- Paperback: 288 pages
- Publisher: Tor Books; First Edition edition (Nov 15 1997)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0312865783
- ISBN-13: 978-0312865788
- Product Dimensions: 20.8 x 13.7 x 2 cm
- Shipping Weight: 204 g
- Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars See all reviews (13 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #1,112,733 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- See Complete Table of Contents
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Product Details |
Product Description
From Amazon
Winner of the 1997 William J. Crawford Memorial Award (for a first fantasy novel), this utopian, archetypal story follows five generations of women--from the monumental, sadistic despot to her great-great-granddaughter working in a warehouse--through their travels away from and toward one another. Loves and deaths are passed through the generations, collected on their successive journeys, each restless character setting others in motion as she seeks freedom and kinship. Candas Jane Dorsey's concise language is powerful, telling an intense story without emotional plateaus, only peaks and valleys, joy and grief. This is an involving, unsettling book. It is easily one of the best and most ambitious novels of 1996 and one that will provoke thought and conversation.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From Publishers Weekly
An acclaimed poet and short-story writer in her native Canada, Dorsey is almost unknown in the States. That should change with the publication of this novel, her first. The narrative braids the lives of three women who are linked by their independent spirits as well as by blood. One is "the waif," a young slave whose strange dreams and troubling half-memories hint at a past she can't remember. When the waif is sold as a concubine to a prince in the distant northern Land of the Dark Isles, she begins a journey that will lead her to the secret of her past as well as to her future. Weaving the waif's tale with that of Essa, an adventurous young woman determined to find her mother, and the journal entries of a woman escaping a husband she neither loves nor wants, Dorsey creates a complex and human story about freedom, love and the need to retain one's own identity. The fantasy setting is stark, a world where the most brutal events are treated with cold matter-of-factness, but Dorsey's writing is strong, even unflinching. Those who enjoy the work of such popular feminist speculative fiction writers as Joanna Russ and Ursula K. Le Guin will find much to admire here. (Jan.) FYI: Dorsey is head of Tesseract Books, a leading Canadian SF publisher.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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Customer Reviews
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Most helpful customer reviews
5.0 out of 5 stars
Modern writing style, surreal, vivid, emotional,
By Auliya "An Avid Reader" (Austin, TX USA) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Black Wine (Paperback)
The truth about 'Black Wine' -- This book reads both like a story woven carelessly from dream-logic and like a story masterfully and carefully crafted. The writing style is like a piece of modern art: sometimes abstract and filled with strange brevity. The issues of the story are raw, emotional, and distinctly adult: feminism, dominance and submission, sex, power. 'Black Wine' is not a "fun" escapist storybook -- it is a highly stylized and challenging piece of literature that invites you to read closely and see deeply. If you seek challenging literary fiction, I highly recommend this book to you.
4.0 out of 5 stars
A pleasant surprise,
By monkey mind (Edmonton Canada) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Black Wine (Hardcover)
It often annoys me when a book's back cover has nothing but praise, without even a hint of what the book may be like. In this instance however, I ended up glad that I had gotten into the book without knowing just what it was I was getting into.I did find the first part of the book difficult to follow, but the allure of the book came from watching it weave together and begin to make sense (starting around p100 or so for me).Unlike a lot of fantasy I have read, where the author takes familiar (tired?) themes and stories and tells them in an alien world with alien characters, Candas Jane Dorsey tells a dream-like, surreal narrative in settings and with characters that seemed quite familiar. To me the book read almost like a feminine 'Naked Lunch'. Although I say the settings seemed very familiar, the book conjured imagery that was fantastic, dark and beautiful. Reading this book was a wonderful escape from this mundane earth, and perhaps if read a second time (which I may do one day) deeper running themes can be found. The only reason I've given this novel 4 rather than 5 stars is that at some points it felt a touch too academic to be a fantasy novel.
5.0 out of 5 stars
Best fantasy of decade,
By "danflemming" (London, Ontario, Canada) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Black Wine (Paperback)
I note a recommendation for fans of LeGuin and the like above. Well, I'm not a big LeGuin fan (I read the Earthsea trilogy in high school), and I loathe Atwood, but I loved this book.Recommendation? Read it. It's amazing. The only fantasy from the '90s that I can think of that compares at all is Brust's Agyar, which is written by one of the best, and most definitely is not a first novel. Out of first novels, this book stands out. I hope she writes more. All I can say is, The Hobbit was a first novel, and this book is too.
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