The Complete Tales of Merry Gold
168 pages, 5 1/2 x 8 1/2
Paperback
Release Date:03 Sep 2006
ISBN:9781573661317
The Complete Tales of Merry Gold
University of Alabama Press, Fiction Collective 2
Obsessive, prudish, and cold, Merry Gold lives in denial of her own condition. This seamstress—the eldest and meanest of the three Gold sisters—possesses a tarnished past and faces a bleak and lonely future. Guilty about her destructive desires and longing for innocence, her inner turmoil and explosive imagination belie a disarming honesty.
A sequel to The Complete Tales of Ketzia Gold, the novel follows Merry from her suburban childhood through design school and a whirlwind of lovers, and into a desolate adulthood. Beginning with a toy seal and ending with mushrooms, this fairy tale set in modern times creeps through cruelty and violence to its inevitable end.
Reminiscent of a miniature, fragile ice sculpture, The Complete Tales of Merry Gold glistens with hard-hearted bliss. Kate Bernheimer has once again delved into the internal anguish of the Gold family to extract a magical, carefully stitched tale of strange and happy fear.
Here simmers witchery: the black magic of an ominous femininity. The little match girl has cut her teeth and her smile glitters with subversion and an irresistible malevolence.’—Rikki Ducornet
Kate Bernheimer’s fiction offers a unique and delicate gift, the tempting mirage of a grace that constantly escapes. The Complete Tales of Merry Gold is an exceptional, lovely book, beautifully enigmatic, speaking a language that mysteriously evokes the unspoken.’—Lydia Millet
A real gem, my favorite book of the year. A novel so simple and beautiful that you forget how hard it is to pull off simple and beautiful. Bernheimer’s second novel is a great, great success.’—Willy Vlautin
Kate Bernheimer, Assistant Professor in the Creative Writing Program at The University of Alabama, is the editor of Mirror, Mirror on the Wall: Women Writers Explore their Favorite Fairy Tales.
