The Wood Wife

Add links
Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
Not to be confused with the poem "The Wood-Wife" by fantasist Leah Bodine Drake.
First edition
cover artist: Susan Seddon Boulet

The Wood Wife is a novel by American writer

surrealist art to tell the story of a woman who finds her muse in a spirited desert landscape. The plot revolves around a reclusive English poet, Davis Cooper, and his lover, Mexican surrealist painter Anna Naverra—a character reminiscent of the real-life Mexican painter Remedios Varo
.

Windling subsequently published a very loosely connected story, "The Color of Angels", in 1997.

Plot summary

The plot follows journalist, biographer, and former poet Maggie Black as she inherits property from her former mentor, the reclusive poet Davis Cooper; he had previously shared the land with his late lover, the painter Anna Naverra.

Native American and Celtic mythologies. Naverra had gone mad and killed herself, and Cooper was the victim of a mysterious murder. Maggie wonders if she will share their fate.[2]

Critical reception

Author Charles DeLint (a fellow member of Terri Windling's Endicott Studio project) praised the novel as "gorgeous, lyric in places, spare in others, always just right. The characters are distinct, the relationships between them revealing and truthful."[2] Eleanor Farrell appreciated the "clear straightforward tale, bringing the magic of the Sante Fe [sic] mountains quietly to the surface and into the life of her main character," but complained that there is "nobody ordinary in her entire population of characters."[3]

Eco-feminist scholar Robin Murray sees The Wood Wife as an example of how writing can break free of previously established binaries separating women/nature from men/culture. She writes that "through its magical realism, [the book] moves beyond binaries and allows its main characters to attain a subjectivity that acknowledges that the so-called "creatures" of the desert are also subjects rather than objects."[4]: 23  Citing fellow scholar Gretchen Legler, she asserts that a key component of this breaking down of binaries is "an ethic of caring friendship" or a "loving eye"[4]: 24 [6] exhibited by the relationships in the novel.

Jo Walton writes about several themes regarding creativity and place in the novel. She writes of it as a "rural fantasy" and a "regional American fantasy" with particular attention to both the mythological context of people indigenous to the southwest and the mythologies brought by European settlers, including Davis Cooper. Cooper and Naverra represent an earlier generation of poets and artists inspired by the locality of the book, while Maggie and Juan del Rio (a painter among Maggie's new friends) are a new generation. All four reflect their relationship with the land and its spirits in their art. Walton also highlights the theme of romantic partners who each have their own creative pursuits, and the different ways of supporting a partner's artistic efforts.[5]

Walton and DeLint both note that Windling is best known as an editor and anthologist of contemporary, mythic fantasy rather than an author. Both noted her editorial acumen, and praise her writing in that context. Echoing DeLint's description of the writing as "always just right,"[2] Walton writes that the novel "hits a sweet spot for me where I just love everything it's doing."[5]: 395 

References

  1. ^ "The Mythopoeic Society: Mythopoeic Award Winners". www.mythsoc.org. The Mythopoeic Society. Retrieved 2018-11-28.
  2. ^ a b c d e f DeLint, Charles (December 1996). "Books to Look For". Fantasy & Science Fiction. 91 (6): 42–43.
  3. ^ a b c d Farrell, Eleanor M. (June 1997). "The Wood Wife". Mythprint. 34 (6).
  4. ^ a b c d e Murray, Robin (2001). "Terri Windling's The Wood Wife: A Space for Complementary Subjects". Femspec. 3 (1): 22–32.
  5. ^
    OCLC 855909865
    .
  6. ISBN 9780253330314
    .

External links
Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=The_Wood_Wife&oldid=1067335356"