A Child Again - Hardcover

Coover, Robert

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1932416226 ISBN 13: 9781932416220

Publisher: McSweeney's, 2005

Synopsis

Casey returns to bat. The Pied Piper pipes again. Little Red Ridinghood is
not safe yet.

Robert Coover returns with a new collection of short fiction, reexamining
our shared narrative heritage -- myths, fairytales, and favorite childhood
stories -- unearthing the underlying hope, fear, and wonder at their core.
Simultaneously playful and systematic, satirical and empathetic, Coover uses
the stories of our past to point towards a fiction of the future.

About this title

From Publishers Weekly:

Inverting and perverting popular folklore and fairy tales is a constant of Coover's prolific, pyrotechnic career, from Pricksongs & Descants in 1969 to last year's Stepmother. A dazzling writer, he's in tip-top if familiar form with this collection of 18 outlandishly skewed tales that veer from slapstick hilarity ("McDuff on the Mound," in which mighty Casey still strikes out) to macabre despair ("The Return of the Dark Children," in which the children paraded away by the Pied Piper come home, with the rats, to haunt their town). "Sir John Paper Returns to Honah-Lee" expands the universe of Peter, Paul and Mary's cryptic "Puff the Magic Dragon" song; "Alice in the Time of Jabberwock" posits a Wonderland even more absurd than the original; "The Invisible Man" leads a lonely interior life; and Little Red Riding Hood is menaced and mesmerized by her "Grandmother's Nose." Fans of Coover's riotous wordplay and fondness for the grotesque, the satirical, the scatological and the erotic will feel right at home with this collection that, though entertaining, is more of the splendid same rather than something new. "Shuffleable deck-of-cards story" that comes with the book not seen by PW. (Oct.)
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About this edition

• Publisher: McSweeney's
• Publication date: 2005
• ISBN 10: 1932416226
• ISBN 13: 9781932416220
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 200