Gretel and the Dark
-
-
5.0 • 1 Rating
-
-
- £2.99
-
- £2.99
Publisher Description
Gretel and the Dark is Eliza Granville's dazzling novel of darkness, evil - and hope.
For fans of Markus Zusak's The Book Thief and Guillermo del Toro's Pan's Labyrinth.
Vienna, 1899. Josef Breuer - celebrated psychoanalyst - is about to encounter his strangest case yet. Found by the lunatic asylum, thin, head shaved, she claims to have no name, no feelings - to be, in fact, not even human. Intrigued, Breuer determines to fathom the roots of her disturbance.
Years later, in Germany, we meet Krysta. Krysta's Papa is busy working in the infirmary with the 'animal people', so little Krysta plays alone, lost in the stories of Hansel and Gretel, the Pied Piper, and more. And when everything changes and the real world around her becomes as frightening as any fairy tale, Krysta finds that her imagination holds powers beyond what she could have ever guessed . . .
'Atmospheric and beautifully written. Gretel and the Dark will be one of the best books of 2014' The List
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Granville's debut is a back-and-forth tale of secrets and imagination, deftly intermingling two distinct and seemingly unrelated stories of loss and redemption. A fairy tale prologue opens onto 19th century Vienna, where Herr Doktor Josef Breuer, a respected psychoanalyst, is stumped by a strange new case. A nameless and stunning young woman Lilie, he calls her claims not to be a girl at all, but a machine who yields no clues about her origin. Simultaneously, the story of Krysta, a pale and lonely girl some years later in Nazi-controlled Germany, unfolds. She spends her days home alone telling herself old stories while her physician father visits the mysterious zoo next door. When Krysta's reality becomes more frightening than the darkest of her fairy tales, Krysta retreats further into her imagination and begins to invent her own stories. Chapters alternate from Krysta to Lilie, and as truths shift beneath their feet, readers may feel the whiplash. Nonetheless, Granville weaves her two tales together through lush prose; her novel is both a thoroughly engaging journey into the darkest corners of humanity, as well as an illumination of the redemptive power of the imagination. And if Lilie's and Krysta's stories are any indication, it's the victors, indeed, who write history.
