The Stain

Paperback
Price: $11.95 $9.56 Save $2.39 (20%)

In The Stain Rikki Ducornet tells the story of a young girl named Charlotte, branded with a furry birthmark in the shape of a dancing hare, regarded as the mark of Satan. "Sadistic nuns, scatology, butchered animals, monkish rapists, and Satan" (Kirkus), as well as the village exorcist, inhabit this bawdy tale of perversion, power, possession, and the rape of innocence. Ducornet weaves an intricate design of fantasy and reality, at once surreal, hilarious, and terrifying.

Details

ISBN-10 1-56478-085-6

ISBN-13 9781564780850

Publication Date Oct 1995

Nb of pages 192

Dimensions 5.5 x 8.5 in.

Onix

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Reviews

Press Reviews

Time Out

An extraordinary black, erotic fairytale, an exuberant, touching and very funny novel.

London Times

A tale of witchcraft, prostitution and sex . . . the images in relentless detail recall Brueghel and Bosch . . . the atmosphere is steamy and pungent, indubitably a powerful nightmare vision.

The Guardian

This is the most brilliant first novel I have read in years . . . Rikki Ducornet's real talent is for language. She is a minor lord or lady of it, achieving abstruse comic effects by a kind of clowning classicism. The Stain is a very odd, accomplished and memorable novel by any standards.

Times Literary Supplement

A highly disciplined extravaganza . . . The writing is highly impressive.

Kirkus

Ducornet displays distinct page-by-page talents (vivid imagery and invention) along the lines of Angela Carter.

Publishers Weekly

Readers with voracious appetites for the bizarre may relish the spread prepared by Ducornet.

Library Journal

A bold, Rabelaisian mixture of bawdy and horror, this first novel . . . is highly recommended.

Chatto Fiction

At once surreal, hilarious and solidly evocative of malign village life, this black fairy tale, with its echoes of Djuna Barnes and Jane Bowles, crackles with the wit and originality of a new and startling talent.

Quotations

A riotous extravaganza, comic, melodramatic and touching, that goes over the top time and time again but never loses its antic grace and sure sense of place.

-Angela Carter

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Genres : Fiction : United States and Canada
Countries : United States of America

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