THE COYOTE ROAD SHOW
Jun. 11th, 2007 11:38 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ellenkushnerWe had a good old time at both readings. Lots of nice folks came. The anthology has already gotten one lovely review in Strange Horizons that singles out Delia's story, and another one in Locus (June 2007, Nick Gevers), not available online, which reads in part:
Easily of major interest to adult readers, the stories presented here (all originals) explore every permutation of the Trickster archetype: Coyote, Hermes, Japanese fox women, and imaginary variations aplenty; tricksters tricking others, tricksters being tricked, tricksters tricking themselves, innocents being tricked into becoming tricksters. It’s a recipe for rich humor, but also an opportunity to investigate just how tricksters arise in the first place, and why, despite their destructive mischief, they are so essential to human nature and human narrative. [....]
Other pleasing, subversive tales abound. “Honored Guest” by Ellen Kushner, set in her Riverside milieu, concerns a confidence woman who visits a foreign household dominated by a clever, cynical, bullying matriarch; the intruder’s complex scheme of theft becomes entangled with the aspirations of the matriarch’s put-upon granddaughter, and the results are amusingly passionate. Delia Sherman’s “The Fiddler of Bayou Teche” is pungently evocative of the Louisiana backwoods, as a girl living among the werewolves of the swamps encounters human cruelty and perversity in their full measure, a spur to clever sleights and competing deceptions.
And - oops! - I forget to mention this review at GreenMan.
Easily of major interest to adult readers, the stories presented here (all originals) explore every permutation of the Trickster archetype: Coyote, Hermes, Japanese fox women, and imaginary variations aplenty; tricksters tricking others, tricksters being tricked, tricksters tricking themselves, innocents being tricked into becoming tricksters. It’s a recipe for rich humor, but also an opportunity to investigate just how tricksters arise in the first place, and why, despite their destructive mischief, they are so essential to human nature and human narrative. [....]
Other pleasing, subversive tales abound. “Honored Guest” by Ellen Kushner, set in her Riverside milieu, concerns a confidence woman who visits a foreign household dominated by a clever, cynical, bullying matriarch; the intruder’s complex scheme of theft becomes entangled with the aspirations of the matriarch’s put-upon granddaughter, and the results are amusingly passionate. Delia Sherman’s “The Fiddler of Bayou Teche” is pungently evocative of the Louisiana backwoods, as a girl living among the werewolves of the swamps encounters human cruelty and perversity in their full measure, a spur to clever sleights and competing deceptions.
And - oops! - I forget to mention this review at GreenMan.
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Date: 2007-06-12 03:52 am (UTC)Speaking of 'bullying', I have to go demand this of Barnes and Nobles now. (D! *joyful spaz*
Question: will you and Ms. Sherman be at Confluence in July? :3 Just curious.
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Date: 2007-06-12 02:30 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-06-12 05:44 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-06-13 02:42 am (UTC)Ellen and Delia both read from it wonderfully.
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Date: 2007-06-13 04:06 pm (UTC)Phooey, that would've been fun at Alpha. *pouts* (This is also Very Bad News for the local bookstores. They're going to be raided by me the very second I get off the airplane from Alpha...those sneaky snakes, releasing it while we're being distracted/detained! >0)
Unleeeee~ess... >3 We use one of those oh-so-convenient Barnes & Nobles trips during Alpha to snatch ourselves a couple copies? *plots* Pittsburgh B&N doesn't stand a chance.
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Date: 2007-06-13 04:59 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-06-13 05:01 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-06-13 04:59 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-06-12 04:06 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-06-12 02:29 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-06-13 06:01 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-06-13 01:16 pm (UTC)The "Strange Horizons" review is a bit ambivalent but the one in Locus by Nick Gevers is really fabulous, and smart -- as his reviews always are. It made my day.
-- Terri