The Pretty Girl: Novella and Stories [Paperback]

From Victorian toy theatres to a painting with a mysterious story behind it to a graphic novelists battle with the schizophrenia which causes her cartoon characters to march off the page, the novella and six stories in Debra Sparks fourth work of fiction, The Pretty Girl, revolve around artists, artistry, and the magicalsometimes maliciousdeceptions they create. With settings that traverse New Yorks Lower East Side, Victorian London, Paris and Switzerland, Sparks stories twist and turn in mesmerizing ways as they reflect on the fictions we fabricate about and for friends, family, and strangers. In one story, a woman finds her life unexpectedly dramatized on the stage; in another, a couples reconnection with a family friend leads to a labyrinth of mysteries and miscommunications. In the tour-de-force A Wedding Story, Simon Baal Shem, a charming five-inch rabbi found in a chocolate egg offers life advice in the form of Jewish stories. Gritty and elusive, Sparks stories work like the best magic tricks, seeming to defy the laws of reality even as they deftly extend and reinvigorate those laws. Readers who love magical realism, illusions, Jewish literature, and art, will be captivated by Sparks wonderfully textured The Pretty Girl.

Twelve bell towers with twelve clocks with twenty-four spindly hands telling the time.

DEBRA SPARK lives in Maine, and teaches at Colby and Warren Wilson Colleges.