Fiction Collective Two is pleased to announce Joanna Ruocco has won the second annual FC2 Catherine Doctorow Innovative Fiction Prize for Another Governess/The Least Blacksmith-A Diptych. The prize includes publication by FC2 and $15,000. The judge was Ben Marcus.
Read the full article at: http://www.thenation.com/article/158975/wrinkles-time-joanna-ruoccoOne of [The Mothering Coven]’s first descriptive passages, which concerns the witches’ next-door neighbor, presents an image of a lettuce heart as a model of the universe:
Mr. Henderson takes the lettuce heart. He had always thought the physical universe had no shape at all, just a multi-directional nothingness with deep space objects floating around at varying speeds. He realizes that he has been ridiculous. All these dark folded places, opening everywhere at once—of course, that’s what the physical universe looks like.
“Opening everywhere at once” is a good description of The Mothering Coven, which navigates the many, fantastical realities that crowd within the illusory unity of our universe... The novel encompasses a multitude of worlds, its concision no obstacle to its holding capacity, since the latter depends not on mere size but on an endless series of folds, which language is no less capable of creating than is vegetation.
...Ruocco’s coven is a counterproposal to language as a homogenizing force—to words that would flatten out the leaves of the lettuce heart or chop them into uniform, bite-size pieces. Ruocco’s feat is to show how esoteric vocabularies unfold hidden pockets of experience.
Pick up a copy today!
Read the full review by Michelle Bailat-Jones at Necessary Fiction"There is quite a lot going on in The Mothering Coven: party preparations, art installations, visits from Ms. Kidney and her sled dogs, trips into town, shamanistic journeys, paleozoological studies and a score of research projects. Often, the tone of these activities is deceptively lighthearted. But this is not a book to read with blithe inattention, as much of what happens and what is said could be perceived as nonsensical whimsy. A slower, more careful read detects the fragile threads of what makes this a novel and not a playful and poetic montage... Despite the playfulness of the language and the sometimes comical, offbeat conversations, real moments of tenderness leap up from within these small scenes."
"Ruocco paints her pages with bright, strong women who clearly revel in mischievous and playful language... In Ruocco’s deft hands, The Mothering Coven takes readers on a delightful romp through a uniquely imagined universe."
"The prose of Joanna Ruocco’s remarkable debut novel The Mothering Coven is so exuberant and thoroughly enlivening in its contagious and cheeky love for the mutability of language’s meanings that its plot often seemed to serve a subsidiary role to its stylistic rollicks; one could read for sound and linguistic play alone – its rhetorical approach to story seemed a narrative unto itself, and one could enjoy and take from this element of the novel as much – indeed, far more than – one could from practically any other published work out there, contemporary or otherwise... a kind of sui generis gem."
In The Mothering Coven, Joanna Ruocco builds us a vacation cottage in a mad village inhabited by brilliant kooks such as Mrs. Borage, who mixes metaphysics with the chores, and ace reporter, Duncan Michaels, whose articles are never read. When it is time for you to leave this place, we think you will find the characters following you. Please enjoy Joanna Ruocco.
Posts
All Comments
