Singing Innocence and Experience

The Devil's School lies down this way. Lot's wife knows your name. Hearts hang in the scales, flesh and clay are one and the same, and the severed head of Orpheus sings in winter waves. In award-winning poet Sonya Taaffe's first collection of short fiction, the boundaries between worlds dissolve to reveal unmasked harlequins and women made of stars, serpentine plagues and New England storm gods, and many other denizens of the spaces between. These songs of innocence and experience, Blake never knew.

Taaffe's first story collection offers evocative reimaginings of myths and iconic images, from unicorns, golems and ghosts to tragic Orpheus and Eurydice. "Shade and Shadow," "Kouros" and "Featherweight" explore the range of sacrifices some make for love. Humans in love with merfolk find trust is the most important aspect of their relationships in "A Maid on the Shore" and "Till Human Voices Wake Us," while the gift of freedom proves the most precious in the title tale and "Clay Lies Still." One of the few stories not set on contemporary Earth, "Time May Be" asks haunting questions about fate and the nature of humanity. At times the richness and sheer density of the author's wordcraft goes slightly over the top, as in the sensual "Nights with Belilah" and the tragic "Retrospective." Despite the presence of a few too many earnest young student-artists and musicians obsessed with love or knowledge, Taaffe's gift for evoking mood and revealing hard truths beautifully is nothing short of marvelous. (Dec.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.