Breath and Bones - Softcover

Cokal, Susan

3.66

119 ratings by Goodreads

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1932961151 ISBN 13: 9781932961157

Publisher: Unbridled Books, 2006

View all copies of this ISBN edition:

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 stimulation (as treatment for consumption) into a comic novel that gallops across the American west.

"synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.

Review:

Cokal’s storytelling blends the morbid and the titillating with imaginative exuberance....
the story of Famke's quest...brings to mind the question Martin Amis asked of 'Lolita': how was it possible to limit her adventures to "this 300-page blue streak -- to something so embarrassingly funny, so unstoppably inspired, so impossibly racy?" ” THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW

Masterful. Cokal draws the reader in to a literate experience that’s also a gripping tale in the tradition of great picaresque novels like Moll Flanders and Don Quixote.” Southwest Book Views

It’s almost impossible not to be amused, then intrigued and finally impressed with the heroine of Susann Cokal’s new novel, Breath and Bones .Cokal has a special gift for starting many of her chapters with lines that zing. Actually, each begins with some sort of quoted matter, but it is Cokal’s own prose that arrests .At various points in its narrative, Breath and Bones elicits laughter, empathy, shock. But Cokal pulls our strings while maintaining a consistent, authoritative voice; she is sure of herself without being arrogant or chilly. Essentially, this is a book about art, flesh and spirit and Cokal delves into all three areas of her inquiry with wit but also heart.” John Mark Eberhart, The Kansas City Star

"The story is a romp, in the tradition of Tom Jones, and a quinta-sensual novel with characters forever circling prey....That Cokal makes all this work is a testament to her research...[and] to her balance of the erotic with the esoteric...” Pages Magazine

Cokal's rich language and ability to craft an intriguing tale and heroine will pull readers along as they hope for the heroine's happiness.”
The Rocky Mountain News

Riveting.” LIBRARY JOURNAL

Another offbeat adventure from Cokal (Mirabilis, 2001), who sends a consumptive but dauntless Danish teenager across 1880s America in search of her lover fun-in a kinky sort of way. An intriguing sophomore effort from a writer who definitely has her own unique voice.”--Kirkus Reviews

within it lies a historical richness that is Cokal’s greatest strength, and which she used just as well in her first novel, MIRABILIS .[This] was an exciting time to be in America, with all its gritty splendor, and Cokal depicts it with authority and obvious pleasure.” PopMatters.com

This steamy historical novel (Cokal's second, after Mirabilis) chronicles the adventures-sexual and otherwise-of its consumptive, red-haired heroine, Famke, from her childhood in a late 19th-century Copenhagen orphanage to her fate in the American Wild West. [A] literary bodice-ripper ” Publishers Weekly
It's quite a trick, lassoing the literary bounty of historical fiction, the sheer oddness of what people did and the words they used, and lashing it tight to a clever, irreverent, a la page voice. Susann Cokal has pulled that off in her second novel, Breath and Bones. Her language is fresh. It's bawdy. It's laugh-out-loud funny in parts. And if it's historically astute, do we care? This is fiction for fun.” The Durango Herald

A poetic, comic, tragic, and surreal story of art, love, and searching.” Richmond Magazine

Inventive One might think the disparate elements in Susann Cokal's "Breath and Bones" incapable of being woven into whole cloth, but weave them she does with the results neatly balanced between the ridiculous and the engaging.” The San Diego Union-Tribune

As a story, Breath and Bones is definitely unique. As wordsmith, Ms. Cokal is a standout. I literally devoured this book, enticed by her skill to keep reading from first page to last Throughout, Ms. Cokal blends fascinating characters and locations, humor and history into a splendid tale of an amazing woman and her travels. And she accomplishes the telling of her story in grand style.” The Midwest Book Review

Susann Cokal’s romping novel explores connections between art and sexuality through the eyes of an orphaned Danish girl, Famke, whose greatest pleasure in life is to serve as a model (and lover) for English painter Albert Castle. Famke becomes addicted not only to being looked at, but also to looking at images of herself, wholeheartedly embracing her role as sexual and artistic object .Throughout the novel she rejects the notion that sexuality is a matter for shame rather than a source of inspiration [A] lovely adventure exactly the kind of novel Famke herself would have relished. NewPages.com

[L]usty, entertaining reading.” bookviews.com

From the Inside Flap:

As a slightly bawdy road novel in the tradition of Fanny Hill and Tom Jones and because of its narrating freshness and its twisted historic perspective, Susan Cokal's second wholly unique comic novel should appeal to readers of Jeffrey Eugenide's Middlesex and Jonathan Saffran Foer's Everything is Illuminated. The story begins in an orphanage in Denmark, where 15-year-old Famke learns about pleasure. Once she's ousted from The Convent of the Immaculate Heart, she becomes an artist's model and discovers how much she likes to be looked at. By the time Cokal has finished with her, Famke has learned a great deal more from her travels through the American West, and yet she remains charmingly naove -- almost to the novel's breathtaking, and literally explosive ending.

"About this title" may belong to another edition of this title.