|
|
|
|
||
|
HELP | |
|
  $6.95 List price:
Used Trade Paper
Ships in 1 to 3 days
More copies of this ISBN:Troll: A Love Storyby Johanna Sinisalo
AwardsWinner of the Finlandia Award (Finland's equivalent of the Booker Prize)
Staff Pick
Told as a modern-day fairy tale, Troll haunted me long after I finished. It has all the elements, including some of the disturbing ones, found in so many of Grimm's stories, but is nonetheless a truly original novel. If you like fiction in the style of Geek Love you will really enjoy this book. Synopses & ReviewsPublisher Comments:Winner of the Finlandia Award, Finland's most prestigious literary award, Johanna Sinisalo's U.S. debut novel is a fanciful tale of a fairy-tale animal who reveals the beast in ourselves.
An enchanting novel that has become an international sensation, Troll recalls the unforgettable charm and otherworldly zoology of Rafi Zabor's The Bear Comes Home and Steven Sherill's The Minotaur Takes a Cigarette Break. Everyone has their rough nights, but things have clearly taken a turn for the surreal when Angel, a young photographer, ends a night of drinking and heartbreak by finding a group of drunken teenagers in the courtyard of his apartment building, taunting a young troll. Trolls are known in Scandinavian mythology as wild beasts like the werewolf, but this troll is just a small, wounded creature. Angel decides to offer it a safe haven for the night. In the morning Angel thinks he dreamed it all. But he finds the troll alive, well, and drinking from his toilet. What does one do with a troll in the city? Angel begins researching frantically. Officially classified by scientists in 1907, trolls have long been thought practically extinct. Angel searches the Internet, folklore, nature journals, and newspaper clippings — even calling a veterinarian ex-boyfriend to find out what it will eat — but his research doesn't tell him that trolls exude pheromones that smell like a Calvin Klein aftershave and that this has a profound aphrodisiac effect on all those around him. Shooting an assignment for the ultrahip "Stalker" brand jeans, Angel finds that Martes, the advertising art director who previously jilted him, suddenly finds him irresistible, and in general he has gone from being the brokenhearted to the heartbreaker. As Angel's life changes beyond recognition, it becomes clear that the troll is familiar with the man's most forbidden feelings, and that it may take him across lines he never thought he'd cross. A novel of sparkling originality, Troll is a wry, peculiar, and beguiling story of nature and man's relationship to wild things, and of the dark power of the wildness in ourselves. Review:"[A]n ingenious dramatization of the nightmare of blurred boundaries between species....A fascinating black comedy, from a writer who has made the transition to literary fiction with a giant's stride." Kirkus Reviews (Starred Review) Review:"Sinisalo cleverly taps this fabled legacy while ditching the fairy-tale tone you might expect." Ellen Emery Heltzel, USA Today Review:"[S]trange, sexually charged....Sinisalo's elastic prose is at once lyrical and matter-of-fact, but this is not a comfortable novel....As the troll becomes ever more unmanageable, the sense of doom grows; the ferocious ending is thoroughly unsettling." Publishers Weekly Review:"All these overlapping narrative voices nicely underscore the moral of Sinisalo's ingeniously constructed fable: The stuff of ancient legend shadows with rather unnerving precision the course of unloosed postmodern desire." Chris Lehmann, The Washington Post Book World Review:"A wily thriller-fantasy....Each discovery sounds like the voice of a storyteller reminding us of how the gods play with our fates." Margo Jefferson, The New York Times Book Review Review:"The biggest question...is that sine qua non of so much fantastic literature — What if? — and pursuing an answer leads to a hitherto unimaginable place and an ending that leaves one reeling." Paula Luedtke, Booklist Review:"Troll is a wonderfully compelling fable, suspenseful and infused with a primeval eroticism. Johanna Sinisalo is a writer who understands the wildness that lies deep within the civilized heart." Carolyn Parkhurst, author of The Dogs Of Babel Review:"Unsettlingly seductive...elegance, authenticity and chilling conviction." Independent on Sunday (UK) Review:"Sinisalo's strange and erotic tale peers at the crooked world through a peephole....Is the troll becoming more human (hurt, jealousy), or does he merely reveal our own trollishness?" The Guardian (UK) Review:"The comedy is irresistible, the pages turn themselves, carried along by the quicksilver of an unbelievably imaginative pen....An entertaining variation on the eternal confrontation between...the light and dark angels which live in all of us." Michel Abescat, Télérama (Paris) Synopsis:Angel, a young photographer, comes home from a night of carousing to find a group of drunken teenagers in the courtyard of his apartment building, taunting a wounded, helpless young troll. He takes it in, not suspecting the dramatic consequences of this decision. What does one do with a troll in the city? As the troll's presence influences Angel's life in ways he could never have predicted, it becomes clear that the creature is the familiar of man's most forbidden feelings. Troll is a wry, beguiling story of nature and man's relationship to wild things, and of the dark power of the wildness in ourselves. Synopsis:Sinisalo's sparklingly original novel is a wry, peculiar, and beguiling story of nature and man's relationship to wild things, and of the dark power of the wildness in ourselves. What Our Readers Are SayingAdd a comment for a chance to win!
Average customer rating based on 1 comment: | |||||||||
|
| ||||||||||
|
||||||||||
Don't Miss
