Northwood
A Novella
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- $14.99
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
"Artfully explores themes of pain, desire, and the meeting place of the two, for a surreal, fairytale–esque accounting of what happens when we go to the darkest places within ourselves, and within others.” —NYLON
Part fairy tale, part horror story, Northwood is a genre–breaking novella told in short, brilliant, beautifully strange passages. The narrator, a young woman, has fled to the forest to pursue her artwork in isolation. While there, she falls in love with a married man she meets at a country dance. The man is violent, their affair even more so. As she struggles to free herself, she questions the difference between desire and obsession—and the brutal nature of intimacy. Packaged with a cover and end papers by famed English artist Rufus Newell and inventive, white–on–black text treatments by award–winning designer Jonathan Yamakami, Northwood is a work of art as well as a literary marvel.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Meijer (Heartbreaker) follows an overwhelming affair and its long reach in this evocative work, constructed as a blend of poems and brief, disconnected snippets. An unnamed woman has rented a rural cabin to escape the city and produce art for a year. At a dance, she meets a much older married man and they begin a passionate affair that tips from rough into abusive. The narrator draws on classical mythology and fairy tales to explain her infatuation despite its violence and terror. After her return to the city, she copes with her mother's cancer treatment and attempts to return to a normal life, including marrying another man. The man from the dance, however, continues to float around the margins of her life, calling her at times of desire and crisis, including after the death of his daughter. The unfinished texture of their affair and the woman's uncertain processing of her trauma shapes her life without providing a firm conclusion. Passages crackle with breathtakingly fresh images such as the couple erotically tasting her inks, and lines such as "it did not drain the pus from the panic when I heard you leave." This challenging but beautiful work will compel readers to fit together the pieces of the protagonist's lingering trauma.
