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Thanks all. When I get home I’ll order at once. Now off to teach Ray Bradbury for my utopia/dystopia course. My main authority is Bill Oran, but I will add Andrew to my list of experts on fanfasy. Anne On Tuesday, April 24, 2018, Germaine Warkentin <[log in to unmask]> wrote: > Not available in print in Canada till September, but I was able to buy it > on Kindle, and have done so -- really looking forward to this! Germaine > > On 2018-04-24 11:19 AM, David Miller wrote: > > Members of the list will no doubt be please to hear that our long-time > listmaster, one Zurcher by name, has had a fantasy novel, *Twelve Nights*, > published by Penguin. > > It isn't out yet in the States, but you can order a copy from Amazon UK. I > did. It arrived last week and I read it nonstop over the weekend. Here is > my one-paragraph review: > > On pages 286-7 of *Twelve Nights*, Andrew Zurcher’s > aesthetico-metaphysical didactic postmodern fantasy novel for children, an > almost unthinkably powerful adult male character says to the progatonist, > nine-year-old Katharine Worth-More: > > > > “Plotters work with boards, Kay.… The boards are of a certain size. We > move the stones around the boards, watching the patterns. Our hands think > through the narratives of things as they guide and are guided by the > stones. But always the stones stay on the board and the narratives are, as > we say, conserved. If stones could fall off the board or come on to the > board from nowhere, the plotting could not function. For that reason, there > is nothing a plotter fears more than the edge of the board; nothing a > plotter guards more carefully than the security of the stones. Causes must > generate effects, and effects derive from causes; a cause without an effect > or an effect without a cause would break the principle of conservation, and > would undermine the plot. > > “The greatest stories flirt with the edge, and become great exactly > because of this flirtation. They skirt it, needle it, always toying with > the loss of a cause or with the spontaneous effect; but the art of the > greatest storytellers lies in the surprise of conservation, in the delight > of an expectation dashed, only to be fulfilled. It may be a simple rule, > but it is a rule.” > > > > Not many nine-year olds will be able to follow this kind of metafictional > labyrinth, but those who do will burn through the book like a lit fuse, for > all the long discursive and descriptive passages that ease the pace. So > will a great many high school and college students, not to mention their > teachers. As a literary event, Italo Calvino meets Spenser meets Plato > meets Aristotle, C.S. Lewis, and narrative theory is too cool to miss. It > is an adventure story suspended for 436 beautifully written pages on the > edge of the board. > > > -- > David Lee Miller > University of South Carolina > Columbia, SC 29208 > (803) 777-4256 > FAX 777-9064 > [log in to unmask] > Center for Digital Humanities <http://www.cdh.sc.edu/> > Faculty Web Page <http://www.cas.sc.edu/engl/people/pages/miller.html> > > > -- > *********************************************************************** > Germaine Warkentin // English (Emeritus), University of [log in to unmask]://www.individual.utoronto.ca/germainew/ > > "There has never been a great age of science and technology without > a corresponding flourishing of the arts and humanities." > -- Cathy N. Davidson > > *********************************************************************** > >