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Critics' Opinion:
Readers' Opinion:
First Published:
May 2005, 416 pages
Paperback:
May 2006, 400 pages
Book Reviewed by:
BookBrowse Review Team
A romp through the late 19th century chronicling the adventures - sexual and otherwise - of its beautiful heroine, Famke, from her childhood in a Copenhagen orphanage to her strange adventures in the American Wild West.
In 1884, Famke Summerfugl is ousted from her convent in Denmark for sensuousness and pulled from servitude by a second-rate painter named Albert Castle. Loving to be looked at, and able to stand perfectly still without shivering, Famke is the ideal artist's model.
When Albert takes his eight-foot masterpiece and leaves his model behind, Famke sets out over the Atlantic, convinced that she is his muse.
Following Mirabilis, her highly acclaimed debut, Susann Cokal blends pre-Raphaelite painting, American brothels, Utahan polygamists, a bit of cross-dressing, a dynamite-wielding labor movement, one California millionaire, and the invention of electrical sexual stimulation (as treatment for consumption) into a comic novel that gallops across the American West.
Breath and Bones
Susann Cokal
This
little book treats of delicate subjects,
and has been sent to you only by
request.
It is not intended for indiscriminate reading,
but for your own private information.
Dedication
To three generations of Familjeflickor
Tove Rasmussen
Gunver Hasselbalch
Krishna Cokal
...
Depending on your preferences you're likely to either think Breath and Bones is great, or a total waste of time (other than a few chapters in the middle where things lagged a little, we leaned towards the former opinion). As always, you can get a feel for the book yourself by reading a substantial excerpt exclusive to BookBrowse.
Incidentally, the use of "electrical sexual stimulation" as a medical treatment is well recorded right up to the 1920s - but we can find no record of it being used as a treatment for consumption - only as a treatment for "hysteria" in women.
(Reviewed by BookBrowse Review Team).
Full Review
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Susann Cokal has lived in various locations in the United States and in Poitiers, France, where she found the inspiration for Mirabilis, her first novel. She earned her Ph.D. in Creative Writing from SUNY-Binghamton and her Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from UC-Berkeley. She lives in Richmond, Virginia, where she teaches at Virginia Commonwealth University.
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