters, the most difficult and prone to flights of fancy ("for a short but rather confusing time when I was younger, my sisters and I turned into flowers"). She sleeps in the dog's bed and hides out at the library, but other people tell her she is clever and pretty, and Adam Brown, the smartest boy in her class at school, wants to marry her. When they grow up, they do marry, and for a while they are happy together, Adam working as a department store pianist and Ketzia as a transcriptionist for the Triple D detective firm. But their happiness is not fated to last: first, Adam's twin sister, Abby, moves in, and Adam seems unnaturally fixated on her. Ketzia leaves abruptly, only returning when Abby finally goes away. Then, in a Bluebeard-like twist, Adam gives Ketzia a set of keys and tells her never to look in a certain hall closet. Of course, Ketzia is unable to resist and finds only a stash of innocent photographs. After a period of stumbling malaise, Ketzia leaves Adam again to wander alone in an unnamed hot Southern state. Narrated in a deadpan, childlike voice, Ketzia's story is a fragmented contemporary fairy tale, shaped only by the fluctuations of its protagonist's coy helplessness. It relies on the inventiveness of its language to charm, and while Bernheimer does manage a balanced mix of the absurd and the matter-of-fact, too many mangled phrases ("Ketzia launched two green eyes about the room") disrupt the effect. Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.
Review
" The Complete Tales of Ketzia Gold [is] a truly original approach to the Bildungsroman, in which Kate Bernheimer has constructed a coherent and compelling narrative by cobbling together the plot lines of a wide variety of fairy tales, and my admiration for her talent as a writer, and the dazzling use to which she puts it, is of the highest order."
βKathryn Davis
"Kate Bernheimer's The Complete Tales of Ketzia Gold is a seductive work of intelligence and charm." βCarole Maso
"Original and beautifully written. . . . Kate Bernheimer is an exceptional writer of fiction." βFanny Howe
From the Back Cover
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. Bernheimer draws upon the motifs of traditional German, Russian and Yiddish folklore to shape Ketzia's bewildering adventures. This meeting of nursery rhyme and nightmare transforms everyday objects as childhood photos, wine bottles and metal trinkets take on a life of their own, eluding Ketzia's frightened grasp. 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. With an obsessive lyricism recalling the poetic fictions of Carol Maso, Kate Bernheimer interweaves hypnotic imagery and everyday life, moving back and forth through time, piecing together the fragments of memory and imagination. 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.
About the Author
Kate Bernheimer attended Wesleyan University and received her M.F.A. from the University of Arizona. She has taught in the Harvard Summer Writing Program and has been the George Bennett Fellow in Creative Writing at Phillips Exeter Academy in New Hampshire. The editor of the book Mirror, Mirror on the Wall: Women Writers Explore Their Favorite Fairy Tales (Doubleday), she teaches at the Pacific Northwest College of Art in Portland, Oregon. The Complete Tales of Ketzia Gold is Bernheimer's first novel.