Items related to Black Oxen: A Novel
In a richly textured and entertaining novel set in the year 2022, Carme Risk relives the adventures she had with her not quite human father as she pursues him through two worlds and three changes of identity and encounters a bold cast of characters, from a sexually ferocious therapist to a frail billionaire searching for eternal life. Reprint.
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Review:
Part fantasy, part mock-biography, part Latin American magic-realism, Elizabeth Knox's Black Oxen sweeps its characters and its audience up in an unsettling and enthralling journey through time and place. Carme Risk and her "not-quite-human" father contain and connect the action, becoming anchors through 50 years, three countries and numerous lives. Most of the people encountered are from Lequama, a Latin American country that had an inspirational revolution in the 1980s; the young, attractive leaders continue to live life on the edge, through love affairs and government posts, until the 2020s. Carme is in narrative therapy in California in 2022, relating in her own words her experiences in Lequama, about her step-mother, her half-sister, her disappearing father and her friends, who were all touched by the revolution. The breadth of years enables Knox to portray people and events through Carme's adolescent and mature eyes, reporting and reinterpreting violence, confusion, emotion and loss. The list of characters from each of the three locales before the novel has begun gives a hint of the magnitude of Knox's work. While Knox doesn't always engage fully with her characterisation and therefore with the reader, the story and characters are still disturbing and exhilarating enough to intrigue you and keep you reading. --Olivia Dickinson
From the Back Cover:
‘Her Worlds have the power to dazzle’ Independent
Black Oxen is the story of Carme Risk’s pursuit of her beautiful and not quite human father through two worlds and three changes of identity. In her forties, in the year 2022, Risk has entered narrative therapy. Her memories and her father’s journal take her from the Eden of her earliest childhood to dusty, poor Lequama, a Latin American country, where she and her father become involved with the slightly mad young leaders of the recent revolution and where everyone seems to practice black magic. And finally to Risk’s life in northern California, still in thrall to her elusive father and now the widow of Lequama’s most notorious torturer.
‘A superb piece of narrative therapy’ Independent on Sunday
‘Leaves the reader with a sense of authenticity, by the brilliance of the prose and by the wealth of knowledge Knox has brought in this vast undertaking…a work of great literary power’ Times Literary Supplement
‘Complex without being complicated, Black Oxen possesses a pure and whole-hearted intelligence’ Guardian
Black Oxen is the story of Carme Risk’s pursuit of her beautiful and not quite human father through two worlds and three changes of identity. In her forties, in the year 2022, Risk has entered narrative therapy. Her memories and her father’s journal take her from the Eden of her earliest childhood to dusty, poor Lequama, a Latin American country, where she and her father become involved with the slightly mad young leaders of the recent revolution and where everyone seems to practice black magic. And finally to Risk’s life in northern California, still in thrall to her elusive father and now the widow of Lequama’s most notorious torturer.
‘A superb piece of narrative therapy’ Independent on Sunday
‘Leaves the reader with a sense of authenticity, by the brilliance of the prose and by the wealth of knowledge Knox has brought in this vast undertaking…a work of great literary power’ Times Literary Supplement
‘Complex without being complicated, Black Oxen possesses a pure and whole-hearted intelligence’ Guardian
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- PublisherPicador USA
- Publication date2002
- ISBN 10 0312420498
- ISBN 13 9780312420499
- BindingPaperback
- Number of pages436
- Rating
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Black Oxen: A Novel
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Picador USA
(2002)
ISBN 10: 0312420498
ISBN 13: 9780312420499
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