- Paperback: 212 pages
- Publisher: Norilana Books (July 1 2009)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 1607620111
- ISBN-13: 978-1607620112
- Product Dimensions: 22.9 x 15.2 x 1.2 cm
- Shipping Weight: 204 g
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #1,226,963 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Product Details |
Product Description
Product Description
"Whimsy and malice--yes--also mystery, a very female sensuality, and wit. An elegant and entertaining book."
--Ursula K. Le Guin
--Ursula K. Le Guin
"The tales are beautifully written, elegant, passionate, funny, and moving. The entire collection is a delightful, magical bridge across cultures. I hope many readers find their way to it."
--Patricia A. McKillip
"Noted short story author Foster offers a dozen enchanting and sometimes chilling tales alive with elegantly sketched characters and sensibilities drawn from Asian folklore . . . Readers who long for a break from European medieval fantasy will be charmed and entertained by Foster's tales."
--Publishers Weekly
Enchantment, peril and romance pervade the shadowy Far East, from the elegant throne room of the emperor's palace to the humble teahouse of a peasant village. In these dozen stories of adventure and magic from the Orient, a maiden encounters an oni demon in the forest, a bride discovers her mother-in-law is a fox woman, a samurai must appease his sister's angry ghost, strange luck is found in a jade locket, and dark and light are two sides of harmony.
A striking debut collection from Eugie Foster.
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Customer Reviews
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
5.0 out of 5 stars (6 customer reviews)
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
Grace, Energy and Heart, Feb 28 2010
By Ken Schneyer - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: Returning My Sister's Face: And Other Far Eastern Tales of Whimsy and Malice (Hardcover)
The book contains twelve stories, originally published as early as 2004, in venues as various as Cricket, Paradox, Realms of Fantasyand Jim Baen's Universe. They are all drawn on Japanese, Chinese or Korean traditions, and in several cases drawn directly from existing folktales or well-known narratives. Being myself disgracefully ignorant of these literary traditions (I could earn maybe a C+ in an oral exam on Introduction to Eastern Religions, but that's about it) I have no idea how well Eugie is reflecting or representing them, but I don't care. She tells her tales with such energy, grace and heart that one feels instantly transported and moved.My favorite story in the collection was "A Thread of Silk," based loosely on actual historical events in Japan, and weaving together this Japanese tradition of storytelling, a scifi sensibility and a reflection of western (Greek!) mythological tropes. It is a tour de force. I love it especially for its thematic and complexity, its twist added upon twist, a feature also present in "Daughter of Bótù" and "Honor Is a Game Mortals Play."
I also adored "The Tanuki-Kettle," a fairy tale also drawn on a Japanese tale that is too unutterably cute for, er, utterances. I read it aloud to my ten-year-old while he chortled. The newest story in the collection, "The Tears of My Mother, the Shell of My Father," is a strange mixture of adorable cuteness and philosophic profundity.
Nearly as fun as the stories themselves are Eugie's one-paragraph commentaries at the end of each tale, reflecting such things as the family expectations at her own birth, the prevalence of unfair "foxist rhetoric" in Chinese and Japanese folktales, and the habits of her pet skunk.
I recommend this collection highly.
5 of 6 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
Far Eastern Fairy Tales Second to None, Mar 18 2009
By R. Santa - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: Returning My Sister's Face: And Other Far Eastern Tales of Whimsy and Malice (Hardcover)
What a joy, a delight, and an experience that makes a fellow writer breathless for having gone through it. Ms. Foster's collection of stories is mind-boggling in its juxtaposition of both complexity and simplicity. Simple, in that almost all of these stories I could read to my young girls at bed time; complex, in that I would be hard-pressed to emulate the storytelling style of Ms. Foster who has obviously mastered the skill. I've given the book to my 10-year-old daughter who is enchanted by it almost as much as I was. No amount of embarassingly rich praise is too much for this collection. "The Tiger Fortune Princess," "The Tanuki-Kettle," The Archer of the Sun and the Lady of the Moon," along with the story from which the book takes its name...classic storytelling flow and structure, set in mostly ancient Asia. So lovely, words fail me, so I shall stop trying to think of them.
4 of 5 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
Pure Style, Jun 22 2009
By Scott M. Sandridge "Scott M. Sandridge" - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: Returning My Sister's Face: And Other Far Eastern Tales of Whimsy and Malice (Hardcover)
Eugie Foster's writing style contains a near-poetic flow that'll keep you reading from start to finish. And when it comes to characterization and plot and so forth, her stories never disappoint.
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